Get to know our locals: The Number Neesh

There are many locals bands across the multiple cities that the Sound Scene Press staff live in, and some of the staff probably don’t know about the various music scenes throughout these different cities. Local music is important to a city’s culture and ongoing atmosphere.

Today, we’re looking at The Number Neesh from the Twin Cities (Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minn), made up of two young men Michael Rogers and Ben Miller.  They’ve been ringing in the new year by playing intimate house shows with their acoustic folk sound, with greater plans to come.

Photo: Ali Lilliah

Sound Scene Press: What’s the history of the two of you starting a band?

The Number Neesh: We started in high school playing in a punk band that kind of burnt out.  So, for a school project about two or three years ago for our audio production class in high school we started Neesh and recorded an EP titled Be a Critic and it just became a thing. -Ben

SSP: Pretty sure “neesh” isn’t exactly a word, so what does the band name mean exactly?

TNN:  Neesh was a word we created in a math class when we were taking a lesson in imaginary numbers.  It was our self made variable word. We eventually used it in place of all sorts of things. -Ben

SSP: What are some of your musical influences?

TNN: Our musical influences are really all over the place, between the two of us, there isn’t really anything we won’t listen to or at least give a chance. Mostly the songs we write come from experiences we’ve gone through translated to music. As far as artists go, people like Oasis, Led Zeppelin, Nirvana, The Foo Fighters, and other rock bands mostly. After our first EP we discovered people like Mason Jennings and Elliott Smith, and we’ve been listening to a ton of that lately. -Mike

SSP: What is in the band’s horizon for 2012?

TNN: Making new friends, finishing our first full-length album, hopefully reaching new people that find our music interesting. -Ben

SSP: How are you using social networking and other sites like SoundCloud or YouTube to the advantage of the band?

Back in high school we went all out with social networking, after our little hiatus, most of that lost priority, now me mostly focus on our Facebook and Soundcloud. We are working on getting some actual music videos done soon. It’s important to us to be nice and personable with our fans, that way they never get the idea that we’re the pretentious musician types, I hate it when that happens. -Mike

SSP: What’s your opinion on the Minneapolis/St. Paul local music scene?

Minneapolis has been and will always be a proving ground for independent musicians like us. There is an incredibly diverse scene here and we are privileged to be a part of it. We both love it here and are proud to call the Twin Cities home. -Mike

SSP: Anything else you’d like to add?

TNN: We really hope to meet some new people at our shows, and we’d love it if you checked out our music at soundcloud.com/the-number-neesh and like our Facebook page. Thanks for taking the time to read about us!