The Union Bar and Grill, 18 W. Union St., will be a rock music hub Friday as it hosts three Ohio-based bands.
El Camino Acid, RADATTACK and Wastemen will be playing at The Union Friday. RADATTACK is a Columbus-based band and Wastemen is a local band from Athens. Frontliner El Camino Acid is a Columbus-based band that considers its music to be a mixture of garage rock and power pop.
The band consists of members Henry Allen, Evan Westfall and Conor Stratton. Allen plays drums, Westfall plays electric guitar, Stratton plays bass and all of the members sing aside from Wes Gilbert, a guitarist who plays with the band for live shows.
All members are experienced with their instruments. Allen has played drums for 12 years, Westfall has played guitar for ten years and Stratton has played bass for 14 years.
The band formed this past January, but they all have known each other for several years.
“We were all musicians focused on our own projects, so at first we got together just to hangout, play around and jam,” Allen said. “But we ended up writing songs and had fun with it, so we decided to get together for real.”
After deciding to take things more seriously, the band took its demos to producer Neil Tuuri, who operates at a studio in Athens called Amish Electric Chair.
At the studio, El Camino Acid recorded its first EP, El Camino Acid, which hit streaming platforms on Aug. 23. The EP consists of four songs including, “LA Blues,” “Morning,” “Radio” and “True.”
Allen and Stratton have spent a lot of time in the studio with Tuuri, but El Camino Acid is currently in the studio for the second time as an official band, working on their first album.
Though the band members initially got together just for fun, they are taking their music career more seriously at this point.
“We’re just going to take this thing as far as it goes,” Allen said.
RADATTACK, another Columbus-based band, is performing with El Camino Acid in Columbus Thursday night, and decided to perform the Athens set on Friday.
RADATTACK consists of lead singer and guitarist Henry Velour, guitarist Leonard Velour, bassist Duke Warner and drummer Izzi Salvador. The band has performed in Athens several times.
“We love Athens,” Henry said.
Henry said RADATTACK’s music can generally be classified as rock n’ roll.
“We are rock n’ roll, and we may incorporate other genres such as punk,” Henry said. “Genres are just so constricting and different sounds can be found in any music.”
RADATTACK will have been together for one year this October. However, all members have been playing individually and have played with other bands for several years in the past. So far, the band has released two singles and one EP, and just finished six new songs at the studio.
RADATTACK is taking its music career very seriously.
“We’re serious as hell about it,” Henry said. “We’re not going to school and we are spending our time to grind this music thing out and see what happens.”
The band has performed in New York City, Nashville and Chicago.
“New York is our favorite place,” Velour said. “Those two shows in that city felt mean and fun.”
Henry said the band might pull out a few new songs at the Athens show, as they have plenty of new music to be played live.
