Artist description August 1998 marked the end of one of Florida’s hottest summers but it was only the beginning of The Blue Collar Diner Band. It all began when guitarist Paul McWhirter was loafing around on the stoop of his low income housing playing a couple of tunes he had recently written on the accoustic guitar. Christina Stanaland, longtime friend of McWhirters roomate just happened to be listening and felt compelled to grab her trusty yellow legal pad and jot down some lyrics. Within an hour the song “Breathe” had been born.Paul felt a vibe with singer Stanaland and immediately called guitarist Lucas Alonso to come join the project. Upon hearing the songwriting team perform “Breathe”, Lucas immediately signed on to the project. The three instantly connected and things soon began to take shape. A new band was born spurred by a need to compose and perform music that could touch the lives of as many people as possible. Interest stirred and soon the trio was asked to do some studio work for a local indie label. Working in the studio seemed to be a natural thing for the group to do, yet they still needed a Bass Player and Drummer to complete a band. “They handed me a Bass Guitar and said play. So I did”, said Matt Bodie. The self taught bassist built up his chops quickly and in less than a month he was ready for the stage. Matt completed the core of the still unnamed band. The question of a band name was now the predominate issue facing the new foursome.When asked about the origins of the name Blue collar Diner, singer Stanaland replies, “Our music is about the real world; relationships, growing pains, and hardships that all of us have endured throughout our lives. Lucas used to work for a Mobil gas station, Paul used to work for McDonalds, and Matt and I both work for Steak & Ale. The common bond between us seems to be that we all have been blue collar workers, we understand their lives, nine to five has been our reality. The Blue Collar Diner is where we wish we could go and forget about our workday – Essentially our “Cheers”. Metaphorically speaking, our music should take you to our place that serves dinner up hot, beer cold, and never makes you feel unwelcome.”“We took every opportunity to play in front of people, in the beginning we didn’t have a lot of songs so we would play the ones we knew until people would really get into to them.”, Says Lucas Alonso commenting on the band’s need to play live. “We are born performers, we do whatever it takes to get the crowd into the show. We once set up in friends driveway that was on a walking path towards Florida State University’s football stadium and played for people walking to the game until the cops arrived to tell us to stop.” Finding a drummer was perhaps the most grueling task for the band. Spending months auditioning and gigging with different drummers, Chris Currie is now what the members of the Blue Collar Diner band refer to as the missing piece. “His sense of timing and our groove is fabulous. He really takes us to the next level”, Says Stanaland, “We’re hoping he’ll stick around for a while.”In November 1998, a representative from another independent label called the band and wanted to release “Breathe” as a single. “We were all pretty excited, even when the CD’s came back from the press with our pictures on the cover and stuff, we though it was pretty cool”, says McWhiter. After quickly selling 1,000 copies of “Breathe” the band decided, after fulfilling their contractual agreements, that the label was no longer able to manage their rising careers. Undaunted, and after a full year of endless gigging through Florida the band’s first true break came. Their first self-produced song, Angel, was played on WXSR (X101.5 Tallahassee); the response to the song was overwhelming. Their next show was filled with unknown people who had come solely because they wanted to hear, “That song from the radio”. The response was great enough to convince Blue Collar Diner to take some time off and produce a quality demo CD, where all the MP3 song are from to attemp to capture the attention of a record label.

Group Members Christina Stanaland - Vocals Lucas Alonso - Rhythm Guitar Matt Bodie- Bass Guitar Chris Curry- Drums/Percussion (He's also the "Token Musician" in the band)

Location Tallahassee, FL - USA

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