Blast Off Into an Interview with The Rocketboys

 by Mathew Zuniga
KTSW Music

Brandon Kinder writes, plays guitar and sings for The Rocketboys an alternative band based out of Austin, Texas. The Rocketboys recently released a new EP of which the band went on tour to support. I caught up with Brandon near the end of the tour at Stubbs, in Austin, before the sold out homecoming.

Mathew: The Rocketboys are on tour supporting the recent release of the Left Right -EP, how is that tour going so far?

Brandon: It’s been going great, we’ve have had a lot of really great shows. It’s been very successful and the CD is doing very well. We did, however, have a show in New York the night of a blizzard that never happened. It got cancelled and we are pretty bummed about that. Also, we were in a terrible accident, other than that though it was a great tour (laughs).

M: I know the accident was fairly serious what happened?

B: Well we were about to drop our trailer off to get some minor repairs to it and we were up in Elkton, Maryland, of all random places, and this guy I guess didn’t see us and slammed into us at about 55 mph. Fortunately everybody was okay and most of the gear made it out alright.

M: The Rocketboys play a lot of shows and are coming up on their 700th show ever this year and I know you have played Austin a great amount of times, what is your favorite venue in town?

B: Honestly Stubbs has been a really great place for us, we have played here way more times than I can count. There are a lot of cool up and coming venues around town, but we just like to play anywhere and everywhere we can. However, Stubbs will always be a special place for us.

M: The single off of the Left Right -EP, “Viva Voce”, was featured on the tv show Glee and was actually sung by one of the cast members, how did that all come to happen?

B: So, this was our first album to be released by a label and they had some ties who do the music for Glee and the song fit perfectly with what they were wanting to do and they got it hooked up for us.

M: Prior to this record label release, how hard is it doing it all on your own?

B: It’s not hard when you love it as much as we do, but that being said it is very hard. It’s a lot of work, you have to book everything, take care of every last little detail and we’ve done that pretty successfully for several years but now we are very grateful for the team we have helping us to get to places we’ve never been.

M: How have fans reacted to “Viva Voce’ and the new EP?

B: It’s been crazy! Ever since the Glee thing we have gotten to almost 90,000 views on YouTube and sold a bunch on iTunes. It’s just been really cool, we had no idea what to expect, except that the Glee spot was going to be cool and hopefully successful but it has definitely gotten a lot bigger than we ever thought it would.

M: Is it true The Rocketboys once played at Homer Hickam’s birthday party?

B: Yes, that is true we played for Homer Hickam’s birthday in Birmingham, Alabama several years ago!

M: Do you remain in contact?

B: Yeah, as a matter of fact we do. It’s been awhile since we have really talked but we will communicate via Twitter every once and a while. He is a super sweet guy and really supportive of us.

M: What can we expect to see from The Rocketboys for the rest of 2015?

B: We will be touring as much as we can to support the Left Right -EP and then hopefully at some point hit the studio again to do a full length. We have a ton of new material that we are excited to share, but for right now we gotta focus on Left Right and those four new songs.

M: Last question, as a bona fide Austinite what is the best food truck in our capital?

B: That’s so tough, all my favorites have turned into actual restaurants because they are so good. East Side King is a really good one and of course Torchy’s was like the original food truck and now its just blowing up all over the place, theres not a bad one!

You can listen to TheRocketboys at their website at http://www.therocketboys.com as well as stay updated with the band via Facebook https://www.facebook.com/therocketboys and Twitter https://twitter.com/theRocketboys.