The Lives of Famous Men is a band that’s hungry for fame.
And only one year after formation, they’re well on their way to national recognition.
Not only has the band done everything themselves, from promoting to networking to booking, they’ve already gone cross-country touring, and could soon find themselves in the national limelight, after ascending the ranks and making it into the top three bands in mtvU’s Campus Invasion Tour contest, a national competition for college bands.
Frontman Daniel Ian Hall, a senior at PSU, said despite all the band’s hard work, effort and countless hours of practice, their success thus far is because of their fans and friends who take time out to help with promotion.
“I want to emphasize that there’s help from all sides. We’ve had a lot of opportunities like this because of a lot of fans and friends,” said Hall. “We owe a lot of that to those people.”
Spending their youth in Alaska, the band members have known one another for a long time, Hall said.
“We all grew up in Alaska and moved down here at different times,” said Hall, who has been in Portland for about three years. “When we got down here, we started playing together.”
So how were Hall and his bandmates able to get The Lives of Famous Men off the ground so quickly?
“We shot a music video with a local video director, Kurt Nishimura–he just won an award for a Decemberists video,” Hall said. “He told us that we should just register with mtvU. You opt into it and have a potential to win some pretty big contests.”
It wasn’t long before the band was getting some recognition from mtvU.
“They made us artist of the week for one week,” Hall said. “Then we opted into this contest, mtvU Campus Invasion.”
Soon after entering, the band made it into the contest’s top 25 and rose through the ranks to a place in the top 10. Now, they’re one of three finalist bands left in the competition, and are being flown to Philadelphia to play a final show that people can vote on at www.mtvu.com. The winning band gets to host the mtvU show The Dean’s List, and a fat cash prize of $10,000.
Ross Martin, the head of programming at mtvU, said other opportunities for winning bands include label deals and spots on MTV tours.
“Artists like The Lives of Famous Men are literally what mtvU is all about,” Martin said. “They embody a new generation of talent simmering on college campuses across the country.”
The band has a history of making the right connections in the industry. Last summer, while catching the tail end of the South by Southwest music festival, where they were approached by James Paul Wisner, a record producer for bands like Paramore, Underoath and Dashboard Confessional.
After releasing its debut EP, Rehearsal, last July, the band followed it up with another EP in December, the Wisner-produced Modern Love, The Wooden Vehicle.
Needless to say, for an unsigned band, The Lives of Famous Men sound pretty polished.
Their sound is a bit reminiscent of a less musically conventional Daphne Loves Derby, plus a touch of outside musical influence, pop hooks and some indie-ish piano-rock 퀌� la Andrew McMahon (of Something Corporate fame) thrown in for good measure. Generally, the tracks are catchy, but don’t fall into the trap of playing to genre conventions so much that they’re instantly forgettable.
Hall said the band’s musical influences vary widely, since everyone in the band listens to something different, but they are all strongly influenced by jazz.
“We all listen to a lot of jazz music, a lot of stuff from the ’30s and ’40s,” he said. “We just try to do something a little bit different. We try to use jazz and Motown influences as much as possible.”
Hall said his own musical influences skew more toward indie-rock, citing Death Cab for Cutie as his favorite.
Despite the band’s increased popularity, Hall said he doesn’t think he is very well known at PSU.
“We don’t have a huge local following in Portland State University,” he said. “We travel nationally, but as far as PSU students go, I don’t know.”
Hall, a senior studying Spanish with a minor in writing, said he loves poetry, which is where he gets some inspiration for his lyrics, as well as the band’s name.
“The [band name] comes from a poem by Jack Gilbert,” he said. “It’s a philosophical poem–on the surface it’s kind of routine, like daily events of this person’s life. I tell people I’ve read it hundreds of times, but that’s kind of what I take out of it.”The Lives of Famous Menwww.myspace.com/thelivesoffamousmen
Want to help them win?
Visit www.bestmusiconcampus.com to vote for the band. Click the “mtvU Campus Invasion” banner and vote for The Lives of Famous Men.