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The Tufts Daily
Where you read it first | Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Cage Rage band Gentlemen Hall discusses their origins and inspirations

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Indie pop band, Gentlemen Hall, will play at Cage Rage this Saturday.

Indie-pop band Gentleman Hall has gone from playing at police-busted MIT frat parties to winning a VMA and rocking Boston Calling. This Saturday, Nov. 15, they will play at Tufts' annual fall concert, Cage Rage, sponsored by Concert Board. Gentlemen Hall will appear alongside musical acts MS MR and STRFKR.

After Gentlemen Hall played an explosive Sunday Boston Calling set earlier this year, The Tufts Daily sat down with band members Rory Given (bass) and Brad Alderman (keyboard) to talk about everything from their origins to why the band doesn’t mind if you steal their music. A lightly edited version of the interview follows. Cage Rage tickets are available to Tufts students for $10 each. Concert doors will open at 7 p.m. and close at 8:30 p.m.

The Stage

Ben Silver: How do you translate your studio recordings into your live setup?

Rory Given: For the last record, we all wrote together. It could be Brad’s chords on the keys, or a bass line I wrote. If it vibes, we continue rapping on that. Any of the guys can come in with a vocal idea or a guitar idea, and we build it together, which is really important because if it was just one of us writing by ourselves, we’d have a jazz piece, or a punk rock piece or a hip hop album.

BS: How much time goes into creating synth patches for your show?

Brad Alderman: However long it needs to sound right! Sometimes when you’re making the patch, you come up with something even better [than the patch on the recording]. That’s how songs take on a life. That’s why live music can be even better than the recording, because it’s developed more.

BS: "Bitch Don’t Kill My Vibe" [2012] -- definitely a crowd pleaser. Are there any other covers that you would like to arrange?

RG: We’re working on a few right now. BDKMV was such an iconic song, and it was cool to really arrange it, [with a] totally different vibe … We had to get a special vocal effects processor for that song.

BA: It is hard to cover a song and make it stand up to the original, so we tend to come up with 20-30 versions of it and try to put it together. BDKMV took two months straight … That reworking is kind of what we do with all of our songs, but it’s how it gets to the high level that it ends up in.

Origins

BS: How was your band founded?

RG: We were all friends long before we had the band. We were all musicians and we would jam … it was something to do late at night. We thought it would be fun … there wasn’t an intention to do something big at first.

BS: What scene were you trying to break into?

BA: The Boston scene … [We thought] “lets play some bars, play some frat houses and have a good time!” Half of us met at the dorms at Berklee -- we were neighbors on the same floor!

BS: What are some memorable venues you’ve played in Boston?

RG: We played the Sinclair in May, the House of Blues, some of the best memories are just Allston house parties.

BA: Some of the best spots are the non-venues. Like, I remember that show we did with the Bad Rabbits in the basement once on Halloween, and the cops busted it. We played our set but they only got a few songs in. Honestly, frat parties where the cops are bustin' it in the middle of your set is kind of the most fun.

RG: There is no cover charge so anyone can go … We used to do a lot of MIT frats, which is cool because the MIT student is very different from the Berklee student. I remember one MIT frat party where the sound system shut down because it over heated, so all the MIT kids were stringing up the fans and troubleshooting the situation and it was really impressive.

The Industry

BS: What are your thoughts on music distribution?

RG: When I grew up it was a blessing to be able to afford a CD. To an extent you treasure that music a little bit more because you owned it, but I think streaming music is so cool because everything is right there. I’m a Spotify nerd.

BA: I was always a big fan of downloading music illegally, because it was free. I think anyone that couldn’t afford our music should just download it for free, and if you want to buy it and support us, that’s cool too. If they can’t afford it, then get the music anyways, and if you’re a fan, come to a show. You don’t need to be a snob about it.