Cape Girardeau's Mike Renick Band will release fifth album

Eight years ago Mike Renick came up with an idea to form the group the Mike Renick Band. He wanted to play his own music that he wrote and that he enjoyed listening to. From there, he found a group of guys from diverse musical backgrounds and formed the group. The band has released four albums and its fifth is in final stages of completion.

Renick is the operations manager at River Radio and is an on-air personality for 92.9 The River weekdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Q: Can you tell me about the Mike Renick band and how you all started?

Mike Renick Band. Submitted photo

A: It started many years ago. We have been playing with some configuration of the group for like eight years or so. The idea for me was wanting to be able to do my own music, music that I had written, and then get some guys together and pick up on certain instruments that I was interested in having play. That's kind of where it started from. I had a handful of written songs and wanted to record them to say that I did that, and it kind of progressed to getting together with a group of guys who just enjoyed playing together. Everyone came from a different background.

Our drummer is in to the rock stuff and our saxophone player likes the Grateful Dead type of stuff. I've always been a fan of The Police, Dave Matthews Band, Peter Gabriel, Jack Johnson -- those people. Those groups have always been groups I liked a lot. That's where the musical influences come from. Then we just started playing a lot around town with the college appeal. We do cover songs, but over the course of performance night it's more so of the original stuff than the cover stuff. We aren't a cover band. I just always thought it would be better to play your own stuff and it's more gratifying and have it be a hit. So we just started playing a lot, through Cape and St. Louis, Carbondale, Columbia, Chicago. We've made some trips to Nebraska and Colorado on occasion. Over the course of those eight or nine years we've recorded four CDs, and I did one on my own as a solo CD.

Q: How many musicians are in the band?

Mike Renick Band. Submitted photo

A: There are five. An acoustic guitar and singer, which is myself, then drummer, saxophone player, bass guitar and electric guitar. For a long time we had a keyboard player, but he moved away. Sometimes he will come back and play with us. We've had a violin player play with us. The music is somewhat organic in nature to where you're able to bring in some other instruments. We've had different people sit in, and I like that and it adds something different for that night, adds a bit of flavor after you've played quite a bit. It's enjoyable, but it's nice to add something extra, get an extra buzz around what's going on.

Q: How often do you perform?

A: I would say roughly on average about once a week if you average it out over the course of the year, like once every weekend. We practice once a week. Tuesday nights are our practice nights. Usually in practice it's a deal where we say, "OK, was there anything we needed to work on from this past weekend that we played? Is there anything new we want to do?" I'm always trying to introduce new stuff. That's what is fun for me -- fiddling around in my room with my guitar and I'll come up with a certain guitar riff, then I'll bring it to practice and someone might say, "Hey, that's cool, let's add this to it or add that to it." Then maybe after the course of a few practices you have a new song you can play.

Q: What is the genre?

A: I would say that it's rock, but if you want to kind of sub divide it's kind of like an acoustic rock-pop jam. The songs are not your standard rock songs, but we sort of come at it with a rock feel, but you have a sax that's soloing and you might have some bluesy things going on with it. I call it like the college rock, Dave Matthews Band type of feel.

Q: How did you get your start as a band?

A: As far as the music goes, honestly I was just going to some open mic nights. There used to be a place called Jeremiah's that was downtown. It was pretty popular, and they would do a Tuesday night open mic night, so I just went to that and started playing. One of the guys that first started playing with me I met there. So I did open mic night, decided to record the music, asked a few guys if they would come in and record their parts and, luckily with being from the area, I knew a lot of people here and was able to get their support. So they would come watch, and we brought out some good crowds and businesses would contact us and ask us if we wanted to play at their place so that helped.

Q: When does your next CD come out?

A: It's not out yet. It's been recorded. It's done. I think it's going to be self-titled. It's only got six songs on it. We haven't had any art work done on it yet.

Q: What is the process of making an album?

A: The process that works for us is I like to have everything really prepared before we come in, so there is no wasting time. Everything is pretty tedious. You have to make sure everything flows and sounds good together, there are no bad notes. Sometimes there are going to be and you might let those go for artistic expression, but the first thing we do is we will all play together and do what is called a rhythm track where you get the drums recorded first. Then you go back and build all the pieces back on top of that, then the bass might go in and record his parts down then the guitar then myself. That's the process that we've done, and that's what worked for us.

Q: What's your favorite song that you've written?

A: Oh boy! The favorite one, that's a hard one. To be honest, I really like the stuff that we've just done for a couple reasons. It's a little more rock sounding than some of the other stuff. I personally think each CD has gotten better from maybe a performing standpoint, from the guy that we record with, him getting better to us having a better feel for each other and him knowing what our end goal is as far as sound goes. So with that point the songs, I think, are better. But man, to pick one that's really tough, I'll have to think on that one.

Q: Would you say that this album coming out is your favorite album?

A: As a whole, yes, I like a handful of the songs on each album, but as a whole I think this one is the best. There is a song that we recorded a while ago that's called "Never Never Land" that we still play, and that was one that was a pretty decent representation of what our sound really is and I've always liked that song. It's one that I've liked and people have liked, so I'll say that one for right now.

Q: What are your future goals for the band?

A: I just want to continue to keep playing because I enjoy doing that. Going back to this last CD, it was really an enjoyable process because it was more of collaboration from a couple folks in the band that are new to the group. The last few CDs, I've had an idea for a song and everyone would just come together and put the music together. This last one, though, there was more input and that was enjoyable and I thought a nice end product came of it. I like that, and I would like to just have the group continue to put together good songs and play wherever we can play. Everyone enjoys playing a lot and makes playing in the band an important part of their life.

Q: Do you all have any upcoming shows?

A: Yes. Our next show will be at Rhymer's on the Plaza April 13 at 9 p.m.