It’s been a big year for the Boston rock act Leon Trout. They played some killer sets at both the StrangeCreek Campout that took place in May at Camp KeeWanee in Greenfield and at the Wormtown Music Festival that happened at the same place back in September. They also shared the stage with Space Bacon, Dopapod and the G-Nome Project among others. On Dec. 30 at Electric Haze, the quartet of co-vocalists & guitarists Aaron Cram and Jimmy Geikie, drummer Roger Dumaine and bassist Nick Votruba are going to be closing the year out with a band. They’re going to be opening up for the New York City instrumental progressive sci-fi fusion power trio Consider the Source, with the music starting at 9 p.m.
In reflection, Leon Trout has seen 2023 be a significant time in the band’s evolution and career. They knew they were getting more attention than usual this past summer when they jumped on the local festival circuit and started drawing major crowds.
“2023 has been a pivotal year,” Geikie says. “Halfway through last year, we got a new bassist on board with Nick (Votruba) and this year has seen him come into his own with his contributions to the band. I think the past 12 months have seen us become musically tighter and we’re trying to push the boundaries of where we’re playing and who we’re playing with. The live album we did at the Nashua Center for the Arts was one of those shining moments where we had never realized that it was the first ever live record done at that venue since it had been reestablished as such. That was one of those ‘This is amazing!’ moments where we took it as a cool sign to keep this train rolling.”
“The festivals that we played this year were all pretty successful, they all went very well,” he adds. “The turnouts at both StrangeCreek and Wormtown were huge and getting to play with Consider the Source on the Vernville Stage at StrangeCreek and then playing after them was kind of crazy. That was a moment that I never expected to achieve and it sits high on my list of accomplishments. While moving forward throughout the rest of 2023, we saw an upward trajectory. Just looking out at the crowd at Wormtown, there wasn’t a space that wasn’t filled with humans at the River Stage and it was really solidifying to the movement that we are making forward.”
Along with playing a bunch of fantastic shows and growing their following, Leon Trout also got linked up with Greg Knight, who handles public relations for bands like Goose, George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic, Lespecial and Twiddle. He initially made the connection and it promises to be a fruitful relationship for everyone involved.
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“Greg kind of came into the wheelhouse at the start of August while we were starting our third year of (our own music festival called) TroutStock,” says Leon Trout’s manager George Adler, who is also the manager and talent buyer at Electric Haze along with being the creative nucleus behind the booking agency Shepheard Productions. “He more so found us instead of us reaching out to him to join the team and he was interested in the project, he liked what we were doing and he liked the direction the band had in their sound. He saw the dream that we were cultivating and he wanted to do his part to help bring us over the cusp and into the national music scene.”
Going into next year, Leon Trout really wants to expand their horizons. They’re looking to do a lot more touring in new areas of the country along with building new connections with various bands and venues.
“We have some pretty aggressive but substantial growth plans for 2024,” Dumaine says. “We really want to break outside of our normal tour area and get into new areas and play with new bands further down the East Coast and out into the Midwest as well. Our goal is to have a studio album out either midway through or eventually towards the later half of 2024. We don’t have a solidified release date yet, but we are going into the studio this winter, which is going to be really exciting. We’re really trying to build and foster new relationships, we want to spread the name and get out farther than where we’re currently playing.
“I’ll add that we’re definitely trying to strategize adding more content creation going into next year,” Cram mentions. “Along with the studio album, we’re certainly going to be aiming for more live albums and we’re going to be trying to record more soundboards for each of our shows. We want to get more traction going on our social media pages while creating more things that’ll bring in fans and entertain them throughout 2024.”
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