Every year 97X hosts one of the toughest competitions for local bands. Only fifteen bands are chosen through a difficult judging process. After this first round the bands are scheduled to play throughout five weeks. The winners are chosen by voting in person the night they play. This ensures a high quality of musicianship and hustle to get their fans out. The prize? A incredibly sought after slot at Tampa Bay’s biggest music festival, Next Big Thing.
We were honored to be chosen as one of the fifteen bands to compete, we knew we were up against some of the best talent in the area. Our night to perform was November 17th and this coincided perfectly with the release of our new music. We had just gotten the final mixes back and decided that we would combine this show with our album release party.
Leading up to the show was unbelievably busy. As a group we sent out more than 1,500 individual messages. Not including all of the other marketing and promotion work we did to let people know about our new music and to come and drop in a vote for us. The night went off perfectly. We had a ton of family and friends come out and support us. We had no idea that it would be the week after that would cause so much anxiety. See, we had done what we could, now all that was left to do was to wait....
The final three bands performed on the 24th. Did they get more votes than us? Did more than two bands get more votes than us? Was 97X definitely going to have two bands open Next Big Thing? Did we only lose by 2 votes? 3 votes? Did we...did we dare to hope we had won?
The morning of the 27th we got an email...
“Congrats! You received the most votes in the Local Band Search!”
And the celebration started. We are BEYOND ecstatic that we will be playing at 97X’s Next Big Thing this Sunday. We are playing a day with bands that have inspired us, driven us and motivated us to be better musicians. We are playing a festival that we went to over ten years ago in its formative years.
See you Sunday 12/3, 10:00am on the Planet Fitness Stage at 97X’s Next Big Thing. We can’t wait to rock out with you.