What started with eight bands on Feb. 6 has been trimmed to two with a winner to be decided Saturday, March 29, at Baker Street Centre.

Presented by ALT 99.5/102.3 FM and sponsored by Whatzup and Fort Wayne Guitar Exchange, Bandemonium began late last year with local bands invited to submit songs that would be voted by fans. The top eight vote-getters were then selected to perform each Thursday from Feb. 6-March 13. Three bands performed each night, with the lowest vote-getter being eliminated.

Well, through it all, we now have the finalists, which will be Tuesday Atlas and Je’Yume. They will meet in the March 29 finals at Baker Street Centre, where James & The Drifters will also perform for your listening pleasure.

The winner of Bandemonium will received $10,000 worth of promotions through ALT as well as a Golden Axe from Fort Wayne Guitar Exchange.

Getting the band back together

The first band to punch their ticket into the finals were the Warsaw-based Tuesday Atlas, which had to get through The Kickbacks, Controller, and The Peffercorns.

According to lead guitarist Skyler Newsome, Bandemonium has reinvigorated Tuesday Atlas.

“I actually was just browsing Facebook, and I saw (ALT host) Zack (Skyler) with the radio station posted about this competition,” Newsome said. “I was just like, ‘Hey, that sounds interesting. We probably won’t get in because nobody really listens to us anymore, because we haven’t been very active.’ So, I just sent the post over to the guys, and I was just like, ‘Hey, you guys wanna try to get in on this?’ ”

The guys are Dakota Boggs on vocals and guitar and Cisco on bass. 

“So, the three of us have known each other since probably 2009,” Newsome said. “We all met in high school. Dakota started Tuesday Atlas as his own solo acoustic project, probably around 2015 or so. 

“Cisco joined Dakota and became his bass player shortly after 2016. Then I came back from college and reconnected with those guys. I started out as, like, their videographer and taking pictures and recording videos and stuff with them. So, I started as a fan, then they were just like, ‘Why don’t you just join the band? You’re hanging out with us all the time anyway.’ ”

So, you may be wondering, “Well, who’s the drummer?” 

“We’ve just been running drums in the backing track,” Newsome said. 

Tuesday Atlas had a more conventional drummer up until about a year ago. But with his busy schedule, he stepped aside. Tuesday Atlas marched on.

“Just the desire to play shows,” Newsome said of using the backing track. “The way our writing process works is we’re always kinda sitting on probably a dozen or a dozen and a half songs we’re working on, getting ready to record. The whole writing thing doesn’t really take us too long. 

“We just started thinking of ways that we could do that, and the backing tracks were kind of our answer. The guy who records us, he kinda turned into our studio drummer, and he let us basically have all the stems from our recording sessions. We just kinda built backing tracks with that stuff to make our live sound more like what you hear on our records.”

It’s worked well, making Newsome’s hunch to join Bandemonium pay off. However, according to Newsome, the prizes are not the goal. Instead, to them, Tuesday Atlas have already won.

“All the bands that we played with in 2019, most of them are not bands anymore,” Newsome said. “We don’t really know who’s out there and who’s doing what. So, it’s, ‘Let’s use this to kinda get back out there and start meeting some people again and reincorporate ourselves into the Fort Wayne music scene.’ 

“Regardless of how the finale goes, regardless of whether or not we made it past the first round, it’s just been nice getting to meet new people and hearing new bands and making friends. It’s been a really good time.”

Strong introduction

Whereas Tuesday Atlas tried out for Bandemonium as a way to get back onto the music scene, Je’Yume has used it as a way to introduce themselves.

“Oh my goodness,” said Je’Yume, aka Maurice Causey Jr., about reaching the finals. “I was like, how are we here right now? Like, there were so many talented people, Sun.Dyle, Islandwalker, Bloodstained Sky. They were way too talented. For us, we just entered Bandemonium just looking to get our first start, our first show as a band.”

Je’Yume actually got his start as a hip-hop artist, which included a three-city stint opening for DJ Paul of Three 6 Mafia.

“I spent five or six years in my room working on my craft,” he said. “It wasn’t until 2022 that I basically finally did my first show at Piere’s. It was for a contest called Concert Crave. It was basically a bunch of artists from all over coming into Piere’s and performing for prize. 

“I just wanted to go there to basically perform and make connections.”

While he continues to “dabble” in hip-hop, Je’Yume’s attention turned toward a band, which includes Justice Robertson and Jordan Lewis on guitar, John Minnie on bass, and Nick Hunter on drums.

“We were just gonna go with the whole Je’Yume as a solo artist with the band behind him,” Je’Yume said. “It really wasn’t called a band at that moment. We were still forming it and it took like a year just to get all the pieces we did. So, we literally got Jordan two or three months ago.”

Je’Yume admitted he’s still getting more familiar with playing guitar and singing at the same time. So, with Lewis joining the fold, he’s able to concentrate on vocals, although he does keep his guitar in tow.

“I just pick it up occasionally,” he said. “I might be in the song or I might be out of the song. I don’t know. I just have my guitar.”

During the opening round, Je’Yume admits he struggled to contain his nerves. At one point, the band had to restart their cover of Radiohead’s “Creep.”

“I felt like I was rushing too much during that first show and just trying to get that nervousness out,” he said. “And a while where we’re doing that song, I basically had to take a deep breath and calm everything down before we went back into it. My mind was racing a thousand miles per second. 

“I had my amp screeching out and Jordan’s guitar, he wasn’t getting any sound through it. It was just like everything that could possibly went wrong.”

Despite that happening, the band moved on, and now they find themselves in the finals.

“I’ve never gotten like that before, because, I guess, it’s something that I really care about at this point,” he said. “Like when you care about something so deeply, you want everything to go right. But in reality, it never goes right. Like, nothing ever goes the way that you expect it to go. So, you know, they say you always gonna have one show that’s gonna be, like, the worst nightmare of all. 

“I feel like the crowd enjoys the fact that we’re all we all are humans, and we all mess up.”