Today we’d like to introduce you to Austin Rominger.
Austin, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
When we were kids our grandma had given me [Austin] a few piano lessons, to which I would immediately turn around and teach to Holden. We come from a musical family and those lessons seemed to unlock something in us. We continued learning piano for a few years, but it was predominantly classical pieces. Our piano teacher Mrs. Lu started to recognize our collective fatigue with those and encouraged us to find other instruments.
I [Austin] give most of the credit to a day at the neighborhood pool. My friend and I were walking back home, and on the sidewalk there was a CD that said “CD of Jimi Hendrix”. It’s strange because it wasn’t there on the way to the pool and no one had walked in after us since we’d been there. Our parents already had us listening to a lot of the classics like The Beatles, Talking Heads, The Beach Boys, Paul Simon, you name it…but Hendrix had never come up. A whole new world of distortion, riffs, and how the guitar was played was opened up right then.
I [Austin] then naturally gravitated towards the guitars our dad had hanging on the walls, and our mom put Holden into drum lessons because he was banging on everything—”So at least it would sound like music!”
In grade school, our foray into the band setting was actually in two completely different groups, each with our own friends. Both of those ended up imploding or were kicked out of…and left us both to just practicing and getting better on our own.
In high school, we formed our next evolution as “Castaways” because that’s what we felt like from our first bands. We started winning some of the Battle of the Bands in and outside of school, and that itch grew and had us getting into the Houston scene back when Fitzgerald’s was still around. In 2014, we wrote our first album as Castaway Radio—keeping our mark of pride as castaways and because each song we write sounds vastly different from the last, like listening to the radio. In a quick meet and greet, we received the word of approval from Ray Benson from Asleep at the Wheel said it was as a “cool name and logo”!
We continued playing over the years, making new friends, bringing on new members, and writing and growing our catalogue. That all led up to the Good Stuff EP, which we released during COVID. Since then, we’ve been improving our craft and preparing our next big release.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
We’ve definitely been down both roads. For us, the biggest struggle would have to be member turnaround. It’s not ideal to have as much as we have, but without all of it, we honestly wouldn’t have written half of what we have. It’s just a part of it. But with Holden and myself at the center, that will always be what matters to us.
It can look and sound fun and glamorous, but it’s extremely hard being in a band and keeping it going (even if it’s with your brother). The state of music is tough, so we do have day jobs (but yes, we do wish we only had to play music to make money). I think the hardest part around it is that as we get older and start families, priorities have to shift a little, but we make sure that the music remains a constant and we’re grateful that our families are supportive of it.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
Simply put, we’re a rock band. We write songs for people to have a good time with us and hopefully relate to. Music should still make listeners feel things or suddenly understand an emotion they’ve been experiencing that they hadn’t been able to put into words up until that point; That moment where you say “Oh, that’s what they meant! I’m feeling that right now.”
Our biggest separator would probably have to be that we’re brothers. There’s plenty of sibling bands out there that we could name off, but they’re still rare nonetheless! It’s also our proud point!
— Some Proud Moments in Time —
If there was a proud moment in time, there was a show being put together by a promoter and two of our four members left us with two weeks notice of the show. At the time, we’d become extremely close with the band Das Wompus, so when asked, they quickly stepped up and learned all our material. We then went on to play to a nearly sold out crowd, and we still consider it to be one of our best shows to date. In fact, you can find that entire show on our YouTube page.
We were also this close (my fingers are practically touching) to opening for Franz Ferdinand. We saw they didn’t have an opener for their last US tour, so we quickly put together our own Weird Al version of their song Take Me Out called “Check Us Out”. It was a whole DIY music video production and everything. I reached out to the lead singer via X and he actually watched the whole thing! He couldn’t get us on as openers despite us making him laugh, but he did add us to the guest list for their Houston show. It felt pretty cool saying “We’re on the list” at a show like that.
Alright, so to wrap up, is there anything else you’d like to share with us?
We are getting closer to finishing our next full length album and we’re excited to share it! It’s still very much has the same essence as our previous releases, but with what we think is a more mature collection of writing and evolved sound that’s grown with us.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://castawayradioband.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/castawayradio
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/castawayradio
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@castawayradio
- Other: https://castawayradio.bandcamp.com
