Tell us who you are and where you’re from/location!
SURGE members are from all over the Rochester area, Greece, Fairport, Churchville, Hamlin and Rochester. Our base is in Greece where we rehearse and have our meetings. Our members origins are local except for Eric who hails from Brooklyn NY.

to see Surge's profile and Galleria Album, Click here!

What do you do (line of work)?
The band started out doing basic rock cover tunes and slowly branched into heavier, more interesting material and now we’re taking the leap into writing our own. We have 13 originals under our belt now and a seemingly endless supply of ideas. We’re not reinventing the wheel, it’s just good rock n roll, but we are influenced by many genres so you may hear a tune with a country rock feel and the next one will have a decidedly heavy, modern feel. No one has invented any new notes or words; we just express them our way. The original or creative side comes out in the verses where we get to express our ideas about sex, politics and the worldwide people stage.

Name of Artist/Band? (list all members & instruments they play)
Surge is: Jimmy Nealon-lead vocals, histrionics and percussion Eric Ferreri-guitars, keyboards, vocals Doug Todd – guitars Tracy Murray-percussion and vocals Brendan Ayers-bass and vocals

When did you form your Band / Production?
The band was formed over 3 years ago. It started with members from No Boundaries and Mr. Hand.

How did you come up with your 'name'?
We were trying to come up with a single word that best describes what effect we have. Surge just seemed to fit our show. Our energy and show definitely gets in your face.

Describe your genre & style of music? What are your songs about?
We like to reach as many people as possible. To that end we play, quite literally, every style of rock we can get our hands on. We like turning on a dime, so you might find us playing Friends In Low Places and a few minutes later doing Down With The Sickness. Our middle ground was bands like Buck Cherry, Bon Jovi or John Mellencamp. We’ve upped the ante lately with songs from Kid Rock, Theory of a Deadman, Finger 11, Green Day. We’ve started performing our originals and usually perform 6-7 a night and that list is growing as people are beginning to request them more and more. Frankly, that’s what it’s all about, writing and performing original material that people enjoy.

What inspired you to make your music?
It’s a great question and over a few rounds of The Captain we could get into a very long discussion about it. But we’ve discussed why it is that some members of the population simply have an overriding need to perform and write music. It’s something so intrinsic, so basic to our spirit that it’s like breathing. We have to create and perform our own material to hold onto our sanity. The world is so filled with both crazy and wondrous things, as a musician we feel an unrelenting need to express what we experience through music. That’s the blessing of being able to write with Jimmy. We both have an unending amount of ways that we want to interpret our perceptions of life. We are just lucky enough to be able to do a decent job of it.

Has any of your music been published?
We have not published our work per se. Jimmy and I created a CD using a drum machine and a Korg Pandora PX4 pocket amplifier and recording on a Fostex MR-8 4-track. It’s primitive but it laid the foundation for the album and we have set to task doing it as a group in the coming months. It will be titled Begin to Burn

Who are your musical influences?
That’s funny. Jimmy and I have this whole Lennon and McCartney thing going on. I write about social politics, religion, angst, the human psyche and Jim writes more about the primal side of man, passion & rock n roll experiences. He is unabashed in his lyrical content. I have loved writing music to his lyrics. He has some basic melodies in his head, which I sort out and lay down some musical groundwork. We figure out tempo and feel, add a chord framework that is slightly bizarre at times and add percussion to taste. It’s a lovely process! We are influenced by a pretty wide gamut of artists. There are so many incredible performers. There are standards that influence us all like Hendrix, Clapton, Beatles and the Stones. Their music is foundational for us all. Then there are bands like Disturbed and Incubus or artists like Bjork or Peter Gabriel, their models of music are pretty exceptional and also have an influence on us. It’s a pretty diverse market out there now. Luckily the audiences are equally diverse, so when we create a musical landscape to back up our lyrical content we can draw from a pretty huge toolbox.

How can your fans gain access to your music?
We have our music posted in it’s 4 track form on our website www.thesurgerocks.net. The CD and official release won’t be until Spring at this point.

Where have you performed?
We are working approximately 5-8 gigs a month. Almost all are on the outskirts of Rochester. Canandaigua, Geneva, Lyons, Hamlin, Naples, all our gigs are listed on our website. We have found Rochester a difficult market to become a part of. We’re not sure exactly why, but it’s as though there are 4-5 bands in town and they just revolve around the clubs. There’s an attitude in Rochester that’s hard to pinpoint. Clubs are often afraid to give bands a chance even with the success that we’re having outside of Rochester, but we realize it’s difficult for clubs to. Everyone wants a guarantee of success and we are an exceptional group. We just have to be given a chance to prove ourselves, that we can compete and succeed for them. Outside of town we do exceptionally well. Large, crazy crowds and a lot of interaction. We have a kind of Kid Rock thing going on with Jimmy’s performance that Rochester has yet to experience. It’s too bad. We have a wonderful show and Jimmy is hands down one of the best front men in the area. No one works a crowd the way he does. No one covers the variety of rock that we do. I feel that it will all change this year as the word is spreading more and more into the city.

· What has been your biggest challenge?
Growing as a band and holding it together. We have lost some members the last year or so. Jimmy and I seek to constantly evolve and improve. Too many musicians “just want to have a good time”. The travel, the bars, the homework and personal drama’s get to them. This usually means getting drunk and playing poorly. Our primary mode has been updating material, playing tightly and executing a good show. That’s our “good time”. But holding the band together through the “quitters” has been difficult. The present line up includes Tracy Murray, a phenomenal percussionist and vocalist who has added a huge dimension to our stage performance and harmonies. He has brought with him some great influences on our material. Also Brendan Ayers on bass and vocals who graduated a vocal major from Nazareth and has incredible versatility and energy. He and Tracy create an amazing rhythm section for Surge. Doug Todd on lead guitar is one of the founding members of the band and has been rock solid at supporting our sound.

What’s your ultimate direction/goal?
We will go where our public wants us to and allows us to. We love our audiences and they always come up with ideas for us. Obviously every band wants to be successful on their original material. We’re happy that people are digging our songs. Jimmy and I are well into our second album’s worth of songs and we haven’t completed the first yet! But there’s great cover material as well and we love doing it all, theirs and ours. The ultimate direction is to excite and entertain as many people a night as we can. We are always looking for new ways to do that.

What's your most embarrassing moment?
You play these bars and sometimes never really know where the separate circuits are. We blow circuit breakers. Hey, we Surge, it happens. There’s nothing quite like the power shutting down in the middle of a hot tune. Time truly stops and you’re standing there essentially with your pants down.

What's your most memorable moment?
I don’t think we’ve had that one yet, maybe this year. Certainly when Jimmy and I started writing last summer and we found ourselves with 13 songs on tape, that came very close. It was a great feeling to know we could put together some great songs.

Is there anyone you’d like to acknowledge for their financial or emotional support?
God, we have been so blessed with great friends who contribute so much to our machine. Melanie, Sharon, Gena, Dawn, Glenn, Eddie, Dave, Diane, Ron, Penny, Tasha, and many more. We would be nothing without them and their ongoing efforts on our behalf. We are incredibly grateful for their caring and support.

Any last words?
Like most hard working bands we lay it on the line every night. We have families and jobs and lives outside of music but the music helps define who we are and what we love. The gift is having friends to share it with every time we hit the stage. We’re very lucky to have the amount of work we have and the fans that steadfastly back us up. It couldn’t be better, but it will be, it definitely will be. The present line up is incredibly committed, we are very fortunate to have each other.

to see Surge's profile and Galleria Album, Click here!