If you think these guys look familiar, then you’ve probably been to one of their shows before. Perennial Kent favorites, Red Wanting Blue will perform Saturday at Fat Jimmy’s.

Credit: Steve Schirra

Attention Dave Matthews Band and O.A.R. fans: Red Wanting Blue, a Dave Matthews Band and O.A.R. clone from Athens, has taken over the music scene and doesn’t plan on slowing down any time soon.

The success would be good for any band, but Red Wanting Blue’s journey has been a steady one. This year marks the band’s 10th anniversary.

Band members have played with Our Lady Peace and Wyclef Jean, but they like to keep their prices down when they’re playing at local bars and clubs.

“I want to make our shows available to someone and not some big expectations, like, ‘we’re some big band, you’ve got to catch us now before we turn big.’ We don’t mesh well with that philosophy,” lead singer Scott Terry said.

Red Wanting Blue is playing Saturday at Fat Jimmy’s. The cost is $5, thanks to Terry arguing with his booking agency and club owners for a low admission fee.

“I’d rather have 300 people come and hear us play for $5 than 100 people for $10,” Terry said. “Bands have good nights and bad nights, when we have bad nights I hate to know that I charged $15.”

On its current tour, the band is playing songs from its newest album, Pride: The Cold Lover. The theme of this album is pride and how the band sees it as a double-edged sword by both helping someone to stand up for himself while pushing people away, Terry said.

Pride: The Cold Lover also is a turning-point album for the band. They went into the studio to record it and ended up scrapping one-half of the songs and rewriting them.

The song that pinpoints this change is “Pride is a Lonely Blanket.”

The band loved the song so much they named the album after it, without making it a title track, but still encompassing what they wanted the album to be themed after.

“Most of the shows we close with (“Pride is a Lonely Blanket”) because we love it so much,” Terry said.

The way Terry writes lyrics is to compose distinctive images with exact feelings, instead of vague ones.

“I think the best writers are the writers that put visual experiences into words. There are bands that write songs that are vague such as, ‘I wish you wouldn’t go,'” Terry said. “I like to hear a song and be like, ‘I know that exact feeling’, rather than just talking about a feeling. It’s not what you say but how you say it.”

Contact ALL reporter Erika Kreider at [email protected].