The Next Big Thing: Discovering New Talent
By: Caitlin Megonigal
On Sunday February 19th, about 30 local bands showed up at the Rock N Roll Hotel in Northeast D.C to play in an epic battle of the bands called The Next Big Thing. This event is put on every year by the executive producer of the The Next Big Thing, Joey Perez. The 12 hour event, starting at 11 in the morning is based out of three venues in the D.C area; The Rock N Roll Hotel, DC Nine, and the 9:30 club. When asked about how the event went overall, Steve Lambert, the co-owner of the Rock N Roll Hotel stated, “We do this every year a lot of people from the suburbs outside of DC come, overall it brings some new people to the venue. But it went fine, no different than any other year.” Most the bands that showed up were alternative and hard rock bands. I caught up with one of the bands that played, In Visions (shown in the picture above), a “post-hardcore” local band from Manassas/Gainesville Virginia. This was a big night for In Visions because it was their first show as a band. Shane Lewis, the lead guitarist for In Vision said, “Performing this show was....unreal. I admit it was my first show ever and I was really shaky and nervous at parts and made a few mistakes but in all, the energy of the crowd and just seeing people’s reactions was insane.” The grungy, modern-victorian style of the Rock N Roll Hotel contributes to making it such a great venue to have events like this. “I thought the venue was really well put together considering some of the other venues in the area, it gave a lot of room for people to move around and never feel cramped when a band was playing, and the stage was big enough for us to move around and get crazy!,” said Lewis. The Next Big Thing event brought approximately 300-400 people to the Rock N Roll Hotel throughout the day and everybody seemed to be enjoying themselves. Unfortunately, the results of the event were not posted by the time of deadline. To learn more about The Next Big Thing Tour click the link below. Also below is a link to In Visions Facebook page.
http://www.nextbigthingtour.com/
http://www.facebook.com/InVisionsband
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