BUTTE — The Butte band A River Runs Thru It is used to playing small gigs like the Staggering Ox, but thanks to an online competition, they have a chance to earn a spot at a rock festival before more than 10,000 spectators.
“Man, it would be life-changing, that’s for sure. It would be like kickstarting into our career, so it’s exactly where we want to be,” said bassist Cody Peterson.
The band has made it to the final round after competing with more than 30 bands in a "battle of the bands" event on Twitch. The winner will perform at the Rockville Festival in Dayton along with bands like Kiss and Guns N’ Roses.
“A Butte band has this opportunity and it kind of blows me away that it’s my band that we had this happen to us,” said guitarist Milan Garcia.
The band with the most votes for viewers will move on. So far, the Butte band has done very well.
“We’re seeing people we don’t even know on this stream saying, ‘A River Runs Thru It,’ it’s awesome, it’s so cool,” said Garcia.
The band formed four years ago but has been working extra hard since entering the competition.
“What really got us this far, besides support, was how hard we’ve worked on promoting and making sure our sound is perfect for it and all this stuff, so I think we sound the best we’ve ever sounded,” said guitarist Joey Smith.
While this little band has big dreams to make it in the music industry, some of the band members say they’re just happy to be making music.
“I’ll be successful as long as I’m making music. If I’m working at a pizza place and playing music, that’s successful to me, if I’m playing an open mic somewhere, that’s success—anything that involves music is success to me,” said Peterson.
The final competition for the Battle for the Big Stage starts Thursday, March 31 at 4:30 p.m. Just visit the DWPresents channel on Twitch.
