Up and coming local band The Real Zebos will be celebrating their first ever album with their release show on February 23.
The show will begin at eight at Benson’s Reverb Lounge for all ages and features openers Garst and Xaiiya.
Tickets can be purchased for seven dollars right now online through the bands Facebook page, or for ten dollars at the door the night of the event.
Physical copies of their album will be available for purchase at the show along with their hats, shirts, and stickers.
The Real Zebos have been performing around Nebraska since January of 2018, approximately two and a half months after the band came together.
The Real Zebos consists of leads Jordan Gaul and Connor Brandt, bassist George Cooper, guitarist Jake Strange, and drummer Les Rahn.
Although the album is only being released this year, The Real Zebos have been working on it for three or four years.
“Technically we started writing the songs as early as 2016, maybe 2015,” Gaul said. “So we’ve been sitting on these songs for a long time.”
Although the band has been working on their album for so long, they still have not had the opportunity to hear the finished version.
“It’s easy for us to hear our demos and know what it’s supposed to sound like an envision that,” Brandt said. “But for other people, they might hear it and say, ‘oh this song sucks’.”
The Real Zebos have previously had their demos available for listeners on Spotify.
“We just want to hear [the album],” Gaul said. “We’ve been working with this three-time Grammy nominated producer and it’s going to be like night and day from the demos that we put out.”
According to Gaul, hearing their music in a professional venue is one of the best parts about performing.
“We had previously written everything with just program drums on the computer,” Brandt said. “So it’s still cool to play them live and hear them live.”
According to Brandt, The Real Zebos are planning to do things they have never done before during their release show.
“We got a lot of theatrics planned,” Gaul said.
Brandt and Gaul are hoping to be one of the most prominent bands in Omaha in the next five years and hope to be lucky enough to tour around the country. Leads Gaul and Brandt have been working on their music ever since they met in college.
“Connor and I met on Craigslist,” Gaul said. “He put a post in the musician’s section, and I thought it sounded exactly like something I would write.”
The two discovered that they lived close at UNO and quickly became good friends.
“We spent two to three years trying to find the right people to be in our band,” Brandt said. “When we finally got everyone else it was like October of 2017.”
The group has gone through two official names. According to Brandt, the group was having a conversation about gazebos and thought that The Zebos would be an interesting name.
“We found out later when we first tried to put our demos on Spotify that there’s another group named the Zebos,” Brandt said. “When we put the music on Spotify it went directly under their name.”
After a failed attempt to contact The Zebos in hopes that they would give the name away, they changed it to The Real Zebos.
“That sounds spiteful,” Gaul said. “Like we’re the real Zebos, not these clowns.”
Follow the band on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook @TheRealZebos.