Kurveball

Attention business owners: If you hire the band Kurveball, your venue will remain intact.
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These young Cape Coral musicians are a far cry from many of their metalhead counterparts, known for smashing walls and shattering windows with destructive musical intensity.

This band's intensity is a little more ... pleasing to the mainstream ear.

They're one of seven bands performing at Swamp Festival. The music starts at 2 p.m. Jan. 17, at the Florida Sports Park east of Collier Boulevard and north of Rattlesnake Hammock Road eastern Collier County.

Proceeds benefit the Shelter for Abused Women & Children, which serves Collier County.

Lead vocalist and guitarist David Stillson, 22, calls Kurveball's music "singer-songwriter folksy" and "alternative jam band blues with an emotional lyrical touch."

Drummer Blaine Ower, 21, just calls it jazzy blues.

They sound like Sister Hazel, Blues Traveler and the Dave Matthews Band.

"I think we rock out, but people say we're mellow," Stillson says as he lounges at the downtown Fort Myers Starbucks with bandmates and wife, Nikki, 23.

"You can actually understand what we're saying. Your ears will probably not bleed when you hear us."

Ower, who used to play in a metal band, agrees.

"We can guarantee you'll leave in one piece," he says. "A lot of people hear our music and think we're 40-year-olds with beards."

Not this bunch.

All three wore black shirts with jeans. Ower has the Christian fish symbol tattooed on the web between his thumb and forefinger on his right hand. A giant gothic cross tattoo stretches over his right bicep.

Bass guitarist Brandon Jackson, 19, is the quietest one of the group.

Like his bandmates, Jackson started playing an instrument when he was a child. Jackson started with a stand-up bass.

The three met during high school when they played together in a youth group band at their church, Grace Community Center in Cape Coral.

They dispersed, rediscovered each other and about three months ago, started making music.

Since then, they've played their church's Fall Festival, a party accompanying the 99X-Mas Ball, the club Rockstarz in Fort Myers and at the nightclub Eddie Fishbowls in Cape Coral.

Their lyrics come from an emotional place, Stillson says.

"I've had some hard times in my life, a death in the family," Stillson says. "You gotta believe that something bigger than you - whether it's God, or whatever - is gonna help pull you through."
- News-Press.com