This past Sunday at the Hard Rock Café anniversary party, I got the chance to photograph and even meet the members of some Pittsburgh-based bands, including Gene the Werewolf’s lead singer and guitarist Jon “Gene” Belan and guitarist Drew Donegan.  I asked them a little about what it’s like being in a band and having their song “I Only Wanna Rock N Roll” played on local radio.  Drew told me that they struggled for a while, trying to get the song picked up by a station, until they finally got a call telling them it would be put in the regular rotation.  Both Gene and Drew agree that it’s really cool to hear their song on air when driving home from work and that it definitely makes waiting in rush hour traffic more exciting.  Gene said he’ll sometimes turn down the volume on the radio to see if the person in the car next to him is listening to the song too.

Although Gene the Werewolf does receive some royalties for the airplay of “I Only Wanna Rock N Roll”, Drew told me that it’s really hard to make money off of music.  Yet, he noted that he doesn’t want the band to be his primary career anyway.  He prefers to have a regular day job and play music more for the fun of it.  I thought that was a really cool thing to say because it shows how the band truly loves what it does.

Additionally, I discovered a degree of separation between Gene the Werewolf and myself when Drew asked if I knew Rob Johnston.  I told him that Rob is one of my internship supervisors in the WPXI web department, and Drew explained that Rob used to play in a band, which was when he met him.  Drew also said I should ask Rob to sing sometime because he has a great voice.  Now I kind of want to hear him perform for us interns before the end of the summer, but we’ll see what happens!

I feel especially cool to have met a local band that I’ve heard on the radio, and the fact that the members were so friendly and down-to-earth made the experience even better.  Between the Hard Rock Cafe concert, the album Wicked Love, and the band members themselves, I think that Gene the Werewolf has managed to make a fan out of me.