Mobile Recording Studio Contest Winner: Tyrannosaurus Grace!

It’s hard to believe that high energy pop-rock band Tyrannosaurus Grace began with a hand-me-down guitar and a cheap practice amp.  Their keyboardist and sound engineer, Justin Foss, is telling me about how he first got interested in playing music.

As grand prize winners of the recent Mobile Recording Studio Contest for the song “Chemistry,” their innovative sound and thought-provoking lyrics made them completely stand out from all other submissions.

Justin chats about what meaning music has to the band. “I think I speak on behalf of all of us when I say it gives us an outlet.  I think we’re all naturally anxious people in this band and the ability to channel that tension into something productive is a real gift.”

Justin tells me about the roots of their unique name. “It came from a poem that one of Tim’s friends wrote about being hung over and entering a room like a ‘Tyrannosaurus Grace’” The amusing anecdote fits the exciting, fun, and humorous spirit of the band, which began when founding members Tim Held and Justin Foss began writing music together in 2009. The rest of the band, Lakyn Bury, David Hoffman, and Jeff Gerrer, came together a year later.

“By next year we hope to be continuing to build our fan base throughout Washington state, getting bigger and better bookings and larger pockets of fans in some of the areas that we rarely get a chance to play.  Within the next 5 years we are hoping to have a large enough following to where we can do west coast tours and actually come back with some money and possibly tour nationally and only lose a little bit of money,” Justin tells us. “We are currently working on finishing our second full length album and it will hopefully be out around February-March of 2012.”

In terms of advice for other bands, Justin strongly believes in perseverance. “Always be working on something.  The only way you get better at anything is do it a lot.  If you want your songwriting to get better, write more songs.  If you want your band to sound tighter, practice more.  If you want your live show to be stronger, play out more.  You have to get the bad stuff out before you can get to the good…and you can always get better,” says Justin.

For industry advice, he tells us “Learn all you can and stay in the loop.  These days we as musicians are very much empowered to take our careers into our own hands with the ubiquity of the Internet.  We can distribute our own music, do a lot of our own promotion, handle our own booking, etc. But because we are all so empowered we need to be very keen on how to utilize all of the tools available to us so we can cut through all of the noise of the innumerable bands out there and gain some attention.

We love that uPlaya is a service that is dedicated to helping artists and helps to further empower us to take our musical careers into our own hands.  uPlaya has helped us specifically with their online press kits which we have used a number of times to help us secure bookings at venues who were unfamiliar with us.”

Thanks so much, Justin! A BIG congratulations to you and the rest of Tyrannosaurus Grace! You should feel very proud of yourselves, and of this exciting accomplishment!

Visit Tyrannosaurus Grace's website or UPK to learn more and check out their music. And don't forget to keep an eye out for their second full-length album in 2012!