Under Influenced

Introduction:

Under Influenced is a Milwaukee area punk band that was started in June 2009 with a reformation in August 2010. With their roots deep in punk soil, the band draws influences from numerous sources in alternative and popular rock alike. Despite the irony of its name, the band is proud of its exciting, upbeat punk sounds which include a variety of pop hooks and alternative guitar sounds to create music that is both unique and classic at the same time.

Biography:

Biographies are most often very long, boring, and narcissistic literary works, so I will try to keep this as brief as possible to prevent lethargy. My name is John Bajorek. My friends Sam Tom and Kevin Kattner, who previously dabbled in a high school band, asked me in May of 2009 to play bass in a new band they were starting that they wanted to be serious about. Mind you the only other instrument I’ve played in my life was piano as a child, which wasn’t too pretty. With their help and the help of YouTube videos, I eventually figured out what I was doing.

We started playing covers of bands such as Blink 182, Nirvana, and Green Day, and managed to crank out a very basic original. We discovered it was not in our favor to have a drummer vocalist so we recruited an old friend, Ryan Renkas, to play drums – this allowed Sam to sing and play guitar as needed. It took about 6 months of practice, songwriting, and playing house parties before we felt comfortable playing an authentic live show. Oddly enough, the first show we played was at The Rave Bar as an opener for Atreyu and The Used on February 9th, 2010. We were very nervous but did our best. The feeling was overwhelming, and seeing people getting into the music was a huge boost of confidence. It was at that point that we realized that we had to keep going strong.

Over the next few months we played as many shows as we could get in on in the area, some of them even in Illinois which was really rad. During this time, we had recorded some of our creations in my basement using a little studio device we invested in. The sound quality wasn’t the best, but it was a way to get our music heard across the world thanks to the internet, which was an awesome feeling. To excite that feeling, we decided to professionally record a four song demo at Cherry Pit Studios, which was very close to home, in late June – and boy did they sound awesome! That demo was called “We Could Call It Anything” because the genre of all our songs was so obscure that we did not know what to call it exactly – we settled with alternative/punk eventually. The summer kept us extremely busy with shows in both Chicago and Milwaukee, but as it came to an end, so too did our time with our drummer. Due to personal reasons, Ryan had to leave the band in August; the details are lengthy and boring so I will leave that out.

In order to find a new drummer, we met in secrecy with an underground music intelligence agent named Craig. He put our band on a search list and shortly after we received a response from a few drummers. We interrogated (jammed with) each one and discovered the perfect one. Enter Paul Tyree. He is a couple years younger than us, but his skill blew us away (and still does). We got to work right away, practicing often and even cranking out some new tunes. We booked out the fall season with some awesome shows, and made a trip back to Cherry Pit Studios as well. By recording the two new songs and recording/re-recording some of our classics, we were humbly ready to present our debut EP. It took a few weeks to create our very own album art (thanks to Kevin), but then we were truly ready. The culmination of nearly a year and a half of hard work was the Social Heart Attack EP, which we proudly made available on iTunes November 16th, 2010.

Since our start, we have played over 70 live shows. We recently signed with a local publisher called Cherry Pit Studios (the same place we record at). We are currently formulating a debut full length album to release during the summer of 2013 with which we hope to carry out a tour. It is currently the winter of 2012-2013, and we are still going strong with shows, songwriting, etc. This is where I will end the bio at last. But of course before doing so, I need to thank everyone who has ever helped us out and continues to do so. Also, thank you to our fans from all over the world for listening to us. It means so much to us during this arduous life of music that words alone cannot express our gratitude. Without all of you, Under Influenced doesn’t exist. Thank you for reading this and stay tuned for info on what we will be up to in the future!