We recently performed a stripped down version of a new song for the video series Show Me Shows.
Read the full article and see the original posting on 88.1FM KDHX right here: Video: Bo and the Locomotive Performs ‘Grass’ for Show Me Shows
“Before Paste Magazine told the nation so, it wasn’t presumptuous to say Bo and the Locomotive is one of the best reasons to get excited about St. Louis music.
The band’s lyrical integrity and palpitation-inducing hooks have marked Bo and the Locomotive for both local and national attention. The band’s lineup features Bo Bulawsky (aka Bo Jackson), Andy Aruto, Steven Colbert (really) and Evan O’Neal. Bulawsky and Colbert had played together before. And although Aruto had known Bulawsky for years, both he and drummer Colbert were intrigued when Bulawsky asked them to learn how to play their instruments for the band.
“Bo told me when we first started that he didn’t want someone already kinda in the groove,” says the band’s bassist, Aruto. “He wanted someone that didn’t have experience. He wanted someone that had to figure it out.”
“A blank slate,” Bulawsky murmurs. Bulawsky’s speaking voice is more like a backing guitar than a power chord. When he agrees with Aruto, his voice is so quiet that the playback on the voice recorder has to be turned up to the maximum volume in order to hear it, which is a surprise. As a frontman Bulawsky is confident and commanding. He delivers his lyrics with an assertiveness that makes them impossible to ignore. Aruto further describes Bulawsky’s theory: “It makes sense. Even now, I don’t have a limit. I don’t have a thing in my mind that I’m trying to fit into. I just do what sounds good to me.”
They might cringe at being number one in Paste Magazine’s “10 Missouri Bands You Should Know” – Aruto admits “We don’t try that hard” — but the honor is bringing listeners to the band and turning ears toward the Midwest. For Colbert, the mention is just “icing on the cake.”
Colbert sums up what it’s like to be in Bo and the Locomotive, in words that should ring true for any band struggling to find their own definition of success: “What we do, we attempt to do, as well as we can do. The songs we play, we try to play them the best we can. And I think as long as you do that, you’re on the right path. There’s nothing we can ask more for ourselves.”
Not bad advice from a former “blank slate.”
Bo and the Locomotive perform at the Show Me Show(case) at Plush on May 19. RSVP at Facebook.“