Battle of the Bands

     Briggs and Stratton may be most well known for their work in motors for different kinds of industrial and lawn care equipment; but to 4 undiscovered bands, they stand as a chance to play at the worlds largest music festival-Summerfest. Briggs Battle of the Bands is a competition being held on Myspace.com and  recently I  had the opportunity to interview David August, Geo Bennett, Bobby Kunkel, Brian Osburn, Johnny Waclo and Luke Zacherl, the members of one of the final bands in the competition, Pittsburgh based band North of Mason-Dixon, A.K.A. NOMaD.

PV: So you guys are in the competition called Briggs Battle of the Bands, can you give me a little more background information on the competition?

Geo: Well, it’s put together by the people who own Briggs and Stratton, whom if you don’t know, do motors for all kinds of different industrial and lawn care equipment. Basically they sponsor the Summerfest Music Festival-which is an 11 day music festival that showcases musicians from just about every genre possibly. Bands like White Snake, Judas Priest, Dropkick Murpheys, Keith Urban and even Bon Jovi is headlining the first night, so it’s a really big deal type of festival; I think there are over 700 bands total playing at it.

PV:  Sounds like a great festival to be involved with! You guys are now one of the Final 4 bands in the competition out of hundreds thats entered, even after entering it two weeks behind other bands right?

Geo: Ya, well I’m not sure how that happened, but we did come in two weeks late and somehow through the help of all of our wonderful fans and friends and family and just strange hobos on the street…just kidding, but we were able to get enough votes to comeback from a two week deficit and make it into the top ten and…

PV: Oh that’s right, this whole competition is fan voted  too.

Geo: Ya, there were like 777 bands and we finished in 6th place which was all fan voted and then the top 10 submitted full length CD’s to the Brigg and Stratton people who privately judged them and picked 4 out of the 10 to go back up on their site and go through the while public voting process again and the winner this time gets the Summerfest gig.

PV: Another thing that’s very cool in the competition is that you guys are the only country band in the final round.

Bobby: Yes, we were the only country band in the top 10 too and they were kind enough to pick us to be in the final 4.

PV: Obviously this is a HUGE deal to any band trying to get out there but, how much would it mean to you guys to come out on top and actually win this thing?

Bobby: I think the most important thing for us is exposure, we’re like a band that…

Geo: Likes to expose ourselves?

Bobby: Ya, we’re a band and in country music there aren’t a lot of bands anymore. We’re a band that does out best infront of large crowds and a really captive audience, so something like Summerfest with something around 100 thousand people, would be real important for us.

PV: So for people who don’t know about you guys and may be checking this out, give us some backround on the type of music you perform?

John: Our music? It’s AWESOME! Actually it’s Hard Rockin’ Modern Country, kinda like if Bon Jovi did country…which he does now, so ya, that screwed us!

Geo: He heard me say that and macked coming into country.

John: So it’s good, it’s like good country music with a rock edge. A lot of people who normally don’t like country music might be into it because we got a lot of people saying, ” I hate country music, but you guys rock!”

David: That’s pretty much our tagline.

Bobby: Plus this is an outdoor gig and let’s face it, we could use a little sun.

PV: So for people interested in checking out your music or voting for you guys for this competition how can they do it?

John: For the battle of the bands it’s all on myspace so it’s:  www.mypsace.com/briggsbattleofthebands

David: Or, you can go to our website at: www.northofmasondixon.comfor our music and we have banners and links to the briggs voting site all over that for direct link to the site. Also we have our own myspace at :www.myspace.com/northofmasondixon. We also Twitter and have Facebook so check us out on those too.

Geo: We also have links to our personal myspace accounts and facebooks so add us there too and PLEASE VOTE!!

For more information check out NOMaD online and see them and the other 3 finalists in the Briggs Battle of the Bands only at WWW.MYSPACE.COM/BRIGGSBATTLEOFTHEBANDS . Voting goes on from now til June 7th at 11:59 PM CST.

*By Candace, who could use an air conditioner and  cherry icee right now.

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