Not many people know that we wrote an original song together at our very FIRST rehearsal...

Not many musicians can do that on their first time meeting each other, but we knew from the first time we pulled the song (now titled) "Drown" out of thin air...

That this was going to be a special band, but let's back up...

Dax (our guitar player) and Zach (our drummer) met each other through mutual friends of their parents...

Typical friend-of-a-friend type stuff...

Ryne (our bass player) and Jesse (our original singer) knew each other after meeting in college together...

Best part about Ryne & Jesse?

(Just kidding) 😉

So how did these separate duos who were in different circles and cliques finally meet?
​Dax and Zach were going through ALL the different find-a-musicians sites like:

In a last-ditch effort to try and find some people to jam with, we decided to go to the ONE site left where you could search for other musicians.

And thats when...

We came from nowhere. Three misfits from Oklahoma and an outcast from a small town in Kansas, scraping out songs no one had heard yet.

Songs that bled. Songs that hurt. Songs that told the truth of what we were living through.

Zach was only 15 years old when he met Dax, and Ryne and Jesse were only 23 years old...

And as you know, we had our first rehearsal from there that was very fruitful...

So from there we knew it was time to real dig in and commit!

From that day we met every week possible (and have for 10+ years now)...

And we literally wrote a song-a-week for 8 straight weeks...

And before you knew it, we had compiled enough for a demo here...and EP there...

But after about 6 months, we had written all the material that would be featured on our first album "Run Away"!

We recorded this record in the middle of Crossroads Mall in South Oklahoma City...

Which used to be a thriving spot of our childhoods, but is now an abandoned mall (and it was pretty close to that when we recorded 'Run Away' in 2014)...

Which was pretty reflective of the themes of the record...

And putting this album together and gigging locally in preparation made us have an epiphany...

We spent 2014 playing ANY gig we could find in ANY state that would have us...

We played lots of these shows for FREE (dumb we know...)

Just to get our name out there and let people know KIRRA was here and we were NOT going to be ignored!
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This was a very grueling and tough part of our journey that we are certainly glad is behind us...

But these tours got us thinking about how much we wanted this, and despite the challenges would figure out how to do this forever!

We played places like The Whisky A Go Go in LA, but we also played places that don't exist anymore like Ned's Bar & Grill in Albuquerque or Red Blood Club in Dallas...

We kicked it off with our nation-wide support for the new album with a CD release show at the Farmer's Market in OKC 👉

Then we hit the road like we owned it.

Sleeping in seedy motels, our van, and literally on couches at venues...

Playing for five or ten people like it was Madison Square Garden!

And we did this on our own for quite a long time...until...

In January of 2018 just 3 weeks before tour, Jesse—the brother who knew what this band meant, and was like a brother to all of us—was gone.

Just like that.

You see...only a few people know that Jesse was struggling with addiction...

Jesse was somewhat public with it on his facebook, but no one really knew the extent of it like we did...

We were devastated...this is someone we had seen every week (and every day for us on the road)...

This was someone who was turning his life around, it wasn't supposed to be like this...
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Ryne had known Jesse since college and Dax and Zach had known Jesse for the last 7 years...

He was like a brother to ALL of us...

At the funeral, we even saw fans that attended, which made the day even heavier since we had just lost our friend but still got to see his impact from people around the country...

​We had an EP we had just recorded with Jesse's voice, a MASSIVE tour on the books to push it, and an opportunity like we'd never experienced before...​​

Most bands fold. We almost did.

But Jesse bled for this band. And if we quit, it would all mean nothing. It would all be over.

So we fought. We fought harder.

We decided after the funeral at a seedy Econolodge in Wichita, KS together...wiping tears away to put another ad out on Craigslist to find someone to fill in for this Nothing More tour and keep Kirra alive!

​We found a singer by the name of Vincent Ojeda.

Vincent took the challenge of learning our songs head on and in rehearsals was killing it!

However, after we left rehearsals things only seemed to go downhill...

Maybe it was the pressure, maybe it was nerves, or perhaps even some self-doubt...

But once we started performing Vincent forgot lyrics on stage...

Started singing off time with the music, almost causing us to have to stop a song in a sold out gig in Minneapolis.

So by the end of the tour, we were in such a yin-yang sort of state because...

🫲 On One Hand:
Nothing More, the other bands, the crew, and every venue staff on this tour was incredible!

Especially our tour package, it felt like a big family where there were no rockstar egos and just good vibes celebrating Nothing More's official arrival as headliner status in 1,000-2,000 cap rooms like when the family member gets the big promotion they've always wanted...

🫱 On The Other Hand:
We were performing at 50% (maybe less) of our potential...

We were known for being a KILLER live band and now our shows had been reduced to mediocre opening act at best...

Vincent had a folder of lyrics he never read, changed the way songs were sang, dismissed our new EP at the merch table by saying "new stuff with me is coming out real soon", complained he couldn't keep beat because "white boys don't have rhythm"...

We found this guy who we thought had a great singing voice, and we invited him to a rehearsal...
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​From literally day 1, Gabe showed up and learned ALL the lyrics, sang them HOW they were written, and even showed vocal capabilities Jesse was envious to learn...
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​We had a moment after Gabe left where we looked at each other like:
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​"This is the guy."
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​We shortly after invited him over for some BBQ (as we do in the South) and congratulated him on becoming our new lead singer!

Gabe immediately integrated within the band and learned a large portion of our catalog...
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​We could now book shows, festivals, and anything we wanted.
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​The world was our oyster as they say!
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​And the first songs we wrote were of a different caliber than they had been...
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​One of those songs was a hypnotically melodic song about a dream of an apocalypse called, "Sixteen Suns"

We had booked a tour with a band called Bobaflex in 2018 to push this new song out on the road and see how it went over...

We tried things we had never dreamed of before, like when we got two drums for Dax & Gabe to play to kick the show off...

(Literally ever member of the band can play drums proficiently) 😜
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​After such a successful tour with Gabriel, we knew it was time to really start to get things back in gear...