Ale House Winter Party - Benefit Concert Promises Afternoon of Music, Food, Fun and Friendship

This weekend the Ale House in Troy will host the Will Burger Benefit. The benefit will take place on Saturday, January 14th from noon to 4pm. Music will be provided by Kevin Maul, knotworking, Hayseed, Leigh Gibson, and Lucky 57. Children's fun including magic by Brisky. All donations will go directly to the Burger family who are incurring unusual, unexpected and costly expenses.

On Thanksgiving morning 6 year old Will Burger woke up with a headache that turned out to be a rare malignant brain tumor called an anaplastic ependymoma. It was blocking one of the ventricles in his brain, and caused "water on the brain" which led to the headache. Surgeons at NYU were able to successfully remove the entire tumor, but an estimated six week course of radiation is required in order to help ensure that no menacing cells were left behind. He will be treated at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston where they offer proton beam radiation - a very expensive but effective type of radiation designed to limit any secondary damage to young brains.

Please come out and party with the Burgers to share some fun, good energy, love and friendship. All are invited whether you already know the Burgers or whether you'll be new friends after the party. No mention of illness will be made at the party. It's about having fun.
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Plug in with Bipolar

Bipolar is:
Mark Petronis - Lead Guitar
Patrick Lee Michaelis - Lead Vocals
David Tyo - Rhythm Guitar and Vocals
Peter James - Drums and Percussion
John Durden - Bass Guitar

Hometown: Saratoga, New York
Genre: Hard Rock
Booking Info: bigpete@bipolarmusic.com
Website: www.bipolarmusic.com

How long has the band been making music together?
We’ve been rocking for about a year and a half now. Mark actually joined up in May of 2004 for internship credit from U of Miami, which was certainly a cool thing to get college credit for. Things went so well that summer that after he graduated in December he signed up with Bipolar on a permanent basis, so the five of us have been together full time since December of 2004.

Where do you call home?
We’re based in Saratoga, where we all grew up, except for Patrick who’s from Montana. Pat was actually visiting New York when Dave saw him performing in Saratoga. Dave convinced him to audition for the lead singer slot, and the rest is history.

How would you describe your music in five words?
Ass kicking, head banging rock.

Tell us about the new CD. What is it's title and why? What is it like? What can you tell us about the experience you had while putting it together?
The new CD is called Rupture. The idea behind the title is that the CD as a whole is very explosive, and the music kind of the gives the idea that it’s just bursting out of the speakers and slapping you in the face, hence “Rupture.” We like to think of it as a straight up hard rock album, but we have a couple of power ballads thrown in there for good measure.
As far as the actual process of recording it, the whole thing took about seven months. It was recorded, mixed and produced by Bipolar’s own David Tyo, with of course input from us all. Dave is really the mastermind behind it all though.
We actually added a couple of tunes at the end of the recording process that we had written in the months we were producing the album. We went back and forth with whether or not to add them, but in the end we felt the tunes added so much to the album that we couldn’t NOT put them on the album.

If you guys could play a show with anyone you wanted to, who would that be?
Hmmm, that’s gonna require six different answers. If anyone of us could sit in with any band we wanted it would look something like: Mark – Black Label Society, Dave – The Doors (of course not possible) or Blues Traveler,
John – Tower of Power, Pat – Allman Brothers Band, Pete – Metallica. If the entity that is Bipolar had the chance to play with any one band, then it would probably have to be Dream Theater. Anyone of the guys in that band can maybe be called “The Best … In The World” with a straight face, and the fact that they’re all in the same band is just absurd. Yeah we’re all big Dream Theater fans.

What is your favorite thing to do when you're not making music?
We’re so damn busy these days between work and Bipolar that no one has time to do anything else! Wow, yeah that sounds like a joke but after work we come home and practice, or write, or record, or take care of band business and on the weekends we gig. Let’s hope it all pays off in the end.

What was the first concert you ever attended?
Mark – Chicago at the now defunct Starlight Theater. That place was cool because the stage was in the center and it rotated so you could see everything. Pete – Dave Matthews Band at SPAC. Pat – Heart at Billings Montana at the Metra (that’s right, Heart). Dave - Beach Boys at SPAC. John – The Monkees, also at the spectacular Starlight Theater. Interesting side note is that Weird Al opened up for them.

What should a crowd expect at one of your shows?
We’re happy and very proud to say that the band you hear on the recordings is the same band you’ll see when you come to our show. In fact we may be even better live because there is so much more intensity when we’re all playing together. It’s a shame that we even have to say that “Yes, we can actually do all this live…” but so many bands now (more often in the Power Pop/Punk/Post Hardcore milieu that’s so popular right now) just sound nothing like they do on the album. Without saying the name of the band…alright God damn it I will: The song Helena by Chemical Romance. I love the song on the album, but then I heard them “try” to do it live, and the band is sloppy and the “singer” can’t hit half the notes on the album. I was just really disappointed and I think about all the kids who are into these types of bands now, go and see them live, and they just suck. So they gotta walk away thinking “Wow, that sounds nothing like it does on the album.” So to sum all that up, when you come see us live we make sure you walk away saying “Wow, those guys really get it done live.”

What's the weirdest reaction you ever got from a fan?
Oh, all the typical things you hear about: body part signings, completely inappropriate drunken behavior, etc. One chick got just about completely naked up on stage at a show at the venue formerly known as Club Caroline in Saratoga Springs. We’ve also got a fan that’s got a Bipolar tattoo. Crazy.

How do you psyche yourselves up before you go on stage?
Unfortunately we don’t have anything cool to say here. Truth be told too many of our shows have involved setting up our own PA, and after an hour and a half to two hours of setting up and sound checking, we usually just grab a beer and start playing. However, now that the album is coming out we’ll only be doing shows at venues that have their own damn PA, so hopefully soon we'll be able to tell you about some crazy backstage rituals because we’ll actually have the time to perform them.

Would you be willing to share your comments on the local music scene and what it's really like to be a part of it?
Albany has its things that it’s good for. Metal and hardcore goes over really well, punk and pop do fine, but there aren’t too many bands in the area who really define the genre we belong to which is hard rock. We're not talking rock, pop/rock, or alternative rock, but straight up ass kicking, bass thumping, and guitar pummeling hard rock. That’s why we do a lot of shows in New York City where we quickly build a buzz and every time we go back there it just gets bigger and bigger. It’s hard to reach a lot of people in our area because no one’s just going to be walking by Northern Lights, hear us play, then call their friends and tell em’ to a hop a cab down to see this band Bipolar, which is what we get at CBGB or Continental. That said, we do have a real strong following in this area, and with some of the new material being released at various online mediums, it’s only getting bigger. On the international level we are currently ranked #5 in Hard Rock on GarageBand.com. We’re happy to say that the band 10 Years is ranked number 1, and considering they just went Gold and you can’t turn on the radio without hearing the song ‘Wasteland’, we feel like we’re in a pretty good spot right now. All we can say is if you’re coming out on January 7th, don’t show up too late or we're not sure that there’s gonna be room for you…

Bipolar will celebrate the release of their new CD "Rupture" with a release party at Northern Lights on Saturday, January 7th. Special guests are Kingscastle and Distant By Design. Doors open at 7pm.