The Greek rockers My Excuse have ventured into the heart of America.
That means for the next couple weeks their home base will be in the Russell Industrial Center in
downtown Detroit.
From the former Ford plant, the band is venturing out to gigs in Ohio and Michigan, including a Thursday
night show at Howard’s Club H, 210 N. Main St., Bowling Green. Music gets rolling around 10 p.m.
The band has been in the United States for about three months starting with appearances at South By
Southwest in Austin, Texas, where they played three shows.
Frontman Steven Triantafillis called the experience at the nation’s foremost “rock ‘n’ roll heaven.”
Back in Greece, he explained by telephone from Detroit, they are one of the top rock bands. But that
doesn’t mean much. Rock is not the music of choice, even for those who come out to their shows. “They
don’t get it 100 percent.”
Triantafillis said the band knew to make it they’d have to come to the United States.
Three years ago they venture for a one month stay, and then on the strength of their single “Silent
Revolution” which drew more than 500,000 hits on YouTube, they returned the next for a couple months.
That seemed liked a good sign.
So this year, My Excuse has a year-long tour set up.
“This is kind of a dream come true for us,” Triantafillis said.
But that dream involves playing smaller venues along with local acts. While in Greece they play the top
venues for as many as 2,000 people, here they may drive 11 hours, sleep in a grungy hotel and then play
for 10 people.
Still playing in America is a step up. “We feel like finally what we’re doing is being accepted for what
it is,” he said.
Given “Greece is so much cut off musically from the rest of the world,” Triantafillis said, My Excuse’s
style is hard to pin down. So much so, Triantafillis said, they ask fans how they would peg the band’s
sound.
Alternative rock from the 1990s is one touchstone, but with a strain of pop blended in. “Heartfelt rock
‘n’ roll” is the phrase the band likes best.
Having Triantafillis as the band’s lead singer is definitely a plus. He was raised in Greece by an
American mother and a Greek father, speaking both languages.
He speaks English with only the slightest accent. He sounds like he could come from any city in the
Midwest or East.
“People can’t tell where we’re from,” he said.
Triantafillis also writes the band’s material. Songwriting for him is not a romantic or glamorous
activity. He works at it constantly, recording bits of melody into his cell phone, sometimes in the
middle of the night. He has about 100 such fragments. He brings these ideas to his bandmates and
together they work the music up.
Triantafillis admits he procrastinates when it comes to the words. He puts it off until “I have no
choice.”
Then he just sits down and writes and “try to make it sound the way I like it.”
Though he tries not to be “too philosophical” about songwriting he finds “by the end for some weird
reason it’s exactly what I had in mind. What I want to say comes out on paper.”
