The Gallery, Winning Band of Play Your Way to Austin Contest

D’addario and Swing House Studios announce rock band The Gallery as winners of this year’s Play Your Way to Austin contest

D’Addario & Swing House Studios announce the winner of the Play Your Way to Austin contest, indie pop band, The Gallery!  As the grand prize winner, The Gallery will perform at the much anticipated showcase during Austin’s top music festival this Friday, March 16!

The Gallery features Brendan Cooney (lead vocals/guitar), Ryan Cooney (drums), Dave Mozdzanowski (bass/background vocals), and Ben Lozano (lead guitar). The band has maintained their hometown fan base in New England, while building a following in Southern Florida, where they resided for three years. In 2009, the group set out on the road for their first national tour, a full 50 dates across 25 different states. Since then, they’ve expanded their fan base across the country, from Florida to Washington and California to Massachusetts. The band has played with such well known artists as Minus the Bear, Rooney, The Maine, and Sam Roberts. The Gallery takes pride in sharing their music and passion with fans at live shows. It’s not hard to see or hear why.

In the fall of 2010, the band recorded five new songs with producer Warren Huart (The Fray, Augustana, Aerosmith). The tracks were released on the Come Alive EP in February 2011, earning the band attention from such nationally recognized publications as Rolling Stone, Alternative Press and AOL Spinner, and nationwide college radio airplay landing the band on the CMJ charts. The strength of the new songs was recognized by the International Songwriting Competition, which selected the band as finalists in their rock division, and also the Recording Academy, who asked the band to participate in the 2011 Florida GRAMMY Showcase.

The Gallery was chosen out of the hundreds of artists that registered for the competition.  The Top 25 voted by fans were then put into the finals pool for selection by the artist relations teams at D’Addario, Swing House Studios, Evans, Planet Waves and ProMark.   As the Grand Prize winner, The Gallery landed the performance slot at the Friday, March 16, 2012 showcase as well as $1,500 in cash, and $3,500 worth of gear from D’Addario, Evans, Planet Waves and ProMark!

Now in its fifth year, the D’Addario and Swing House showcase has hosted music from legendary acts such as Echo & The Bunnymen and Tom Morello of Rage Against Machine to rising stars like Semi Precious Weapons, Crash Kings and Grace Potter & The Nocturnals.