Lately fans have noticed a tightening, an increased cohesiveness. Is Sprocket becoming more disciplined, more connected?

Dan Haller (bass/vocals): I think what people are responding to is the fact we are realizing that we really love the music we’re making and that makes us want to put more time into getting even better. We have always loved to play music individually, but I don’t think that any of us have ever been in a band where we love the group effort so much. It makes us want to fit in an extra rehearsal on a random weeknight, or go to the studio to hang out instead of going to a bar on Friday night. We just love playing the music we’re playing and hopefully that shines through to the crowd. Connectedness is also something you cannot fake. It takes hours upon hours spent jamming with each other to develop the trust necessary to play the music that we’re making. So if people are recognizing that we’re tighter, I think it’s because we’ve been putting in the time to get there.

Nathan Rosler (drums): Every day we play as a band we become more in sync with the music, with each other, with our own instruments. Having our own to studio to play in whenever we feel the urge certainly helps, and now having a residency at the Bitter End, where we have 3 plus hours of stage time once or twice a month, has truly been paramount in the evolution of Sprocket. Playing 45 minute sets and other venues just didn’t give us the ability to really stretch our legs and take tunes for a walk. Now we have that and couldn’t be happier with the outcome.

Let’s talk about the band’s residency at the Bitter End. What prompted the long run at the club? Has it been memorable?

Thomas Tompkins: Our first show at the Bitter End came on a whim. The booking agent there reached out to us about playing the club. We played the bar Wicked Willy’s, located right down the block from the Bitter End, and were told to turn down, which is complete and utter nonsense if you ask me. Anyways, that’s how we got our first show at the Bitter End. We discussed the residency with them after. In NYC, the typical show for your no-name band is 45-minute “one and done” sets, which doesn’t really cater to what we’re trying to do very well. The Bitter End was willing to give us the time we so desperately wanted and needed on stage to continue moving forward. It’s one thing to practice in our studio where communication is generally very easy between us, but in the live setting it’s an entirely different beast.

I understand Sprocket has been hard at work in the studio, meticulously crafting its first album. Will you briefly describe Tropical Bushwick ?

Thomas Tompkins: We sure have been! Tropical Bushwick is a place both real and fake. It started off as a tongue-in-cheek thing. Our old rehearsal studio, much like our new one but not nearly as cool, is right off Bushwick Avenue in Brooklyn. You see some crazy shit over there every now and then, and Tropical Bushwick almost sounds like a nice place, but it’s really not..but it is. The songs on the album are all related in some way, which I can’t divulge at this time, but some of the artwork which will be included in the album will give some idea of what’s in store.

Dan Haller: The album has been a great accomplishment for us. We sat down as a band at the end of 2013 to recognize that it had been a great year for us. We came a long way and while we embraced the progress we’d made, we looked to push even harder to get to where we wanted to go as a band. So we asked ourselves what we wanted to accomplish in 2014 and made a list of goals for the year. Recording an album was the first thing on the list and we began doing it on January 1st. So it’s incredibly satisfying to sit here, not two months into the year, and say that we’ve already accomplished one of the big goals for the year.

Nathan Rosler: Tropical Bushwick is a fantasy world in which all things Sprocket live. Not to say it’s a concept album, but we really enjoy the possibility of all our songs having some kind of unified thread. I believe the world we started to create with Tropical Bushwick is just that.

Angelo Miliano: Tropical Bushwick is a fictitious place in the fictitious Sprocket world that we hope to create. There are other places, and as we grow, hopefully that world grows with us, too.

When should we expect a full-scale Sprocket tour?

Dan Haller: We’re shooting for late summer/early fall. Touring is another one of our goals for 2014 and as long as we keep pushing the way that we have been so far this year, it’s going to happen. It takes a lot of work for a band to break into new cities and fan bases, so we’re looking for all the help we can get and have gotten some great responses so far. Hopefully this year will see Sprocket taking the stage at a few festivals over the summer, and then we will hit the road when schools are getting back in session. We’re ambitious but we work hard, so we feel like we can accomplish pretty much anything we set as our goals.

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