interview with TuXedoo
Have any of you played in other bands?
Patrick & Marc played with MOSFET
Christoph played with DECENT
Uli played with THE MORPHEAN and BLACK VELVET
How is it that you started playing music? I grew up in a very musically family and so I started playing drums when I was only five and a half years old
What are your names? / Who plays what? / How old are you?
Johannes Frauenhuber, Vocals, Percussions, 33
Christoph Kiebe, Vocals, Percussions, 38
Michael Tiefenthaler, Vocals, Guitar, 33
Marc Gruber, Guitar, 33
Patrick Schmuck, Bass, 32
Uli Meisinger, Drums, 33
Have you had other previous members? Yes we already have 6 previous members.
Did you make music even when you were young? Yes I’ve played in different groups since I was 8 years old. From brass bands over funk & jazz up to percussion groups.
Where are you from? I’m from Mattighofen (Austria)
What year did the band form? tuXedoo was founded in 2005
What’s your style of genre?
We call it ourselves “Alpencore”.
It’s a mixture of Metalcore, Thrash Metal & Nu Metal
What inspires you? Bands that inspired tuXedoo are: Sepultura, Soulfly, Ill Nino, Slipknot, Parkway Drive and many more
How often and where do you reherse? We try to rehearse once a week. But that doesn’t work always.
How have you developed since you started with the music? tuXedoo started as Crossover-Alternative Band. We covered Bands Like Foo Fighters, Rage Against The Machine, Oasis, Korn, Lostprophets, … After a few years, we lost interest in this kind of music and we decided to become a Metalband.
Do you have other interests of work outside the band? The band is just a hobby of us. So we have to earn our money with serious jobs J. In 2012 I founded small advertising agency. When there is some time left beside my job & tuXedoo, I love kitesurfing and thriathlon.
Are you looking for a booking agency, and what are your thoughts around that? Until 2015 we did all the booking, organization and marketing tasks ourselves. Then we signed a contract with Global Concerts from Munich. Of course, everything has two sides. But we’re very happy with this agency. Now we can focus 100% on the music because they take a lot of organizational work from us. Without the agency we wouldn’t have played on festivals like Wacken Open Air, Sonisphere, Nova Rock, Rockavaria, Reload Festival, and more.
Are you looking for a label, and what are your thoughts around that? We’re working on a new album at the moment. But we don’t know, if it is necessary for small bands to have a label these days. Currently it looks like we’re releasing the album ourselves.
What made you decide to make this music? We we’re fascinated of the power and energy of metal. We have much more fun to play metal than the stuff, we did in the first years.
What are your songs about? We write primarily socially critical lyrics. But you also will find senseless funny lyrics in our songs.
Who does the composing and writes the lyrics? The whole band works together at the song writing process. The guitarists write the melodies, the drummer writes the beats and the whole band structures the song.
Do you start with the music or the lyrics? We write the lyrics when the song is instrumentally finished.
Do you compose in a certain inviroment? The guitarists write the melodies at home. The structuring we do in our rehearsal room.
Have you done any covers live? Yes we actually cover “How Much Is The Fish” from Scooter.
What language do you sing in? Mainly English. But we’ve also a few songs in Austrian dialect.
What are the least and most people to attend one of your gigs? Our 2 biggest shows we played at Wacken Open Air 2017 and Rockavaria Festival 2018. I don’t know exactly but round about 8 – 10k.
What ages are most of your concert attendants? Very different. From 20 to 60. But the majority 30+
Do you always play the same songs live, or do you vary? We try to vary.
Do you have a regular place you play live often? Yes in Munich we play the most times.
What was your first gig like? It was a very cool “sold out” gig in a small barn with 90 visitors. Absolutely unforgettable!
What was your latest gig? Our latest gig we played in December 2018 in Cham (Germany).
Have you had to cancel a gig? Unfortunately, we had to cancel a gig with Sepultura in Switzerland last year. This was the only gig we cancelled in 13 years.
Where have you played live this year? Highlights in 2018 were the Nova Rock Festival, Rockavaria Festival, Full Metal Mountain, Werner – Das Rennen and the Free & Easy Festival.
Where do you plan to gig the comming year?
Published until now:
Area 53 Festival (Austria), Metal Fields Festival (Austria), Mosh Open Air (Germany)
When did you start to sell merchandise, and what do you have for sale? I think we started in 2006 to sell merch. We have Shirts, Tanks, Girlies, Zippers, Hoodies, CD’s, Patches, Sun glasses, Wrist bands
Where can people buy your merchandise? Of course, at our live shows and online on: https://www.rocknshop.de
What do you think about people downloading music instead of buying records now a days? If people download/stream it legal, then it is ok for me. I also stream music. You have to go with the time J.
How do you think the music industry have changed because of this?
The bad thing is, that the musician earns almost nothing with downloads/streams. Also the listening behavior of the fans has changed. A physical record was listened from the first to the last track several times. If the listener nowadays doesn’t like the song, he immediately switches to the next artist.
On the other side, newcomer bands can reach a lot more people worldwide for example with playlists. That was not that easy in the past.
What do you think of my work? I really appreciate your work. Because of people like you, underground bands become visibility, that we wouldn’t have otherwise. Thanks a lot for your work Robex!!
How do you think and know that this interview will help you in the music business? If only a few people read this interview, then it already helped us a lot.
Is it easier to find inspiration from older bands, or bands that are more active today? For me both sides are very important. On the one hand there are old, established bands that have proven themselves over the years with a completely different kind of inspiration than the kids nowadays have. One the other hand I also love young dynamic newcomers, that bring fresh wind into the scene.
What have been your biggest obstacles? One of our biggest problems was that we had almost no chance to play at bigger festival without a booking agency. We wrote many hundreds of festival applications every year. I’m pretty sure that most of them ended up in the bin without being read.
What advice would you give other bands or artists? Of course, the most important thing is to make good music. But just waiting for someone to discover you will not be enough. That won’t happen to 99,9%. The work around organization, marketing, etc. is at least as important as the music itself and at least as time consuming. If you don’t spend enough time and energy in this annoying work, you won’t have any chance.
How do you get psyched for a gig? We drink a Jägermeister J
Do you have any new material?
Currently we have 2 new singles:
LIKE A BOMB: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVOE6LhEMlE
SANCTUARY: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8__PCDM5VM
What are your web sites?
https://www.facebook.com/tuxedoometal
https://www.instagram.com/tuxedoo_alpencore
What are your plans for the future? This year we will do a couple of Festival Shows in Summer and we hope to release our 3rd album in 2019.
Do you have something to add? I want to say thank you for the interview and your support!!
