We recently finished the first year of The Capitol Heights, and what a year it’s been. We are extremely happy and excited about how far we have come and what the future has in store for us. The Capitol Heights have personally been the most successful music endeavor we’ve been part of and we want to take a minute to reflect on where we have gone and were we are going.
But before all that, we’d like to thank our wives for putting up with the countless practices, performances, times we have played a “different version” of a recording (“no the high-hat is different in this version”), and various other miscellaneous band nuances. If we could take one thing back about the band it would be our only true regret: the time we have lost spending it with you – our wives – our biggest personal fans. Without you we wouldn’t be who we are today, and we want to thank you for allowing us to pursue music and graciously understanding all of the things that come along with it.
Secondly, we would like to thank our friends, family, and fans we have picked up on the way for supporting us along our journey. Without you we wouldn’t have the success and attention we have. It’s truly been an awesome experience. None of our previous ventures have had this amount of notoriety and it is thanks to you we can look back on our first year as a band with fondness.
The First Dollar
Once Kenny got settled in his new apartment after moving to D.C., The Capitol Heights got down to business. We set up a list of songs we both already new along with some we thought might be fun to play and commenced jamming together. We decided to kick things off by going around to open mics and playing some covers to get accustomed to playing again. Before our first open mic, we took the streets of D.C. and busked for the experience. We treated it like it was a “live practice”.
We didn’t realize this, but, in the end, the band had made it’s first dollar. It was the quintessential “We are something” moment every entity has once they get started. To date we haven’t made a dollar in all of the digital channels from our song plays, so relatively speaking, our first dollar is still pretty important. Okay, okay – so it really isn’t that big of a deal.. It is really just a symbol of where we came from. It is something we can look back on that puts where we are presently into perspective.
Ireland’s Four Courts
Awwwww, our first show. Why did we pick this spot? Because Kenny’s lived next to it! It ended up being a good time, but we made every rookie mistake over again. We basically forgot our everything. Picks? Nope. Tuner? We don’t need tunes – we make ’em. Brian Franke was a great sport and we appreciated his working with us. We will always remember our first time out as a duo, and how Irelands Four Courts helped kick us off as a band. It was actually here that the Open Mic Challenge was birthed at the 3rd table immediately to the right of the stage. Yeah that’s some VH1 behind the scenes shit right there, holmes.
We also appreciate the apostrophe in the name of the restaurant. Well done.
Sequestered Together
Our first song took a LOT of work. It felt like such a lift, with us dusting everything off again. It definitely felt like the opening sequence from one of the early batman movies with that montage of each piece of the batsuit snapping into place in a really aggressive manner. The song was fairly well received and provided us with an avenue to start playing original songs – what every band needs!
We sent it to all of our friends, got feedback from Reddit, posted it to Soundcloud, and navigated the passageways of getting it posted to Rdio and Spotify! Those silly Spotify bitches even paid for the plays 🙂
Iota Club
Our first show at Iota Club made such a huge impact on us. (Iota club open mic review) We met Alex and Jahnel, who’ve both had a monumental impact on our band in the past year. We still connect with and see people around from that night. It felt like it was our first true integration with the D.C. music scene.
You And Me
You and Me Blogpost marked the next age of The Capitol heights – or it felt that way, at least. In ten years we will talk about it like when you study the history of the earth. It will be our “Precambrian Period”, if you will. The release of You and Me was well received and we saw it in our social media outlets and website analytics. It was awesome to see people actually talking about us, liking things, and sharing our music. We’ve written other songs, but this song is the only one we have recorded that really shows the direction of the band that we’re thinking everything will flow.
To Infinity and Beyond
Fuck Buzzlightyear. Enough said.
The Next Year
We’ll probably be finishing up the open mic challenge in the next few months. We’re still figuring out what we want to do with this whole music thing. We’re playing originals but also having great times with covers in bars. We love it when people sing along. Whatever happens down the road, we will surely remember our first year as a great one. Thanks again to everyone who has helped us have a great year one!
