Keeping Mint fresh

Mint has a problem of identity. It is not that they do not know who they are; they most certainly do. Mint’s identity issue lies more in keeping themselves within the public consciousness.

Mint plays Wooly’s on Saturday, Jan. 31.

“There’s two modes for bands to be in,” explained drummer Christian Peters. “There’s creating mode, and there’s playing live mode, and we haven’t really been in that playing mode for a while.”

All well and good. Nobody plays all the time. But as any successful act will tell you, self-promotion is one job that never has a time clock to punch out on. If you are out of people’s sight, you are very often out of their minds.

“We’re the worst at self promotion,” admitted frontman Bradford Johnson. “So we’re trying to get better at that. We’ll have a ton of stuff in the mix, but not say anything about it. And the way Des Moines works is that if you’re not constantly doing stuff, people tend to tune out. We’ll be working on a ton of stuff for three months, but not say anything about it, and we’ll have people come up to us and go, ‘Dude, are you guys even a band anymore?’ And it’s like, ‘Yeah! We have some awesome stuff going on.’ ”

For now, anyway, the band is hitting 2015 at a sprinter’s pace. There are whispered rumors of new music and a music video working their way down the pipeline, but in the meantime, there is the band’s annual birthday show this week.

All three members of Mint have birthdays that fall within 24 hours of one another. To commemorate this fact, they’ve made the combined celebration an annual affair, complete with disc jockeys and a couple of other bands contributing to the party. This year’s affair includes Field Division, with DJs Johnny Rage and RogerThat spinning between sets.

“Having a DJ for the party is nice because it takes some of the pressure off as the headliner,” Johnson said. “You can play your set then relax, have a drink and socialize with everyone.”

It’s a nice, fun way to kick off each new year. Time will tell whether 2015 is the year Mint capitalizes on that momentum.

“This year, our main focus is on constantly keeping new things coming out,” Johnson agreed. “We’re trying to kick off this year as a really media-heavy one and try to figure out what kind of band we want to be.” CV