Sextonic Plates

Don’t let the Sextonic Plates fool you.
Though they list “drinks, fire and things that go boom, bang, bash” as their favorite things on Facebook, band members are also into building community pride, the brotherhood and sisterhood of musicians and economic development.
The Pittsburg band is comprised of Fred Gladbach on drums, Ryan O’Toole and Mark Blankenship on guitars, Roger Horton on bass and Samantha Mahon on vocals and keyboard.
O’Toole and Horton grew up together, and Gladbach and Blankenship have known each other for many years.
“Fred and I are from Fort Scott originally and we were in Rusty and the Thrusters,” Blankenship said.
Mahon moved to Pittsburg around 4 1/2 or five years ago from Wichita.
“I came here to go to school and study music,” she said. “I used to be in another band and that’s how I met the others.”
Sextonic Plates was born in September of 2012 when Blankenship, Mahon and Gladbach met Horton and O’Toole for drinks and threw some ideas around.
The group covers a few songs made popular by other musicians, but mainly sticks to original material.
“We’re all four songwriters, and we all have different perspectives,” Horton said.He said their musical influences include Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones and Queens of the Stone Age.
“Our environment in Pittsburg also influences us some,” O’Toole added. “When you hear a New York band, you can tell it’s a New York song, or if it’s a Los Angeles band or a Seattle band, you can tell. Pittsburg has a sound, too.”
“We all do have our own style of writing and playing, but it’s all complementary to each other,” Mahon said.
There’s also a mutual sense of trust when one band member presents a song idea to the others.
“We’re all pretty accepting,” Horton said. “We know we can make it our own song. There’s no fear.”
“I know I can give something to the guys and trust them to make something awesome,” Mahon said.
The group has made one EP recording and is working on another.
“Once you record it, that opens your eyes to a song,” Blankenship said.
Sextonic Plates has been playing a lot in Kansas City and Lawrence, but regards JST Bobby G’s in as its home turf.
“Bobby G’s is our comfort zone,” O’Toole said. “It’s open to a lot of styles.”
In fact, they believe the music scene is doing well in Pittsburg.
“There’s a nice little music oasis in town,” Mahon said.
“Southeast Kansas has always had good musicians since I was a kid,” O’Toole said. “There’s a ton of talent here.”
That talent is getting more support now, band members say. Gladbach says the support of 99.1 FM, Pittsburg’s classic rock station, helps a lot.
“When a show is advertised on radio, you see a lot of new faces at it, people you hadn’t seen come out before,” he said. “As the town grows, as the university grows, people don’t just go in a bar to drink, but also for some entertainment.”
The drummer also believes the change in the local noise ordinance will be good for all concerned. Formerly loud music couldn’t be played after 10 p.m., and now the cut-off time is 1 a.m.
“This especially helps with groups from out of town,” Mahon said. “Nobody wants to bother to come here if they have to stop playing at 10 p.m., just as a lot of people are getting to the bars. Now you can start rocking Monday night and end Tuesday morning. It’s awesome.”
She pointed out that more musicians coming into town, followed by their fans, means more out-of-towners visiting local restaurants and bars, staying in motels or filling their gas tanks before they head back home.
“This benefits the city,” Mahon said.
The group is excited now about being invited to play at the Midcoast Takeover, an unofficial showcase during South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, on March 12.
“This is a very big deal for us, and possibly for Pittsburg,” O’Toole said. “Music executives, booking agents, producers and all types of music industry professionals will be there. Pittsburg is our home base for writing, performing and getting our whole act together and we are proud to let out-of-town crowds know where we’re from, which is a small, quiet town, rich in talent.”
The band plans on touring more in the future.
“We’re in talks with different booking agencies, seeing what we could gain from them,” O’Toole said.
Their next gig, though, is in Pittsburg. Sextonic Plates, along with Super Rats and Jace & Jeff will perform at a band night and rigatoni fundraiser starting at 6 p.m. Saturday at Bubba’s 311. There will be no cover charge, and the dinner is $5 per plate, with food and tips going to the Pittsburg DragonBoys, a travel baseball team for boys 8 and younger.
“If we as a band keep working for better things for us and the people around us, I think it will be a better town,” O’Toole said.

Read more: http://www.morningsun.net/article/20140221/Lifestyle/140229928#ixzz3999Mevdc - The Morning Sun

MidCoast Takeover Day 1
Who: (Main showcase) Baliff,The Clementines, The Capsules, Eyelit, The Grahams, Sextonic Plates, Not in the Face, Two Cow Garage, Jessie Malin, Katy Guillen and The Girls, Claire and The Crowded Stage, The Philistines, Scruffy and the Janitors, David Hasselhoff on Acid; (Acoustic showcase) Hillary Hand, For the Sound,Bobby Dean Floyd,CSLUXEM, Beaded Hall, Ben Sauder, Julie Byrne, Small Houses, Vi Tran, Matt McCloskey
Where:Shangri-La
When:(Main showcase) 12 p.m. - 11 p.m.; (Acoustic showcase) 2 p.m. - 10 p.m.
This is a free showcase with RSVP. All shows are 21+ only.
Go here to RSVP for all four days of MidCoast Takeover through Do512. Go here to download a free audio sampler featuring 50+ tracks from MidCoast Takeover artists. - KVUE ABC

JOPLIN, Mo. — Ryan O'Toole didn't know for sure about the gig until about three weeks before it was to happen. But the gig was too good to pass up, and he had known since January that it might happen.

"Someone else canceled," O'Toole said. "It was a band on the MidCoast Takeover stage, run by the Midwest Music Foundation. They liked our sound, and we ended up playing."

The gig was in Austin, Texas earlier this month during SXSW (South by Southwest), an event of conferences, film festivals and concerts that draws thousands from around the world. The event each year features top bands, hip indie films and cutting-edge trends in content creation and interactivity.

Three local bands took part in this year's event, held from March 7 to 16 -- Sextonic Plates (of which O'Toole is a member), Me Like Bees and Last Chance Casanova. The appearances were short, required a lot of work and didn't pay.

But the exposure to fans and industry insiders -- as well as so many other talented bands -- make all the efforts to play the festival worth it, O'Toole said. Between Wednesday, March 12 and Friday, March 15, band members got a chance to earn new fans and make business connections.

"It was a success as far as us getting to do everything we set out to do," O'Toole said. "This is proof of it. It's a setup for all the things we want to do in the future."

Concerts

Last Chance Casanova got a chance to play last year's festival, so lead singer and guitarist Alex Fuhr started early to get into this year's event. He submitted the band for consideration to the Red Gorilla Music Festival through the band's ReverbNation page.

Fuhr said the band was accepted and landed a prime spot at one of the busiest bars. Moments after they arrived in Austin early Wednesday morning, they were invited to play at a second gig by another group.

"We confirmed the gig and started playing that Wednesday afternoon at Amped," Fuhr said. "Then Saturday, we got a prime spot at one of Austin's busiest bars."

Sextonic Plates, based out of Pittsburg, played Wednesday afternoon at the MidCoast festival, opening for the band Not in the Face. O'Toole said the band got the gig because of past experience playing in Kansas City. Their time slot kicked off the rock portion of the day's lineup.

"A sound guy at the Record Bar, he liked us a lot, so we got put on a cancellation list," O'Toole said. "Everyone gets there early, and we had a really good time to get to play down there."

The band also played with a band based out of Los Angeles -- three music teachers who call themselves No Small Children.

Luke Sheafer, singer for Me Like Bees, said his band was one of the groups initially chosen by the Midwest Music Foundation. Band members performed Friday night on the MidCoast stage at a bar called Shangri-La.

Me Like Bees also picked up a gig -- through its label, Loveway Records, they were the house band for the Loud Village Official SXSW Party, a comedy and music show on Thursday. Performers included T.J. Miller, Sean O'Connor and Byron Bowers.

"That was kind of interesting," Sheafer said. "We played a set at the end, but we'd do 10-second snippets between all the comedians. It was like we were a late night show band."
SXSW draws so many people to Austin that the festival spawns a large amount of side festivals and showcases. Each of the three local bands played events that weren't part of the official SXSW lineup.

But the scene is so diverse and filled with all sorts of music, Fuhr said.

"There's such a great scene in Austin already, and people travel from all over the world to get there," Fuhr said. "Something like this, it's an opportunity to be heard. Almost all the bands go there and play for free just to get that exposure to people hungry for music."

Last Chance Casanova invested heavily for the trip, acquiring a new tour bus with plenty of space for gear, beds and food. Having had a tour in 2012 cut short because of van problems, Fuhr said he wanted to have a good bus ready to go.

But staying three days for a festival isn't exactly easy -- or affordable. Band members from all three bands had to scramble for days off from work, account for child care and manage other provisions.

Fuhr said his band had about $20 a day for food, which could be easily spent in one meal.

"We groceried up pretty good," Fuhr said. "We had a cooler for all the food and had plenty of things to munch on and cans of Spaghetti-Os that we ate cold."

Sextonic Plates had a similar budget but had friends from Pittsburg they relied on for a place to crash, including longtime friend April Green. O'Toole said money saved from previous shows helped keep the band fed with Mexican food and pizza.

Because so many bands are around, parking becomes a major issue. Sheafer said that band members had to haul gear as far as a mile and a half between a parking spot and a venue.

"After our Loud Village show, the guys from Last Chance allowed us to throw our gear in their bus instead of hauling our gear back to our van," Sheafer said. "Otherwise, we would have had a really rough night."
The work, energy, shortage of sleep and cramped living quarters are all well worth it, band members said. Being a band at SXSW is a point of pride, signifying that the work done on making music, playing gigs and networking is starting to pay off.

Sheafer said the simple act of spending time with so many people in the music business, whether it's powerhouse networking or just cutting loose and enjoying the entertainment of a big city, is invaluable. He said he met people with a well-known talent agency and others with music magazines such as AP and Rolling Stone.

He also said they successfully crashed a Snoop Dogg concert but left before the rapper took the stage.

"The line was around the corner, but we just went to the back and I told the guy I was with Capitol Records," Sheafer said. "He didn't even ask and just got out of our way, and we rolled in to Snoop. But we didn't think he was even there, so we left. Then we saw that he played later. All that wonderful work (sneaking in) for nothing."

The payoff also means a lot for the Plates, who formed two years ago.

"Usually, we just go through the motions and don't think about it as much," O'Toole said. "When something as big as this pulls through, then you feel like you've made your own luck. We feel pretty successful at the moment because we gained more freedom to be creative with our music. It opened our eyes to things we can do differently."

While not playing, the band spent time passing out albums, seeing other bands and meeting even more. That opens doors for future tours, O'Toole said.

"Now we know people in all these towns," O'Toole said. "If we're going to tour, we can ask to play with some of these other bands. It's an old-fashioned system of gigging."

While making the festival is an accomplishment, it's also a sign that the work isn't done. Band members agreed that while awesome, it's just the beginning. The festival helps get a name out to people, Fuhr said, but it's still just a start.

"You have to look signed to get signed," Fuhr said. "It's about looking as professional as possible, but looking that way is hard to get into."

Sheafer said there is really no overnight success in music anymore, especially in the rock genre that all three bands are in. Being surrounded by so many talented bands at SXSW reminds him that they still have to make it, even though they made it.

"We were very much aware that we were on the bottom level, maybe second tier," Sheaffer said. "How are we going to differentiate ourselves? Hopefully the people who saw us were impressed. It's another small step forward. The only game changer is working hard and taking advantage of those small opportunities. Hopefully they will aggregate into success in the long term." - Joplin Globe