When best friends Alex Cintron, Scott Oswald and Nick Wagner realized Mike Greisiger could play bass guitar during a party in December 2012, they knew it was time to start a band.
“After that party we jammed together and made a song and decided to keep going with it,” Greisiger, bassist, said.
The members formed their band Free Range, a rock and psychedelic funk band from Maumee, Ohio. Greisiger is a sophomore at the University and Cintron, drummer, goes to Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.
The band enjoys writing its lyrics about stories and from old literature from the 1800s. Oswald, drummer, said he likes to write about political and philosophical points of view.
“We like to write about making people think when listening to our songs,” Oswald said. “We take the band really serious and want to get our name out there.”
Greisiger said it’s difficult to practice together because Cintron lives three hours away and Oswald and Wagner, percussion, both have full time jobs in Maumee.
Cintron writes the lyrics while the rest of the band writes music for the lyrics which make up the final song.
Cintron makes the venture from Oxford to Maumee a few of days before a show to practice as a full band.
“We don’t really know what the words are going to be when we have a song so we don’t really think of a melody until [Cintron] gets there,” Greisiger said. “After he gets there, the first practice we’ll be bad and be off beat and then we’ll practice and practice until we get better. Once we get to a show everybody will be on beat and the show will be easy.”
Free Range has performed some shows with fellow Maumee band Human Juicebox at Mickey Finn’s Pub in Toledo and at Howard’s Club H in Bowling Green.
Chris Rogge, guitarist and vocalist in Human Juicebox, said his band enjoys playing shows with Free Range because they always pack the venue and both bands’ music is similar in genre.
“They’re super young and I feel like they have a lot of potential,” Rogge said. “We like jamming on stage with each other.”
The band has five songs recorded in the studio and plans to release a demo in a few months, as well as touring further than northwest Ohio.
“We all talked about getting signed to certain labels,” Greisiger said. “We just need to get out there first.”
