I found myself in a relatively dirty bathroom in Ripon, California, looking through the view finder of my SLR at a group of characters crammed into a bathroom stall. Ben, the drummer, has his thumbs up and his pants down, as bassist Macenzie holds himself precariously above him, wedged between the two stalls.

On the other side of wall, front man Scott is holding himself between the stalls too, as Dan, the guitarist, wedges above a toilet behind him, looking the way he normally looks when he finds himself in strange situations with his best friends and band members: slightly uncomfortable and pretty confused.

“I got an idea,” says Scott, after hopping down and out of the bathroom stall.

Off we went, me, and the winners of Hayward’s Battle of the Bands, the French Cassettes.

I drove to their middle-of-no-where town for a photo shoot, telling them before hand to, “try to think of a place to meet that you feel would truly represent your band”.

We met at a Starbucks.

We sat down and casually talked. Their excitement about the shoot was definately there, but ideas for where to go and what to do were hard to come by. With day light rapidly fading away (my fault by the way, I got horrendously lost for an hour), I was getting kind of nervous. It was then that Scott had the idea to go to their high school where they play.

We arrived at Ripon high, a tiny but well groomed little high school and started walking around. I placed them against a wall and shot them there as they joked and laughed with one another. We posed pictures on the stage where they play. But something didn’t feel right. The photos felt generic, and I didn’t feel like I was capturing what truly makes them such an amazing band:

The fact that they’re best friends.

Looking at the fading daylight, I was beginning to get nervous.

“Any ideas guys?” I’d whimper with little or no response from the high school seniors. I thought about how stupid it was that I had gotten lost on the interstate for an hour (never use Mapquest, ever. Google maps for life!), how stupid it was that I left my freakin’ flash at my girlfriends house, how I had just wasted time, gas and energy on a shoot that simply didn’t look like it was going to work.

It was then I noticed one of the only bathrooms in the school that didn’t have a lock on it. I looked at them, looked back at the unlocked door, and the next thing I knew, all of us were laughing hysterically from the inside of a dirty, smelly bathroom as my shutter clicked away.

“Any ideas?” I asked again. The answer, to sum up the plethora of shouts and playful arguments between the band members as they got out of the bathroom stall, was yes.

The remainder of the shoot was rushed, as the day light began to fade, but the rush made for a festive experience that took us into alleys, delapedated laundry mats, and in front of charming, small town shops and bars.

The Cassettes’ energy and enthusiasm on stage is just as powerful while they’re hangin’ in person. Often one of the member starts a sentence, only to have another one finish it. Throughout the shoot in their small town, (that takes about 10 minutes to drive completely through) students, adults, and a lot of girls stopped by to say hello to their famed local band.

Hangin’ with them out in Ripon turned out to be an awesome experience. They’re ordinary, fun dudes with extraordinary talent. They’ve got the skill, presence, and most importantly, ambition, to go a long way in this tricky business, and if their accomplishments thus far are any indication, they will.

To check out photos from the shoot, head on over to the photos and video section of the home page, and click ‘portraits’. And come see them play at our launch party, May 19th at the Red House in Walnut Creek!

<>To read my story from the Hayward Battle of the Bands, click here.