#ShitToHit This Weekend: An Under Cover Weekend @AUCW

Despite gaining a little negative press earlier today from the RFT, An Under Cover Weekend will be taking place at the Firebird this weekend in it's most visible and heavily promoted year yet. The Egotist is behind this idea full force - as anything that can get more people to come out to a local show with local bands is alright by us. The kicker is - even the shitty local bands you don't like won't be playing their own songs! At the very least it's like a well rehearsed, completely live karaoke. Take a chill pill RFT.

Michael Tomko, one of the founders of AUCW, has this to say:
With An Under Cover Weekend 6, I think that we've finally hit our stride. We have come a long way from being a one-off event to being named by the St. Louis Beacon as an "institution" in St. Louis. AUCW is a celebration of local music, through covers, and we work tirelessly all year to put on an event that is somehow bigger and better than the previous year. For our sixth installment, we not only stepped up our approach to photography, but we also expanded the coverage and output of our blog and shot a 5-part mini-docudrama where we interviewed those involved in AUCW both past and present about what the event means to them.

All in all, we aim to be the gateway drug to your new favorite local band(s) and every year we will continue to expand on ways to introduce you to the best talent in St. Louis. Just give us one weekend a year and An Under Cover Weekend will change your life.

Videos

We released five videos this year, produced by Allison Babka, David Treadway, Kevin FitzGerald, and Mike Tomko, that take an in-depth look into The Beginning, The Photography, The Showmanship, The Community, and The Experience of An Under Cover Weekend. The videos were shot in a single day at The Silver Ballroom in South City and feature an ensemble cast of organizers, photographers, bands, and fans of AUCW. These documentary style videos have been a dream of ours since year one and Allison and company helped us to finally make it a reality this year. We are going to continue working on a full AUCW documentary and have some really big things in the works for 2013! All five videos can be found here

Photos

AUCW6 marked our second year of having local photographers Bryan Sutter and Jason Stoff shoot exclusive photos of all ten bands for use on our website and for press. We wanted to create a branded and cohesive set of photos that would stand out as something different from your typical band photo and to our knowledge there is no music festival, local or national, that takes their branding to this extent. This year we took things to the next level by hosting our photo shoots in the beautiful Thaxton Speakeasy downtown. Our look has always harkened this sort of secret agent / film noir type of thing and Bryan and Jason, combined with a cooperative set of bands and the amazing architecture of The Thaxton, were able to capture our vision many times over. You can see all of the photos from this year here.

Check out a mix tape featuring the bands (original tunes).
View the AUCW Schedule & Band Info.
RSVP on Facebook.