WITF Music: 25th Hour

Fitting music, work and life into 24 hours.

• Joe Ulrich
  BioRecent Stories

  

  Joe has been interested in audio and music since he was a kid. What started as a fascination with his parents’ vinyl records and cassette tapes turned into a love of both performing and recording. He grew up in Elizabethtown, Pa. and moved to Pittsburgh in 1999 where he majored in Photography at the University of Pittsburgh.
  
  In 2004, he attended the Conservatory of Recording Arts & Sciences in Tempe, AZ. He returned to Pittsburgh to work at a recording studio.
  
  In 2008, Joe arrived at WITF, where his skills have found a good home as an on-air host, audio engineer and producer of WITF Music. In 2016, Joe earned a National Edward R. Murrow award for Best Use of Sound.

25th Hour performs for WITF Music on June 5, 2023 Jeremy Long - WITF News

25th Hour got its start in 2017 by a group of friends at Millersville University. After adding more members and making it through the live music slump during the pandemic, 25th Hour is out gigging and even undertaking a “world tour”.

25 Hour is: Tabitha Rudy (vocals), Nathan Kraus (guitar), Paul Lerario (guitar), Joshua Lavan (guitar), Sean Grahn (bass) and Tyler Samsel (drums).

Listen to the radio feature:

Joe: I saw on Instagram that you’re in the midst of a world tour.
Tabi: Right in your backyard!
Tyler:  It was a rough flight man.
Joe:  So you guys are flying right back out after this?
Nathan: Yeah, we’re flying back to a Lancaster tonight.

Joe: Tabi, what is it like working with a bunch of dudes?

Tabi: Terrible. Terrible. Honestly, I’ve been blessed to be in a group and surrounded in general in our community by some really awesome guys. I have run into the not-so-awesome ones that don’t give you the time of day, don’t want you to speak, they talk down to you.

But these guys are super great about making sure that my opinions, my voice is heard and I appreciate you guys for that. I don’t say that very often, but I do. I really appreciate you guys.

Joe: Is that something you run into at shows or something like that?

Tabi: I do run into issues and part of it is my fault, I think because I don’t always speak up for myself, because I want everybody to feel comfortable. I want everything to go smoothly. And I want to make sure that I don’t seem like a problem to people, which is that growing-up-in-misogyny kind of thing.

Joe: How does the band fit into your life?

Nathan: I think for all of us, this is like our baby. A few of us play in a few different groups and everyone in the band is extremely talented, so everyone’s got multiple projects.

Tyler: Unfortunately it pays the least.

Joe: What are some of the other local bands that you’re friends with or who are really interesting to you right now?

Tyler: Big Fat Meanies.

Sean: Houses in the Sky. Shout out to The Other Girls.

Joe: Tell me about the writing of the new album.

Nathan: Our newer stuff was a lot more of a thought process. A lot of puzzle pieces and sometimes we couldn’t find the puzzle pieces because we didn’t bring them.

Tyler: But we did it pretty quickly because we gave ourselves a deadline. And everything turned out awesome.

Nathan: Shout out Jeff (McKinnon) and Evan (Seeburger) who we did the record with. They’re good producers. They know the right questions to ask, to pull stuff out of us.

Tyler: We had some songs that they were like, no, you guys gotta go back and rewrite that.

Nathan: Which is good for us because we did need that for some of them. Because some of them weren’t done.

Tabi: That’s gonna be one of our goals going forward: being a lot more transparent with one another whenever we’re in the writing process. Making sure that we put the egos aside for a second. If you’re married to something, try not to be because everybody’s got a vision.

Nathan: Especially with close friends.

Tabi: We’ve said it before, but it’s like you’re dating five other people sometimes.

Joe: What is the hardest thing about being in a band? In a local band?

Tabi: One thing about being in a band is that we can’t go to all of our friends’ shows. It’s like we’re having shows at the same time and I’m like, crap, I wish I could go to that.

Nathan: It’s honestly consistency. What I mean by consistency is that could be in all of our own schedules, that could be going to different shows. Since we don’t have our own sound guy, sometimes we don’t know what sound is gonna look like, we don’t know what load-in is gonna look like. And even with our own releases. Consistency in posting [on social media].

Tyler: Just time in general. Everyone works day jobs. Whether it’s record or write or get more shows or just go see other people’s shows. It’s hard to fit it all in.

Joe: Is there a sort of grind about social media? Is that good? Is it bad?

Tabi: There’s no one really in this band necessarily that it comes naturally to, that skill of online self-promotion, maybe Sean.

Sean: I feel like a lot of it gets lost in the void of all the people promoting in one place. If I see a music post on Instagram, I don’t really think about it.

Tyler: It’s hard. Because people are getting really good at it nowadays too.

Tabi: The goal that I have right now is just post something, don’t overthink it. Because I can often get in my head and it’ll stop me from doing anything at all. I just have to post something. Thank God we have Tyler here, content creating genius. And we know so many creatives in the area that take photos, do video. Thank goodness that we have some good friends because we wouldn’t be able to do it without them.

Joe: Where does the band name come from?

Nathan: So if we could re-roll the tape back to earlier when we were talking about consistency and stuff, it sounds super silly now, but  I think we were feeling overwhelmed and then one of us literally went, Hey, what if there was an extra hour in the day? Wouldn’t that be crazy? And here we are.

Tyler: Yeah, we were trying to change our name recently, but no one can think of anything better that we all agree on.

Tabi: The thing is, names are dumb. And that’s what we have. It’s not the best name. It’s not the worst name. But it’s ours. And we are gonna make good music to go behind it.

Joe: What was the first concert you attended?

Sean: Rush. I was like 11.

Joshua: I saw Aerosmith in 2011.

Paul: Mine was Hall & Oates.

Nathan: I went to see the Eagles before Glenn Frey passed.

Tyler: I don’t know. Probably Skillet.

Tabi: I was going to say I probably went to Creation first.

Nathan: Oh, I’ll have to change my answer to that then too.

Tabi: Creation was pretty rockin’. It was either Creation for me or Rascal Flatts.

Joe: Do you have a favorite local business?

Tyler: Roburrito’s.

Tyler: Cactus Cafe in Millsersville.

Nathan: They were THE breakfast place. And to give you an idea, they had a sandwich called The Hangover. That saved everybody’s lives in this band more than once.

Tabi: I really like Reduex Vintage. They’re local. They do good things for the community.

Nathan: Also Red Rose Books in Lancaster. They do some music there sometimes, but they have a really nice selection of art made by local artists. Really nice vintage shop in Lancaster in the middle of town.

Tyler: Shout out to Phantom Power. Local venue in Millersville. They’re killing it.