From Dreams to Dive Bars: The Origins of Mild Heroes Band

Youtube Short #MemoirsofaDiveBarRockStar

Float back with me a full year ago to when Mild Heroes was just the perspiration on my forehead; a fever dream. It all kicked off on Bandmix, that hit-or-miss app for musician socials to connect. This isn’t some ad for the program, but it actually worked! In this age of interconnected madness, you’ve gotta harness the bytes or get left behind in the furrow of silicon dust, coughing up the expectorant of “hawk tuah” mediocrity, as it were. 

Zane Erhardt(Lead Vocals/guitar) & Sean Yousefi(Bass) share pizza and laugh during the early days of the band Mild Heroes

I’ve been a musician my whole life; drums in the band room of the middle school while everyone else was learning algebra; guitar in the subway when I should have been studying for midterms at San Francisco State. But, with age comes focus and this app helped me condense that sweat into the Mild Heroes sound you hear today! It was a year of chaos, growth, and musical liberation like no other in my life. But, in the end, you’ve got to have the right personalities and players for a pop-rock band! And if you’ve ever tried to find bandmates online, you know it’s a bit of a rollercoaster—some gems and some, well, not so much.

Tryouts are necessary for a serious band, especially with the random bunch of players we found using a social app. As we scrolled through profiles, we encountered a colorful cast of characters: there were burnouts, fakes, and flat-out psychopaths. Tryout after tryout, we slowly pieced the personnel together(at least 12 drummers!). And when I say diverse, I mean a wide cross-section of the musical landscape: from the guitar pick designer for Metallica to the guitar player who decided it would be a good idea to livestream his audition for his girlfriend...We saw them all. It was a fucking grind.

Hundreds, literally hundreds of profiles got the old copy/paste treatment with my offer to join what I imagined(and dreamed and wished, and prayed) would be a successful rock band. But, slowly, the pieces fell in place...

Dave-o was the first to sign on, solid as an oak on keyboard with recording expertise and a rare ear. Together Dave and I found the core of what would become the band Mild Heroes: Jaybo as our spiritual leader, ayahuasca shaman, and rhythm guitar player, Sean as the solid foundation of “BEHS”(bass) that defines the lower end of our sound, Jason, the tattooed and stone-groovin’ lead guitar player with that sweet tone, and Marco as the youthful heartbeat that kept us all in line from behind the drumset. But it wasn’t all as easy as 1-2-3-4!

Zane of Mild Heroes band in his "Valley of the Moon" studio(garage)

Suddenly, we weren’t just some musicians banging out chords in a garage—we were Mild Heroes, standing at the threshold of the Bay, ready to carve our names into the night sky, make a scene, make a sound. Originals, that’s the anthem around here, so I sat there in my garage with the ghosts of old riffs and new ideas, scribbling lyrics, hammering out hooks, all the while that raw spark blossomed letting me know, “You’ve got something REAL.” And I guess, since real things are the rarest in life, I had to take a risk on this dream...

What began as a few auditions turned into a solid band focused on crafting songs that resonate. We’re still in the early stages, but with our lineup set and new material on the horizon, we’re eager to perform.

So, keep an eye out for Mild Heroes as we work to establish ourselves in the Bay Area music scene. We’re excited to share our journey and the music that’s uniquely ours!