Classic Crime gives Denver a shot

Seat­tle-based band, The Clas­sic Crime, will play Den­ver’s Mar­quis The­ater on April Fool’s Day. The band describes its music as rock, pop and folk.

Video may have killed the radio star, but the Inter­net has killed the rock star.

At least that’s what Matt Mac­Don­ald thinks. Mac­Don­ald, the lead singer of The Clas­sic Crime, which plays Denver’s Mar­quis The­ater on Thurs­day, April 1, swears that the Inter­net has been a bless­ing for his Seat­tle-based band.

“The rock star is dead because you have to hum­ble your­self and min­gle with fans,” Mac­Don­ald said. “As artists we use the Inter­net to inter­act with peo­ple, through Face­book, Twit­ter,” Mac­Don­ald said. “We use it as a tool to keep con­nect­ed with our fans. The music indus­try is so high­ly over-sat­u­rat­ed right now and every­one has ADD, so you have to keep their atten­tion.

“We are one of those bands that hangs out and min­gles. We are able to main­tain our fan base and grow our fan base because of the Inter­net.”

One way the band is stay­ing con­nect­ed is by stag­ing a video con­test for their new song, “Solar Pow­ered Life.” The con­test offers the win­ner a $1,000 Apple store gift card.

But more impor­tant, Mac­Don­ald and the band are keep­ing fans aware of the needs of the vic­tims of the dev­as­tat­ing Jan­u­ary earth­quake in Haiti by donat­ing mon­ey from the pre­sale of their lat­est CD, “Vagabonds,” to a non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tion.

The band’s mis­sion in Haiti began in a round­about way with a trip to India. Mac­Don­ald and drum­mer Paul “Skip” Erick­son vis­it­ed India to learn how they could help third-world coun­tries.

“We want­ed to be a band that impact­ed lives; we want­ed to do more than music,” Mac­Don­ald said. “Instead of serv­ing our­selves, we want­ed to serve a greater good. And then all these things fell into place for a trip to Haiti last Novem­ber.

“Some of the band mem­bers weren’t real­ly inter­est­ed in going to a fourth-world coun­try, but we all fell in love with it after the trip.”

While in Haiti the band mem­bers met Tom Osbeck, the exec­u­tive direc­tor of Jesus in Haiti Min­istries.

“Tom is an Amer­i­can mis­sion direc­tor who runs a feed­ing cen­ter, an orphan­age, a school, church and he’s adopt­ed 20 chil­dren him­self,” Mac­Don­ald said.
“He teach­es peo­ple to be lead­ers in their com­mu­ni­ties, to give back to the peo­ple. And these are peo­ple who want to stay in Haiti.”

Mac­Don­ald and the band are using the min­istry as their way of giv­ing back.

“I’m not a preach­er,” he explained. “I’m an artist, first and fore­most. I real­ly believe that I was put here on this earth to cre­ate and through my art influ­ence oth­ers, and this is our way, because I nev­er ser­mo­nize a song.”

Mac­Don­ald and his mates picked the band’s name, The Clas­sic Crime, to stay away from genre-spe­cif­ic monikers.

“We want­ed a name that would make peo­ple say, ‘I won­der what they sound like?’” Mac­Don­ald explained. “There’s this neg­a­tive con­no­ta­tion that goes with Chris­t­ian rock, and we want­ed peo­ple to give our music a shot.”

And what kind of band is The Class Crime? “Schizo,” Mac­Don­ald said. “Rock, pop, folk, and we try to do every­thing the best we can.”

So, if you’re up for help­ing out a cause while expe­ri­enc­ing an eclec­tic night of music, give The Crime a shot.