Abbey Williams
awilli63@uwyo.edu
Local Laramie band Sorry, No Sympathy have been busy touring, writing and progressing with no signs of slowing down. They have built up their name since they started in 2010, playing shows with Memphis May Fire and August Burns Red, releasing two EPs and a full length album and bringing the underground Laramie music scene to life.
The five-piece band consists of lead vocalist Chace Corrigan, lead guitarist Josh Kirchhefer, rhythm guitarist Trevor Kuma, bassist Sean McGee and drummer Blaise Turcato. For them, being in a band was no question.
“When I was 15 I was into the music and I’d always go to a ton of live shows all the time,” Corrigan said. “It’s just seeing that person on stage inspired me, I pretty much wasn’t going to stop until I was up on that stage.”
Kuma said the band has been on around 12-15 tours. They have yet to go international but they said it is something they want to achieve within the next two years. They have played shows with bigger bands, like opening for Memphis May Fire and August Burns Red when they played in Cheyenne.
With Memphis May Fire, it took persistence to get their band in the lineup. Turcato said fans of the band were telling Memphis May Fire they should have a Wyoming band in their lineup if they were playing in Cheyenne. They ended up contacting Sorry, No Sympathy to play the show and August Burns Red did the same in another instance.
“For as giant as they are and for how long they’ve been a band it was the coolest thing because with our experience with Memphis May Fire we didn’t really try to talk to August Burns Red we were just kind of standing around,” Kuma said. “Matt Greiner, their drummer, was the one who walked up to us and introduced himself to us which just blew my mind and set a great model for us on how to operate.”
Kuma said this moment was big for them because for him personally, August Burns Red is one of the bands that got him into music. Kuma said to open for the band was one of his life goals.
“I took my headphones off and the crowd was so loud that it hurt my ears,” Turcato said. “I got off stage and my ears were ringing just from the crowd because it was so loud. It was wild.”
The band has a tour lined up for this month that will be their first solo tour since they first started. They’re touring the Midwest, playing venues and hitting places like the Midwest Fest in Toledo, Ohio.
The band talked about how tour takes work and playing bigger crowds is something you work up to.
“A lot of bands at first when they go on tour they think that they’re going to be rock stars,” Corrigan said. “They hit the road and every show they play has 10 people at it and they give up.”
For Sorry, No Sympathy, they are aware that they have to put in work to play bigger shows and they are doing just that.
“You’re going to play venues where literally you’re playing for the people who own the venue and that’s it and the other bands and that has happened,” Turcato said. “We have played shows like that. It’s funny because some bands take that to heart.”
Kuma said their first show together was when they played in the Battle of the Bands in Cheyenne and they have grown a lot since then. Kuma said it is like “two separate bands” from then to now.
The band has several works out, including two EPs, one called “Give a Boy a Gun” and the other called “The Path,” as well as a full length called “Egalitaria.” They have new music in the works as well.
The band goes to Scotland, South Dakota to record at their friend’s studio, called All Poetic Audio.
“It’s beautiful because it’s a small town,” Turcato said. “Chace will be out and he’ll be tracking and just hitting his head because he can’t get this part, so he goes out, rides a longboard down the street because there’s no cars and no one there. It’s nice to get lost in a small town and it’s easy to focus.”
Turcato said as far as writing goes, it’s “all over the place” but usually Kuma writes a structure and everyone else builds off of that.
“One of the things we strive for that I feel a lot of bigger bands and certain bands of certain genres do is release the same things over and over,” Kuma said. “They find their formula and stick with it but it gets boring, dry, repetitive and completely predictable. I think why it takes so long for us to write something is because we try not to use the same chord structures while still sounding like us.”
Corrigan says they have never written a song where the lyrics come first.
The band is busy with personal jobs and lives as well as improving the band so making time for practice is a challenge when they are not touring.
“We all work a lot,” Kuma said. “We have to work to make it work but there’s so many things we have to do for the band while we’re home that dividing up the time and making the time and taking the time to do band stuff outside of tour is one of the hardest things about it.”
Though time is a challenge, the band is happy touring, recording and building relationships within the music scene.
“That’s probably the coolest part is that we have built up these relationships with so many friends, we see all our friends just in different parts of the nation,” Kuma said.
Their solo tour kicks off May 13 in Rapid City, South Dakota and will go until the end of the month. The band will play a show at Shocktoberfest in town on May 10 with Earth Grounds, Only Home and Mothersound.
