Since January 1998, Laurie Steele has been one of the local music scene’s most dedicated supporters as the host of The Homegrown Show, which airs Sundays from 10 p.m. to midnight on KOMP 92.3-FM. “For a commercial radio station to have the same host and the same show for 20 years—it is kind of a big deal,” Steele says as she gets ready to celebrate the show’s 20th anniversary with a concert this week at the House of Blues. She picked out a few of the bands that have made the biggest Homegrown impact, from the early days through the present.
Face Down In 2000, Steele accompanied this Vegas industrial goth-metal group to the South by Southwest music conference in Austin, Texas. “That was kind of crazy,” she says. “They were not a band that blended in well in Texas, let’s put it that way. The band’s all 6-foot-plus tall, with long black hair, dressed in black leather, and Texas wasn’t quite sure what to do with them. The looks and the reaction to them was really interesting.”
Inside Scarlet A few years after these influential local alt-rockers broke up and the band members left town, Steele convinced them to reunite to play a show at onetime local music hot spot Pink E’s in honor of her birthday. “Somewhere around 2001, 2002, they kind of hung it up,” she recalls. “I was in contact with them, and we were talking about doing kind of a reunion show. That was the last time that I’m aware of that they played together.”
Left Standing One of the longest-running local rock bands remains a Homegrown staple. “They’ve been a part of the show for almost the entire length of the show’s history,” Steele says. “They’ve slowed down—marriage and work and kids and stuff makes it slower. They’re working on a new album. They’re recording. And they’re still doing their thing.”
Bravo Delta and First Class Trash Steele is especially enthusiastic about the work of busy local guitarist Andy Ingraham. “Two of the bands that I am really excited about the most right now have the same guitarist, which is kind of neat,” she says. “They’re not even similar. [First Class Trash] is more of an electronica kind of rock, and Bravo Delta is more straight-ahead hard rock. His guitar work is phenomenal in both projects.”
The Dirty Hooks This garage-rock trio features former members of The Day After and The Ill Figures, “both bands that I did a lot of stuff with [back] in the day,” Steele says. “And of course I’m supporting The Dirty Hooks now. They’re making a lot of noise, too. They just opened up the West Coast tour of Stone Temple Pilots. They’ve been doing really well with that.”
Vegas Homegrown Series with Honor Amongst Thieves, Bravo Delta, Driven, AntiTrust, Incarnate. June 29, 7:30 p.m., $9. House of Blues, 702-632-7600.
