In January 2011, freshman Dean Sinclair and the other members of alt-rock band August Hotel were just four kids from the northwest suburbs of Chicago, cobbling together a last-minute winning set for a church-basement battle of the bands in Des Plaines, Illinois.
Four years later and 220 miles away, August Hotel opened Phi Mu Alpha’s Battle of the Bands with a bang, filling the Historic Dawn Theatre with a sonic banquet accompanied by approving screams from an enthralled audience of Hillsdale students. Moving dexterously from Bleachers to Vampire Weekend to original material, the hour-long set did not sag for a moment. And when they left Hillsdale, they left a legion of fans behind them.
In more ways than one, Ryan Lammers, John Benedeck, Cale Singleton, and Sinclair have come a long way.
“They’re great crowd-pleasers, and they’re super humble,” freshman Callie Ring said. “All their songs are unique: they have great lyrics, they don’t sound the same, and all the riffs are super cool.”
Musically, August Hotel draws from an energetic mélange of modern alternative with splashes of indie pop, giving them a surprisingly and pleasantly distinctive sound. Onstage, they command attention with their charisma and undeniable virtuosity, easily filling the shoes of every group they cover. They are not, however, satisfied to be merely a good cover group.
“Initially, the band formed as an outlet to write our own material,” Sinclair said. “But it’s hard to get gigs where you’re just playing originals, because a lot of people, they don’t care — they just want to hear covers. So that’s what we did, a bit of both.”
The band’s first musical seeds were planted six years ago, when drummer Sinclair and guitarist Lammers met in a middle-school talent competition.
“The judge was just like, ‘Hey, you guys should play something,’” Sinclair said. “That was the first time I ever really played with other musicians like that.”
After the dissolution of the duo’s first band, Poseidon, Sinclair and Lammers recruited keyboardist Benedeck and bassist Singleton in 2011. The band started to play regular shows in their community that summer and quickly gained popularity around the members’ respective high schools. (Sinclair and Benedeck attended McHenry High School in
McHenry, Illinois, while Lammers and Singleton attended Cary-Grove High School, 10 miles away.)
“They were always performing,” said sophomore Hank Prim, who also attended Cary-Grove and is good friends with Lammers. “People always wanted them to perform, not just because they were from the community, but because they were actually good. Sometimes you get stuck with a mixed bag of ‘well, they’re from the community, but they really suck, we don’t want them to play.’ But it was cool because they had both.”
In addition to frequent performances, the members of August Hotel found time to record two extended plays and two singles at various facilities.
“The first EP, that’s hidden away,” Sinclair laughed. “The [second] EP was with a friend of ours who studies at Columbia in Chicago who does sound recording stuff. So we did that at his house… The other two were at a studio in Fox River Grove, Illinois, called Waysound Recording.”
The past few years have stretched August Hotel geographically as well as musically. Last year, Lammers enrolled at Northwestern University; this year, Sinclair came to Hillsdale. The band has no intention of calling it quits, however.
“It hasn’t been too difficult,” Lammers said. “We text and we work on things and still play our instruments. We know the stuff well enough that when we get a gig, we don’t need a whole lot of work.”
In fact, August Hotel has high hopes for the future.
“We want to hopefully wrap up this album and get it recorded, and also get some shows with more notoriety where we can play our own material,” Sinclair said. “We opened for Knox Hamilton in January… and every song we played, the people there, they didn’t know whether we were just kids or there was some value to us. So playing our songs like that at a venue like that where it demands original material was really cool.”
Whatever happens, August Hotel has certainly gained a following at Hillsdale.
“The other day I walked into our dorm and girls who were not even friends with Dean were playing August Hotel songs,” Ring said. “Especially since they’ve played Battle of the Bands and the Valentine’s Day Dance people definitely know them. A lot of people have August Hotel stickers around, shirts… we have a poster in our room.”
For their part, the men of August Hotel enjoyed Hillsdale, too.
“The Battle of the Bands was amazing; the crowd was absolutely fantastic, and the venue is super cool,” Lammers said. “It felt like we were playing this super cool legit show at some nice theater. I cannot speak highly enough of the crowd. They were really into it, and it made me feel really happy to look out into it and see people enjoying it so much. The next night was the same; the people were fantastic. It was a long drive and a busy weekend, but completely worth it.”
To check out August Hotel, look them up on iTunes, Amazon, Google Play, Spotify, or Bandcamp.
