Famous band set for Jan. 8 show at City Club

After two highly popular albums and a successful tour across the country, locally based band 12 Stones decided it was time to come home to the Gulf Coast.

The band scattered across their stomping grounds to Louisiana and Mississippi and took a quick breather from the grind of the music industry.

“We grew up a lot,” singer and Slidell native Paul McCoy said of the break on the band’s official web site.

But musicians can only rest for so long and 12 Stones got back in the swing of things and are ready to rock again.

And they’re taking their show to the Tri-parish area, too, playing a Jan. 8 show at the City Club of Houma.

Tickets for the show range from $15-25 and can be purchased at City Club’s online box office at www.cityclubofhouma.com.

Anyone looking for a Saturday night of fun that hasn’t seen 12 Stones in a while should probably call the ticket office now, according to McCoy, who said the band’s rest has taken the group to a whole new level and they’re ready to reach heights they haven’t yet seen.

“We really just couldn’t wait to get back to making music,” McCoy said with a smile.

12 Stones burst onto the scene in 2002 with their debut album “12 Stones,” which featured singles that were used by World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) and thus broadcast globally to audiences around the world.

Riding the momentum of their first album, 12 Stones hit the charts for the first time in 2004 when “Far Away,” on the band’s second album, “Potter’s Field,” reached No. 38 on the Billboard charts.

Being mostly from Louisiana and the surrounding Gulf Coast, the months following “Potter’s Field,” were bittersweet, however, as every member of the five-musician band felt the pain left by Hurricane Katrina.

The storm, combined with just the overload of being thrust into the mainstream music scene in a short span of time, caused the group to take its yearlong sabbatical from the road.

When the band reconvened, they released arguably their most successful album to date, “Anthem for the Underdog,” an album that saw three singles reach the charts n “Lie to Me,” “Adrenaline,” and “Anthem for the Underdog.”

The band touts that album wasn’t written as a tribute to those affected by the hurricane, but was more “about the recovery taking place around them,” and it spelled out 12 Stones’ philosophy for those working hard to get back on top.

“Anthem for the Underdog,” debuted at No. 53 on the Billboard 200 list and turned the self-proclaimed “underdogs” into “big dogs” in the music world.

The music the band will play at the Houma show will be a compilation of all of their work, as well as songs from the group’s newest collection, “The Only Easy Day Was Yesterday,” which was released in July.

That album featured the band’s hit song, “We Are One,” which served as the theme song for the WWE’s popular group The Nexus. It also ended up at No. 30 on the singles charts.

So don’t miss your chance this month to hear some of the more popular rock songs of the past decade from the source itself n a refueled, recharged band ready to push forward into the new decade.

“We’d been gone for a while,” McCoy said. “But we’ve never been in a better place.”