The seed for Tampa Bay indie rock darlings DieAlps! was planted nearly a decade ago when Connie and Frank Calcaterra met. An Austrian native, Connie was visiting the States as an au pair, and when her year here was nearly up, she met Frank.
She went back to Austria, but the two kept in touch. He visited. She visited. After a few years of that, she moved back to the U.S. and the two married. Both had a background in music, and when they started playing together, a band coalesced. Connie sang. Both played guitar. They found bassist Doug Nelson on Craigslist, and in 2012, DieAlps! (“The Alps” in Connie’s native German) was born.
The band’s catchy, waltzy baroque-pop gained them friends and fans in Tampa Bay. It probably didn’t hurt that Frank and Connie are just super-nice humans, either. They all have day jobs (Frank is a sound engineer; Connie a vet tech at a cat hospital), but found time over the past year or so to put together their first full-length album, “Our City.”
Now the band, rounded out with drummer Jonathan Robbins and keyboard player Sarah Modene, are preparing to release “Our City” on Tampa’s New Granada Records, and will play the Gator Club on Wednesday.
Connie, Frank and Sarah stopped by the HT Studio on Monday and played a short set. The three ballads in this video show their soft side, but the band promised some more hard-driving tunes in the mix Wednesday night, when they join Orlando’s Pathos, Pathos and Sarasota’s Eduardo Correa for the monthly Moxie Productions original music showcase.
