Stars Go Dim

You’ll recognize most of the characters from different plays. There’s drummer Lester Estelle and bassist Mike Wittig from Pillar. There’s principal songwriter and guitarist Joey Avalos from Justified. Only Chris Cleveland, vocalist, is the new face in Stars Go Dim. And the band, according to Wittig, is all the stronger for it.

As we spoke with Wittig, he gives us the details on how already being seasoned professionals has given the now pop-focused group a leg up on others. In fact, things are going so well they end up winning contests they don’t even enter.

Soul-Audio: How are the early days in Stars Go Dim?

Mike Wittig: It’s been so unique because we all came from different bands. Lester and I came from Pillar and Joey came from Justified and Sky Harbor. Our singer, Chris, was in a band with his brother for a while. So we all had been doing music for 10-years-plus on a professional level. When you’re doing your first band, there’s a lot of trial and error. It takes a while to actually get to where you can be considered good. So it takes a while when you’re in that first band. But with Stars Go Dim, we already knew what to do. We knew how to produce good music. We knew how to write songs. We had a lot of contacts in the industry.

So things have been a whirlwind since we started. They’ve been happening quick. It’s still exciting because we’ve been doing it for 10 years, but this makes it all exciting again. This year has just almost gotten out of hand with everything happening so unexpectedly. Joey, our guitar player, just says he can’t believe it’s all real. Earlier this year, we won this contest put on by Ernie Ball and John Mayer’s people. Out of 4,000 bands, we got picked to go play with John Mayer on a cruise liner called the Mayercraft. It’s ridiculous. It’s a contest I don’t even remember signing up for. In fact, I think our fans signed us up. They said we really needed to sign up, but we were just burned out on contests. I don’t like bugging our fans to vote, vote, vote all the time.

So we told the fan to go ahead and sign us up and upload pictures and songs and all of that. I said that we will tell some fans about it. So she set it all up and we completely forgot about it. We got a call one day from Brian Ball – Ernie Ball’s son – saying that we won. We were freaking out man. We were calling our moms and everything. It was ridiculous. So we got to go on this cruise at the end of March or early April. It was a five day cruise and we got to meet John Mayer. We got to talk to him and he enjoyed our music and was glad we won the contest. In all my time of playing music and touring nationally and internationally, that was the coolest thing that’s ever happened.

SA:You talk about the trial and error thing with the new band and that you have this blank slate. So what did you do this time around that you didn’t do the previous time?

Mike: Well, everything worked out great with Pillar, my previous band. But from day one, this band has done everything differently. We’re making sure everything is absolutely quality. When you see a new band and you check their MySpace, you can tell they’re a new band – from their pictures to their name. So we put thought into our name and the logo and the pictures and just how we wanted everyone to see our first impression. We wanted that to be really strong, so there was a lot of thought into that from day one. The first time everyone saw anything to do with Stars Go Dim, it looked like a legit band. It looked like we cared about what we’re doing and we were putting effort into it.

The other thing is that we wanted to connect with fans right away. We had a lot of fans already from the beginning and they were following us from our other projects. So 10 months went by before we released one song, but when it was, we had 10,000 MySpace friends and a good e-mail list. And we had been taking photos and videos of everything since day one – sort of a video journalling of sorts. People just followed along and watched.

SA:Why leave Pillar? Why leave Justified? Why did everyone come together?

Mike: Well, Joey had left Justified a while ago. I met him nine years ago or so when Pillar was on tour with Skillet and Justified. It was one of our first tours and we just became good friends. Then about three years ago or so, Noah, our guitar player with Pillar, had a fall on stage and tore his ACL up real bad. He had to have surgery and he was out for a while. My first instinct was to call Joey and see what he’s doing. Well, all I had was this old e-mail address. So I wrote him and just said that we really needed a guitar player. It turns out that Joey hadn’t checked that e-mail in years. Seriously, for years. But that day, he checked his e-mail for the first time in years and he hadn’t even been playing guitar. He was working at Countrywide Home Loans. He thought it was over with for him. But he got this e-mail, took his guitar out and played as a part of Pillar for two years.

When Noah came back, we just enjoyed having two guitar players. In the meantime, me and Joey and Lester just created a good friendship. We have a lot of things in common and we’re really laid back. Lester and I had talked about a side project for a long time, but we never had the right situation. But with Joey in the picture, we had a guitarist. We actually had a bus breakdown in Montana and we had to rent three cars to get to the next show on time and the three of us were in one car and we were talking about doing this side project. We didn’t want to compete or take away from Pillar, but we wanted to do this pop thing. So it came together there.

But then you wonder who will sing. Noah got married earlier that year and there was a kid singing in his wedding who was amazing. He was a friend of Noah’s. He ended up doing this acoustic gig with Pillar – this one-time thing – for AC radio. We had to pretty it up and be pretty light, and this guy from Noah’s wedding was playing piano and singing amazingly to himself. So he was the first person to pop in my mind for this side project – this guy from Noah’s wedding. So I call him up and ask Chris if he wants to be our singer for this side project. He said, ‘Yeah, man. I’m down.’

So it just happened that way. It took a couple months to even figure out what sort of music we would write. Joey started off by just recording 10 different guitar tracks and two or three of them turning into full-fledged songs and making it on the album. And it was only supposed to be a side project, just something fun to keep us occupied. Then things started snowballing so quick, it quickly became its own thing.

SA:So it’s not a side project anymore?

Mike: No, it’s been a band for over a year. In leaving Pillar with Lester, it was separate from this. Honestly, I’ve been in it for 11 years and I prayed about it and it was just time to move on. Lester was the same thing – just time for him to do something different as well. He’s actually doing some other things as well and now he’s out playing country gigs with Neal McCoy. He’s just an amazing drummer. Someday I wouldn’t be surprised to see him out there with Justin Timberlake or something.

SA:So the exit was amiable?

Mike: Yeah it was all good. All good. Still friends with everybody.

SA: How do you balance your target audience with the new band?

Mike: We don’t shy away from anything. Even in the general market, we don’t shy away from sharing who we are or our faith. If Christian people want to do interviews or shows, we’ll do that, too. We just want to go wherever the door is open for us. And we’re not strictly marketing to the Christian market either. We just happen to be four Christian guys. Of course, you won’t see us write anything that goes against our beliefs, but I’ve never been a fan of pigeonholing music. The U.S. is the only country with a specifically Christian market, so it’s interesting that we even have that. So this is music for everybody.

• www.starsgodim.com
• www.myspace.com/starsgodim

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