College Sound: Rally Rally steps out of DJ booth, onto stage

The members of Rally Rally look like they belong to another punk rock or progressive rock band. But in fact, these four guys produce electro indie pop that make people want to dance.

"It doesn't translate, right?" said drummer Jason Thomas.

Rally Rally started as a partnership between Adam Salazar and Ben Scheffler. Both have a background in electronica music. The two decided to come together to create their own sound.

"(Ben) would say come over and make some music. I'll engineer," said Adam Salazar, lead vocalist/guitarist. "That's when we started playing and picking up real instruments again."

Guitarist Miguel Salazar, who is an Austin Community College student as a Commercial Music Management major, didn't have a choice when he joined the band because he is Adam Salazar's brother.

"He was recruited just by the fact that he was moving up to Austin. He had no choice in case the school thing doesn't work out," Adam Salazar said with a laugh.

"My brother always wanted to make music with me, so we found this perfect opportunity to do it," said Miguel Salazar. He's also the director of entertainment for ACC Student Life's Student Activity Advisory Board (SAAB).

Thomas became the final piece of the Rally Rally puzzle. He and Adam Salazar are part of the same rave and DJ community.

"I always kept running into Adam at two or three o'clock in the morning, and I'd always say we need to start something," said Thomas. "Almost two years went by before he called me and said come listen to this and play this, and we did. It was fun, and he's been on my ass ever since."

While most bands performed their first live show in a music venue among the Red River street area, Rally Rally's first performance was on a boat, a sold-out boat party to be exact.

Boat parties are popular in the dance music community. The promoters can charge $25 to $30 a person including entertainment and food.

The band got the gig as a direct result of its DJing roots.

"Once people found out that we were getting together and working on a live band thing, a bunch of our DJ friends and people who throw parties started asking if they can book us for shows," said Adam Salazar. "We thought (the boat party) would be a little-pressure opportunity to see how it sounded live."

Unfortunately, performing on a boat proved to have its own set of sound issues. Enclosed walls help the sound bounce into the crowd's ears. In an open environment, this doesn't happen. On top of that, the moving vehicle had limited power.

"On that particular boat party, they underestimated the equipment we brought and the power draw we had. We had to do with less monitors which meant that three of us were sharing one. Jason had one that wasn't working as well as it should have because of the power consumption issues. We were basically playing blind," said Adam Salazar. "Good times though. It was fun."

Now that the band members have one EP and that memorable debut show under their belts, they are focusing on another EP that's in the works.

"This EP that we're coming out with now is more rock, more driving and also heavy on the electronics. It gives (the listeners) maybe more an idea of what we sound like now," said Miguel Salazar.

"Once that's done, it's pretty much open the floodgates to shows, and we're trying to get into doing the traditional shows and non-traditional shows," said Scheffler. "We'll be experimenting with that and experimenting with visuals - just different ways to take what we do live into the studio and take (the music) out of the studio into the club."