"Where Rock Lives"
Motor City Blog recently had the opportunity to cover the sixth annual Rock on the Range festival in Columbus, Ohio at the Columbus Crew Stadium. Rock on the Range is one of the largest music festivals in North America. The three day festival played host to 44 bands on three stages to a crowd in excess of 70,000 people. Surprisingly this event is extremely affordable.Tickets for the event range from approximately 60 bucks a day depending on whether or not you purchase field or staduim tickets (both give you access to all three stages). That is some serious bang for your buck considering most of us have spent that much on one ticket to see one or two bands. Here is this years lineup;
Friday, May 18
Friday Night 4Play
F.Y.E. Second Stage
7:00 PM Hells Bells
7:45 PM Black Tide
8:30 PM Foxy Shazam
9:30 PM Hairball
Saturday, May 19
Monster Main Stage
Noon Adelitas Way
1:10 PM Halestorm
2:20 PM Theory of a Deadman
3:40 PM Chevelle
5:00 PM Slash
6:40 PM Five Finger Death Punch
8:10 PM Shinedown
9:45 PM Incubus
F.Y.E. Second Stage
11:30 AM Emphatic
12:35 PM New Medicine
1:45 PM Falling in Reverse
3:05 PM Cavo
4:25 PM P.O.D.
5:55 PM Cypress Hill
Jägermeister Stage
11:30 AM Fox Rocks Winner
12:35 PM Otherwise
1:45 PM Rival Sons
3:05 PM Kyng
4:25 PM In This Moment
5:55 PM Bobaflex
Sunday, May 20
Monster Main Stage
12:05 PM Black Stone Cherry
1:15 PM Escape the Fate
2:30 PM The Darkness
3:50 PM Volbeat
5:10 PM Mastodon
6:45 PM Megadeth
8:15 PM Marilyn Manson
9:45 PM Rob Zombie
F.Y.E. Second Stage
11:30 AM Aranda
12:40 PM Redlight King
1:55 PM Trivium
3:15 PM Attack Attack!
4:35 PM Down
6:00 PM Anthrax
Jägermeister Stage
11:30 AM Ghosts of August
12:40 PM Eve to Adam
1:55 PM SOiL
3:15 PM James Durbin
4:35 PM 12 Stones
6:00 PM Lacuna Coil
Detroit’s own Ghosts of August opened up the Jagermeister Second Stage on Sunday May 20th at 11:30am. MCB had the opportunity to catch up with the guys to hear about their ROTR experience and to discuss their newly released album.
Ghosts of August is;
Dave Holowchak - Vocals
Steven Lee - Guitars/Vocals
Terry Freers - Bass
Kenny Lee - Drums
Paul Delmotte - Guitars
MCB: Your self-titled debut album just came out recently?PAUL: Yes, the album came out on December 6, 2011 digitally through Itunes and Amazon. The physical copy was just released the first or second week of January 2012.
STEVE: The album is just now starting to show up in Michigan Best Buy’s and places like that.
PAUL: That’s cool I bought our own cd at Best Buy, but I’m not opening it. (laughs)
DAVE: I bought it too but I kept in the wrapper.
MCB: So you guys sold at least two copies already! Lol The album is self titled and your first single is “Disease” correct?
DAVE: Ya, it’s our first single and it did really well. We got like number 41 on the active rock charts. For being an Indie I guess it says something at least for us and we just released our second single “Scars” about a month ago and it’s the first song we played today. So we are trying to push that one and hopefully we have a couple more in the bank before we start going back the studio to work on the next cd.
MCB: This is your first Rock on the Range. How is the experience so far?
KENNY: It’s been great.
STEVE: We got to spend the day yesterday doing some media and press stuff, but got to catch a couple of the bands and that’s always fun.
MCB: Who does most of the writing in the band?
DAVE: We all kinda do it collectively. We all know what we do in the band and when we do it, it might be someone starting a riff or whatever it is and all of a sudden someone grabs it and builds on it and then someone else grabs it and builds on it. Then the lyrics hit. It really is a collective process. We all have credits on the writing. It’s never really just one person.
PAUL: Sometimes we’ll just jam at a rehearsal space and a song will just come out of it from nothing. Other times someone will come and say they have a riff idea or this melody and we just build it.
MCB: How long have you been playing together?
DAVE: This band since 2007, but outside of that we all came from the same area, but different bands. This is the most cohesive unit I’ve ever been a part of and without each one of these guys we wouldn’t be Ghosts of August.
(awwww)
DAVE: It’s true, that’s the way it is. Everybody brings their own flavour to it. That’s the basis of who we are.
MCB: Out of all the bands playing here this weekend, who are you most excited to see?
TERRY: Down.
DAVE: The Darkness.
KENNY: I’m with Dave, I want to see the Darkness.
PAUL: Yesterday was a huge day too. Slash was awesome
MCB: What’s up next for Ghosts of August?
STEVE: More of this.
PAUL: It’s gonna be a crazy summer.
DAVE: Next week we have a couple of one offs with Smile Empty Soul and Veer Union. We are playing The Machine Shop on Friday and then Sunday we are in Kentucky with those guys. After that I think we have a weekend or two off and then we are playing Rockapalooza in Jackson and Toledo, Band Camp in Wisconsin.
STEVE: A few more are being added slowly.
DAVE: We are in the process of building our summer right now. This is our biggest push of the album so far.
STEVE: This summer we kinda left open to do the summer festivals and place in some gigs along the way but the tour should hopefully come in the fall sometime.
MCB: Awesome. Thanks much for talking to us and best of luck with everything.