I was kidding really. The Bright Light Social Hour posted on its Facebook page that, after a brutal year on the road, they were very glad to be home for the next month. I facetiously suggested “let’s do lunch!” Band manager Alex O’Brien thought I was serious and his brother, bass player Jack O’Brien, sent me a message that they were up for it.
It wasn’t lunch. Instead, we sat down for some South Austin Tex-Mex Tuesday night and caught up. After the homegrown quartet – @tblsh is their lively twitter handle – swept the Austin Music Awards in March they never stopped.
The big news is that they’ve signed to booking concern The Agency Group, which represents acts as diverse as the Black Keys, Foster the People, Booker T. Jones, Wiz Khalifa, Tinariwen, Dream Theater, and 1,000 others. Someone at the Agency caught the quartet in Boston, alerted the New York office to see them play the CMJ conference in October, and the next week TBLSH were attached to the same international routers as the Sword.
The band played about 100 gigs in 2011, accomplished all on their own with the occasional hairy maneuvers. Now they have high hopes that touring will run a lot smoother, that more festivals will be part of the mix, and that maybe a high profile opening act slot is on the horizon. Jack O’Brien said that although they’re working on five or six new songs, the road has become a priority and they don’t know when they’ll return to the studio. They don’t anticipate a new album or EP in 2012.
Guitarist Curtis Roush said the highlight of the year was playing KGSR’s Blues on the Green in June, when they appeared in front of more than 10,000 people suffering from heat stroke. Keyboard player A.J. Vincent claimed the size of the crowd was overwhelming for a band that regularly plays in 200-400 capacity rooms, but he finally figured out to concentrate on the first few rows. They all agreed that Tucson, Green Bay, and Hartford were on the list of least favorite or just plain weird gigs, with eight people in the audience in Tucson and some odd Top 40 like competition going on in a separate room of the club they played in Connecticut.
TBLSH will be out on the road again beginning in January, with a local appearance on the books at La Zona Rosa for February 10.
This article appears in December 9 • 2011.