The Departures Making a Name for Themselves

If you went to the Fireman’s Fair or the Four Town Fair these past couple weekends, you may have seen The Departures – a local band made up of five Ellington High School juniors.

The band made the round of fairs, has played at , the Ellington Farmers’ Market, and will be headlining a concert next Friday, Sept. 30 at . The concert is to benefit the Opening Knight Players drama club and its .

Band members Jon Samson and Eric Lucas started playing together in eighth grade and then freshman year, added Justin Nicoletti as their bassist. Over the last few months, they’ve added Justin Graziani and Ben Tempelman – who had been playing together for a long time – to the band.

According to the band, the additions have been a good move.

“It’s becoming a lot more mature – sounding a lot more full,” Tempelman said. “There’s a lot more we can do now.”

The guys say that they don’t really have a style and would consider themselves Indie or alternative and play whatever they like.

Lucas – as well as all of the band members – likes the Arctic Monkeys. Samson also likes Green Day, Graziani likes The Strokes, Nicoletti likes Alkaline Trio, and Tempelman has gotten into The National lately.

In addition to playing songs by their favorite bands, the band also writes several of its own songs.

For most of the songs, Samson writes the lyrics and chord progressions and then the band fills in the music. Lucas has also written two songs – only one of which has been released – but everyone in the band is welcome to try to write something.

Samson said that the band went through a few different names until they wrote the song The Departures and after that, they started thinking about using that as the band name. At the time, they were a trio, and everybody liked the name. He said that they also asked Nicoletti and he liked it as well.

According to the guys, they practice at least once a week, but in preparing for the fairs and the concert, it has been more frequent. Over the summer, they practiced all the time. When they go to Samson’s house to practice, they practice for approximately five hours.

“It doesn’t seem like that long though,” Samson said.

The guys have a good time together and are enjoying what they are doing with the band.

“We all want to go as far as possible,”  Samson said.

To find out more about The Departures, check out the Facebook page.