Sheboygan brewery 3 Sheeps is paying for one Wisconsin band to travel to Los Angeles – after they prove themselves in a “Battle of the Bands.” The brewery is hosting a series of competitive concerts in collaboration with the Les Paul Foundation, and the winning band will receive a free recording session at the Les Paul Recording Studio in LA.
Bands applied to enter the battle earlier this year, submitting an entry that included at least one original song to 3 Sheeps’ team to judge. The competition required that they be from Wisconsin and unsigned. “We were beyond thrilled with all of the entries we had,” says Grant Pauly, the brewery’s founder. “There was a wide variety of music, from soulful to rock, to alternative and country.”
Now the chosen bands will face off in three live performances. The first is in Milwaukee at Vivarium on Saturday, July 11 at 7 p.m. Eight bands will duke it out in the free, open-to-the-public concert to determine a winner.
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That will be followed by another battle of the bands in Madison at Harmony Bar and one in Appleton at Gibson Music Hall, both on July 25 with six bands competing in each. Winners at each event will be chosen by a panel of three judges, who will be assessing the groups’ performances based on musicianship, originality, stage presence, crowd engagement and overall impression.
The audience at each event will also get the chance to vote for a crowd favorite, and their choice will count for 25% of the deciding score.
The preliminary battle winners – which also includes a virtual-only round – will all perform at 3 Sheeps’ Sheboygan taproom on Aug. 15 at 6 p.m. The grand prize winner of that championship round will receive a free four-hour recording session at the Les Paul studio in Los Angeles, along with $3,000 to cover travel expenses.
“This will be another opportunity for [the winning band] to have a leg up and keep pursuing their passion, to see what their musical act could turn into,” Pauly says.
The Les Paul Foundation was created to preserve the legacy of the rock ’n’ roll icon, Les Paul, who was from Waukesha, Wisconsin and pioneered both multitrack recording and the solid-body electric guitar. Paul died in 2009. Dedicated to providing music education grants and funding medical research related to hearing, the organization also works to support undiscovered artists.
“If you knew Les, then you knew how important Wisconsin was to him,” says Michael Braunstein, the foundation’s executive director who worked closely with Paul for years. “I specifically asked him, ‘Where do you want to be buried?’ He didn’t even hesitate and said ‘Waukesha. I am going home.’
“His Midwestern roots are, in my opinion, what made Les himself. … Billy Joel always talks about Long Island. Bruce Springsteen always talks about New Jersey. With Les, it was Waukesha, it was Milwaukee. His ties to the Midwest never stopped. He was always just a Midwestern kid.”
The Les Paul Recording Studio, located in LA’s historic United Recording Studios, opened last year. It features restored original equipment used by Paul, including the custom eight-channel mixing console he built with Rein Narma in the 1950s. “When you are in this studio, you can see the evolution of modern recording,” Braunstein says.
