Based out of Delevan, New York, rock band The Scarecrow Show will be releasing its first album and EP within the next few months, per an independent recorder. The Scarecrow Show features Geneseo sophomore Ben Juchniewicz on bass. Making up the rest of the band are Ben Juchniewicz’s older brother Jon—who is the drummer and lead vocalist—and their longtime friend and lead guitarist Ray Cook III. The trio grew up with music-centric interests and began jamming together long before formally establishing the band.
Priding itself on its versatility of sound, the band upholds a hard rock foundation while remaining receptive to a myriad of influences.
“We usually try to steer clear from pigeonholing ourselves into a specific genre,” Ben Juchniewicz said. “We pretty much call ourselves hard rock with a lot of influences, including punk and blues, all coalescing into one sound.”
The Scarecrow Show has existed as a band for about a year. They played at Geneseo’s Battle of the Bands in spring 2015 under a different name—RC3. The band soon after democratically decided to change their name, ultimately voting on calling themselves The Scarecrow Show to better reflect the motif they wished to portray through their music and style.
Appreciative of its opportunity to participate again in this year’s Battle of the Bands on Feb. 4, The Scarecrow Show hopes to continue gaining local exposure.
“We got a great reaction from the crowd at Battle of the Bands this year. Everyone swarmed the stage and was singing along or dancing to the songs they knew,” Juchniewicz said. “We didn’t win, but that’s alright. We exposed our work and got ourselves out here. People know us now and seem to like us, so it’s a foot in the door.”
While the band hasn’t played any full shows in Geneseo yet—its primary sites are in the Buffalo area—the band hopes to start soon and gain more recognition locally.
During shows, The Scarecrow Show sometimes plays its original music, while other times they exhibit their vast dexterity of covers. The album and EP include a profusion of the members’ own work.
“We’re mostly an original band,” Juchniewicz said. “We write a lot of our own stuff, but in an area like this, where there isn’t a very strong music market, it’s often necessary to play shows where we’re covering songs people are familiar with.”
He added that the band first recorded 12 songs for their album and then decided to add more. “I think it’s up to 19, including the EP,” he said. “Now, we’re just mastering them in the studio.”
Passionate about their music, The Scarecrow Show members are adamant about their organic process of creativity, doing only what comes effortlessly to them rather than molding their songs around the limits of society’s expectations of rock. Sometimes, they write songs separately from one another before bringing them to the band, while other times they join together and just play, building sounds off one another that gel and eventually become distinctive songs.
“We’re not doing it to make money—we love our music and we want other people to love it as well. We do what feels natural to us,” Juchniewicz said. “We don’t try to cater ourselves too much to what people would like to hear because we hope there are enough people who like what we’re doing enough to hop on board and come along for the ride.”
The band’s plan for the foreseeable future is to try to play about three shows each month, especially after its album is released. Between recording, getting shows, networking and pursuing exposure, The Scarecrow Show currently has a lot in the works—and its members wouldn’t want things any other way.
“We love what we’re doing. We love the music we make, the people we’re working with and all of our fans,” Ben Juchniewicz said. “We’re excited to see where this whole thing takes us.”