An evening with RIVAL SONS

Got to do a photoshoot with RIVAL SONS the other night. Here's how it went.

I don't know if you've heard of RIVAL SONS, but if you're into rock-'n-roll, you should feel ashamed for not checking them out. They're the next big thing, I can tell you that.
Only a couple months ago, they barely filled a club of 400 people. Tonight, they were nicely filling the famous Ancienne Belgique in Brussels with over 1,500 fans!

Our photoshoot was scheduled one hour before stage time. I arrived quite early, went for dinner with Nathan who was nice enough to assist during the shoot. About an hour before the shoot, we got inside the venue. When I met Pete, their tourmanager, he informed me that everything got pushed back a bit, which basically meant the shoot was now going to happen right before showtime. In a way, occasions like these have their advantages: the band will be in a totally different mind-set, ready to perform and they will be in stage outfit. On the other hand, there isn't as much time and the band is mostly a lot more nervous. Fortunately, for these guys, this latter wasn't the case. They were really easy-going and in the end we had about five minutes to shoot before the intro music sounded on stage.

Michael, the band's drummer, was even kind enough to show up a bit early to warm up and have me make some photos of that. Awesome guy!

We first shot some images of the band with Todd, their keyboard player during the tour and then we moved on to the four-piece band pictures.

Here's the set-up for the photoshoot: only one light due to the limited space. In the end, we changed things a bit and moved our gear to the loading dock: pretty close to the stage and there's was almost no one there. Plus, it looked pretty interesting, giving the picture more of a backstage / industrial look.