Local band releases record

The Beans, a band consisting of students and alumni from the University of St. Thomas, released its first album Dec. 29 at Fitzgerald's.

According to the press release, the band has been playing together since early 2011 and consists of drummer Brendan Hall, bassist Daniel Taylor, guitarist Christian Galatoire and guitarist and vocalist Sam Griffin. The founding members, Hall and Taylor, met as active members of the St. Thomas University Jazz Ensemble.

"It has been a long, exciting, exhausting and fun experience," said Taylor in a press release. "When I started to hear our artistic vision coming together and how good it sounded, everything else was blocked out. I just felt giddy and joyous."

The Beans gained popularity in the local music scene by performing on campus and in local music venues. The band was nominated for Best New Act in the Houston Press music awards in 2011. Hall and Taylor were also nominated for best drummer and best bassist, respectively, according to the release.

"One of the real benefits of waiting so long to record our first album is that we really gave ourselves time to develop as a band for our ideas to take a clearer and more focused shape, which I believe makes the product substantially better," Taylor said in the press release. "A couple of the other songs that are on the album we wrote literally a couple of weeks before we started recording and had only practiced a handful of times, which I think is very rock and roll of us."

Fitzgerald's is at 2703 White Oak Drive.

For more information, visit www.facebook.com/beansband.