From the time that I’ve started covering local bands and musicians here in Reno, you see a large range of variety from genre to genre. From the Hip-Hop scene to the Hardcore scene to the Indie scene to the Alternative scene and to the Rock and Roll scene, it has all been a unique experience.
One experience that has really stood out to me the most, is the Will Shamberger Band. From their goofy personalities to their mind-boggling performances, this is a band that demands your attention if you are in the same vicinity as them.
“It’s cool to get together and make noise,” Shamberger said. “The amount of bulls*** you go through together being in a band whether it be showing up and being like, ‘Are we getting paid?’ ‘Well I don’t know’ or picking up and lifting all of our heavy s***. Once you’re there and you play it makes it all so much worth it. It trumps every band thing.”
“It just feels f***ing good, there’s not a way to say more harmfully than that, it’s fun,” Stone said. “It’s great just like playing a sport or whatever people do.”
“Especially with people who you feel like click, you play well together with,” Marrow added. “{Like when} y’all finish a song together on the same note and you look around like ‘We nailed that.”
“We all come from different musical backgrounds,” Gomes said. “So when the music is made, Will being the principal songwriter and kind of the guy who has the ideas and lays down the foundation of what it is. We get to do the fun stuff and come up with, ‘Ok that sounds cool. What can we do something that is different from then I heard it, but is still palpable and everyone’s cool with it.’ I think that’s the funnest thing for me.”
The guys carry a one of kind stage experience when you see them live. With Stone passionately banging on his drums to Marrow’s calm and slight rhythmic motions while he strums the bass to Gomes going crazy on the guitar playing like a madman who is playing guitar for the last time to Shamberger cathartically singing every ounce of his heart out.
While the band has been only officially together for about two years now, there is a lot of history with how the guys came together to have the time of their lives doing it is what they love the most.
Shamberger and Gomes have known each other for about 12 years, but they’ve been friends for about 8 years. The two have always done music, they just did it separately. The two, sort of, had a little “beef” because they each played for the two different bands at their high school in Fallon. Mind you, it was the two only bands at the school. Eventually, things would subside as the two had respect for one another. They started to jam together and a chemistry started to form. They had a group early on where Shamberger played drums and Gomes played the guitar.
Shamberger also really liked the original band that Jesse was a part of in Fallon. He had followed them closely then started to gain a friendship with Marrow when Marrow started to go into the coffee shop where he worked at the time. After a while of gaining that friendship, Stone also got a job at the same coffee shop that Shamberger was working at. They had an issue holding a drummer down in the newly formed group as the band claims the first one had a “chicken adventure” that made them leave and the other one apparently had better things to do than spend his time in the band. The band claims that there are no hard feelings with them and that they think they’re great people. Stone had mentioned to Shamberger that he’s a drummer when he had heard that they needed a new one, which made Shamberger want him in the band, and Stone fit like a glove.
“I wouldn’t say we were the most musical band,” Gomes said in regards to past band formations. “Besides Will, Will being the songwriter and the principle guy as the namesake. It kind of starts with what Will does. At least for as long as the duration of this band and what we do. We’re kind of like, what does Will have going on and we look at what does and then we go, ‘Ok that sounds sick, let’s see what we can figure out with that.”
After the band had officially come together, they did a bunch of shows in their hometown of Fallon to get things started. Recently they have done a ton of shows in Reno. In the past 9 months they’ve played over 20 shows here in the 775. They even just had their first show in California for this band this past weekend.
The band had a tour and a bunch of shows lined up before COVID, however, due to the pandemic, they weren’t able to make a lot of those shows work. Fallon's restrictions during COVID weren’t super intense so they were still able to pick up a few shows to play during the pandemic.
While the pandemic might’ve been damaging in a lot of ways, it somehow brought the band even closer and tightly connected than before. “It was what it was,” Gomes said. “But then you just pick your s*** back up and do it again.”
“When COVID hit, like us just as a band kind of shifted gears and we started practicing like every week nonstop for like a year straight,” Marrow said. “We got way tighter and way better. It really honed us into the band that we are now and I look back at those practices very fondly.”
“Like quarantine sucked, but we definitely made the most of it,” Stone said. “We had a lot of fun practicing.”
The band described how they don’t do it for the money. They simply do it for the joy that the music brings them. When talking to one of his friends, Gomes had been asked why he puts up with all the troubles that music can cause. Gomes turns to the guy, who is a cowboy and he asks well do you do it for the money, the guy immediately understood what he was meaning. The cowboy explained to him that he didn’t cowboy for the money, he cowboyed for the sole reason of that is what brought him joy and happiness and he was willing to do whatever it takes to maintain that.
“Never needed a better explanation than that,” Gomes said. “I mean if I don't make any money, you can bet I’m going to play guitar. At the end of the day, I need to play some jams. Out of everything in this world that’s all I want to do. Music has taught me the best values and the best life lessons that I’ve ever had in this world and if I can even just be a part of that for somebody here.”
New music and goals are on the horizon for the band, who hope to get an album out this year.
“Our short-term goal is to finish our album,” Shamberger said. “Our long-term goal is to just play music for as long as we like to or as long as people would like us to.”
The members shared the differences in the creative process when playing live versus recording for a studio version of a song/record.
“It’s different and sort of new for us,” Shamberger said. “I think it’s super rad just to see how they turn out. It’ll always be a different song, it will forever be a different song every time we record it, but it’s cool to hear it in a way where it’s like no this is the song now.”
“Live we are a little loosey-goosey,” Stone said. “We like to improv and stuff. When we record we definitely do it differently because it’s like how many stops can we pull out.”
The band recorded their last EP where each band member would take turns doing their parts to each song for the entire EP. They would work on multiple songs at a time. Now for their new album, the band doesn’t stop working on a song until it is pretty much completely finished and the band agrees that it is a way better process.
“As far as the words are concerned and the meaning behind that, Will is kind of the focal point behind that,” Gomes said. “I’m biased because I’ve been doing this with Will for quite some time, but no Will just has an excellent brain for the stuff I like to hear. I’m not a smart guy, but I’ll tell you, his words move me. I would be hard pressed to say that they don’t move anybody else. So, with that, the different songs that he writes I feel bad sometimes because I just bring the sprinkles on top of it, so I’m like am I doing too much here or not enough like what should we do. Having a cornerstone is something that you can’t really put a price on.”
“For me as a guitar player, I like to shred, I like to get weird…,” Gomes said. “But at the end of the day the s*** that really moves you, especially when it comes to what I do on the instrument or what anyone else does on the instrument, it’s the stuff that really connects with you on another level. That’s not superficial. It’s not like ‘Oh that was a hot show’ or ‘That was sick because they played their instruments well’ like naw. It connected with you on another level you just think about it later. Will’s music always did that with me even when I didn’t even have any contact with Will.”
The band has no regrets in the two years they have been learning with one another. They have this bond and chemistry that is immediately felt upon the first time either meeting them or seeing them. If you get a chance check out one of their shows if you can.
“We have a good time,” Gomes said. “These are my brothers. We have fun doing this. There’s no point in doing this if you can’t get some enjoyment out of it if you can’t get a rise out of it. We have a good time, every time… We love Reno,” Charlie said. “We love to play in Reno. We love that we have an audience here, and very happy to have an audience here because we come from nowhere.”