A Bunch Of Smooth Criminals Rocking the Brickhouse

Tri-parish citizens should probably keep an eye on their valuables and lock their doors when away from home this month.

A bunch of Smooth Criminals are about to come to Louisiana.

The hit rock band Alien Ant Farm is taking its energetic jams to Houma this month and will perform at the Brickhouse Main Street Tavern on Sept. 23.

Tickets for the show cost $20 in advance or $25 at the door.

The band’s members say those who pack the house will be in for a treat.

“Music does good things to people, it’s one of those art forms everyone enjoys,” Alien Ant Farm vocalist Dryden Mitchell said. “It’s magical when we play our stuff for fans and they light up.”

Alien Ant farm didn’t start off with a following.

But they did start as a so-called “All-Star Band.”

The group got its modest beginnings in 1996 in Riverside, Calif.

The band’s members were an all-star cast of the best garage band members in the area, including Mitchell, guitarist Terry Corso, bassist Tye Zamora and drummer Mike Cosgrove.

“Individually, we were trying to figure out who were the best players in the area,” Mitchell recollects. “We kind of identified each other and started cheating on the bands we were playing with at the time, getting together after practices.”

The culmination of the group’s practice came in 1996 on Mitchell’s birthday when the group took the stage for a show.

“[We] have been together ever since,” the singer explains.

From the stage, the band has taken to the studio and released their Love Studio EP in 1998, before releasing their debut album “Greatest Hits” in 1999.

That album won the Best Independent Album in the Los Angeles Music Awards that year and earned the group the respect of fellow California band Papa Roach.

“Coming up with [Papa Roach] was great,” Cosgrove said. “They had a fan base in Northern California, and we had a fan base in Southern California, so we began swapping shows; we’d hook them up with gigs down here and they’d hook us up with gigs up there. There’s a lot of mutual respect between us, and we’ve become good friends. We see the fire in them and they see the fire in us.”

“We’d always said, ‘Whoever takes off first will help the other group up,’ and that’s the way it happened,” Corso added. “They’ve been very vocal about us, which is priceless, and we can’t thank them enough.”

Through the tag-team relationship with Papa Roach, the group got signed in 2000, inking with DreamWorks SKG. Under that label, they released their first studio album, “Anthology”.

Success was quick to follow as Alien Ant Farm has had multiple top-selling singles, including “Movies,” “Bug Bytes,” “These Days,” and “Glow.”

The band’s most popular contribution is “Smooth Criminal,” a 2001 cover for the Michael Jackson classic.

That song became a No. 1 single in both the United States and Australia and was No. 3 in the United Kingdom.

“We want to pay homage to Michael Jackson, but on our level. Obviously we’re not that glitzy,” Corso said on an MTV interview at the time of the song’s release. “So we just want to tastefully take the stuff that’s cool in his videos and apply it in our own dirty little backyard way.”

Success eventually pushed the band its separate ways as several of the group’s members sprouted into other groups throughout the mid-to-late part of the past decade.

But on Feb. 9, 2010, Alien Ant Farm announced to the world that the original group was reunited again for the first time since 2003.

From that reunion, the band also inked a contract with Field House Management, a firm that also represents famous rock bands like Egypt Central and 12 Stones.

The group’s renewed energy is the inspiration for the group’s current tour, which will swoop through Houma.

It’s also why the group believes the show is a must-see for anyone interested in world-class rock music.

“We’re blue-collar musicians who’ve worked hard to get where we’re at,” Zamora said. “We’re not trying to be something we’re not. This is real music coming from real people and it will always be that way for us.”

“You can’t pull anything over on the fans,” Cosgrove adds.

So spend a night at the Brickhouse this month and catch up with a few famous musicians.

Just keep the valuables in a secure place, because there are some Smooth Criminals on the loose.