Bradenton area bands compete at Seminole Hard Rock in Tampa
It's pretty cool that Bradenton band has a gig at the Hard Rock Café in Tampa this weekend. It's extremely cool that two Bradenton- and Sarasota-based bands are playing there that same night.
But what's really amazing is that there's a decent chance of one of them parlaying the Tampa Hard Rock gig into a concert in front of an international audience in Barcelona later this year.
The two bands are Twinkle and RockSoulRadio, fronted by longtime area vocalist Twinkle Yochim, and Sarasota-based Seven Years Past, fronted by Lisa Larkin.
They're part of this year's edition of Hard Rock Rising, a five-year-old world-wide battle of the bands. The Hard Rock Café, which is inside Tampa's Hard Rock Hotel and Casino, is the first stop.
But it's a significant achievement to get to that first stop, Twinkle said.
"I haven't played in a battle of the bands since I was 16," she said. "I don't have a competitive spirit. But Tony (LeClerc, her brother and bassist) signed us up and all of a sudden we were winning."
Bands from all over west central Florida submitted songs to the local level of the contest, and online voters picked the winners -- including "Old Texas Picker" by Twinkle and RockSoulRadio.
The local part of the competition covers a pretty large geographic area, and includes some much larger cities. So it says a lot for Bradenton's music scene, Twinkle said, that two local bands made the first cut.
They'll both play toward the end of the five-hour show on Saturday. Twinkle and RockSoulRadio will play at 10:05 p.m. and Seven Years Past has the last spot, at 11:35. Each band plays a half-hour set.
The show's open to the public and it's free, but it's probably going to be crowded. Twinkle and her band have chartered a bus to take local fans to the show, and it's virtually sold out.
A panel of local radio personalities will score all seven bands based on musicianship, vocal talent, originality and stage presence.
The winner will get $1,000 and will go on to a May 15 regional competition with bands from all over the southeastern United Sates. The winner of the regional contest gets a free trip to Barcelona. In July, all the winners from all over the world will play for yet another panel of judges in Spain.
And then the winner of the ultimate completion gets to play the Hard Rock Rising Global Music Festival, also in Barcelona, sharing the bill with Kings of Leon, Lenny Kravitz, Robbie Williams and others.
Twinkle's not thinking that far ahead yet.
"I'm just excited that we get to play at the Hard Rock," she said. "I have my outfit picked out and I'm ready to go. I'm feeling good about it because we're bringing a bus full of people up there."
The fact that two bands from Bradenton are among the seven bands playing should help both, she said, because the two bands' contingents will skew the audience.
"I just think it's so cool that two bands from the Bradenton area will be playing," she said. "I think that's a real testament to our area and the kind of great original music that we have here."
Details: 7 p.m.-12:30 a.m. April 25, Seminole Hard Rock Hard Rock Hotel & Casino, 5223 N. Orient Road, Tampa. Tickets: Free. Information: 813-627-7625, seminolehardrocktampa.com.
Marty Clear, features writer/columnist, can be reached at 941-708-7919.
Follow twitter.com/martinclear.
This story was originally published April 23, 2015 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Bradenton area bands compete at Seminole Hard Rock in Tampa."