10/10/2024
By Katharine Webster

Just one year after four UML musicians got together to perform a senior recital, they won the most storied music contest in Boston, one of the world’s great rock and roll cities.

The alt-rock band The Ghouls burst onto the Greater Boston music scene last May by winning the Rock & Roll Rumble, believed to be the longest-running “battle of the bands” in the U.S.

The competition, also dubbed “The World Series of Boston Rock,” features 24 bands selected from about 100 by the host of the online music show “Boston Emissions,” DJ Anngelle Wood. Over four weekends in April and May, the bands compete by playing half-hour sets at a live venue – this year at the Middle East and Sonia nightclubs in Cambridge, Massachusetts. 

The Ghouls won against three other bands to move on to the semifinals and then to the finals – where they won the crown, bragging rights and more than $23,000 worth of prizes, including recording time and mixing and mastering services from five different studios.

“We just went out and did our thing,” says guitarist Peter Trainor, a sound recording technology (SRT) major from Westford, Massachusetts, who just completed his final graduation requirement, an internship. “It was very surreal that we went all the way.”

Image by K. Webster

The Ghouls (three are recent alumni; one is a senior) haven’t been doing their thing for long. They got together when George Danahy ’24, who majored in composition for new media, began looking for other students to play in his senior recital in April 2023. 

“I had a backlog of songs, and I needed people to play those songs who were into the music and reliable,” says Danahy, who is lead vocalist, guitarist and songwriter for the Ghouls.

Danahy, who grew up in Natick, was already friends with sound recording technology major Jacob Babcock ’24, a Lowell native who became the Ghouls’ bass player. Trainor and Ghouls drummer Bryce Maher, a senior music studies major from Medford, dropped in when Danahy held open rehearsals.

“I showed up to one of his rehearsals and I thought, ‘These songs rock!’” Trainor says.

“The rehearsals were like a party,” Maher agrees. “When George asked me to play drums, I did. It was like a sitcom – everybody got up and cheered. I was so gassed!”  

The Ghouls gelled quickly after that, and they’ve stayed together while juggling jobs, school and other bands. Maher, who plans to continue for his master’s degree in music education, is in three other bands right now – “It happens to any drummer who can hold a beat” – while Trainor also plays with an emo band and Danahy is helping to launch a country cover band.

But the Ghouls is their main gig. The band, whose music is inspired by groups such as the Cure and the Strokes, makes regular appearances at the Taffeta and the Worthen in Lowell, DIY clubs and benefits. Crowds are drawn to their musical virtuosity and high-energy performances, which include Danahy hurling himself onto the floor while continuing to sing and play guitar.

With the $23,000 worth of studio time and mixing and mastering services that they won through the Rumble, they’re cutting an album, one song at a time. They also won free video and photo shoots, publicity and legal services, another concert booking in Boston and more.

They have just released their second song, “Pocket of Gold,” on Bandcamp, Apple Music and Spotify. On Spotify alone, it has already been downloaded more than 1,700 times in three weeks, while their first song, “Hellbound,” has been downloaded nearly 5,300 times.

Image by Coleman Rogers

As a bonus, they’re learning a lot from the professional recording engineers with whom they’re working, Trainor says, including Ethan Dussault at New Alliance Audio, who helped them on “Pocket of Gold.”

“We’re getting a bunch of different perspectives” along with access to top equipment, Trainor says. “All of them donate studio time because they believe in the Rumble.”

Trainor also got a job out of the Rumble, because one of the prizes was a “sound tasting” of interesting pedals for electric guitar. He loved one called the Pet Yeti, looked up the company’s website and saw that the one-man shop was offering a paid internship.

He stayed up all night working on his application – and got the internship, in part thanks to his SRT chops.

“The first thing my boss asked when he interviewed me was, ‘You recorded and mixed your band’s single (‘Hellbound’): How did you master that?’” says Trainor, who has stayed on as a full-time employee. “Between the Ghouls and my job, this has been my year.”

Danahy teaches guitar and bass, mostly at the Rock Institute in Marlborough, Massachusetts. He also runs summer rock band camps for kids. Babcock, who played viola in the UMass Lowell String Project as a child and also as a member of the University Orchestra, is teaching violin at University Music in Lowell.

All music majors, whatever their area of study, must take lessons and perform on at least one instrument. Babcock stayed with viola, while the other three studied guitar. But all of them have learned multiple instruments and played different music styles through UML’s array of contemporary, world music and classical ensembles.

Danahy and Babcock especially loved Prof. Alan Williams’ Classic Albums Ensemble class, taking it multiple times; each semester, the ensemble performs and records an entire influential rock album. Both sang and played guitar; Babcock also played violin, electric violin and bass.

“We did Radiohead’s ‘In Rainbows’ junior year and the Talking Heads’ ‘Remain in Light’ and ‘Speaking in Tongues’ senior year,” says Babcock. “That was a really, really amazing experience, because that was also the first time I got to play stuff that wasn’t just classical viola.”

Trainor spent three semesters in the Cambodian Ensemble (also led by Williams), playing a different instrument each time, and also took Percussion for Non-Percussion Majors. Maher performed in the Contemporary Electronic Ensemble last year, led by Prof. Ramon Castillo, and this year, he’s in Castillo’s “musical Minecraft” Video Game Ensemble. 

Danahy, who also took the Minecraft class, says it was the contemporary music ensembles that led him to choose UMass Lowell over other public universities with music programs that are “in the past.”

“This seemed to be way more what I was doing: ensembles playing with distortion, and all the guitars sounded like rock ’n’ roll,” he says.

Rock on.