U Might Be Mine

Hazlet is the type of small suburban town every punk band sings about wanting to escape. There’s one high school with just under 1,000 students enrolled annually, and you can only drive through town for about ten minutes before hitting city limits. Most kids go stir-crazy living there for their whole lives, it’s so small and uneventful. Soon, however, Hazlet will be known as more than just a stuffy, boring town. Soon, it’ll be known as the birthplace of up-and-coming Alternative Rock band, U Might Be Mine.

Composed of Gabby Guida (lead singer), Jack Powers (drummer), Dan Abbatichio (Lead guitarist), and Kyle Sanders (bassist), the band formed during middle school and have been making music ever since. Now all in college, they’ve put out two EPs and multiple singles, and are working despite the pandemic to put out as much new material as possible. 

Earlier this year, they released an EP of two songs, titled The Lows. The first song, Prelude, features a chorus of staticky news clips and muddled dialogue behind distorted, minor piano chords. This apocalyptic track leads into the surfpunk-inspired The Lows, filled with classic pop-punk power chords and playful bass scales. It’s a mix of Green Day, Paramore, and The Dead Kennedys, making for a unique sound setting the young band apart from other groups trying to break into the industry. 

The band’s founding members, Powers and Guida, met in middle school by chance. Guida was gearing up to sing a rendition of Twenty-One Pilots’ Tear In My Heart for the school’s annual talent show, when her band teacher suggested she needed a bassist and a drummer for her performance. “He [the band teacher] came to me and another student who played bass and was just like, ‘you’re gonna play for this girl in the talent show, and we were like, alright.” Powers said. “Afterwards, my dad was like, ‘Who the hell was that singing? You need to get her in a band, you need to do it now.” 

So Powers did just that. He direct messaged Guida on Instagram and introduced himself as “the guy who played drums for you in the talent show”, and asked if she’d be interested in forming a band. Abbatichio joined a few months later in their freshman year of high school. They’ve swapped members quite a bit over the years, with Sanders joining the band just six months ago.

Guida, Powers, and Sanders all attend Montclair State University. Guida is a freshman majoring in Vocal Performance, Powers, a sophomore, in Music Education, and Sanders, a junior, in Philosophy. Abbatichio is a sophomore Nursing major at LaSalle University, though he took this Fall semester off to work as an EMT.

Funnily enough, UMightBeMine actually began as “Um”. Their name change was prompted by a shift in band direction--The group decided they wanted to pursue their music careers more seriously rather than just as an after-school activity, and felt the name change was necessary to highlight that. 

“We had a conversation that was like, ‘guys, let’s be real’, like, in all honesty is this something that we want to do... like, go as far as we can as a band? I think for a couple of years it’s been that unspoken and many times spoken thing that’s like if this is it, let’s commit and do it.” Abbatichio said. The conversation came up after the band played the Asbury Lanes in Asbury Park, NJ. “We really wanted to take things to the next level and make this our career,” Guida commented.

Abbatichio explained, a lot of the band’s earlier music was about trying to make “loud sounds” and “getting people hyped”. Daniel’s Song, and Caller I.D for example feature upbeat thrashy guitar scales and rock drumming, a distinct playfulness akin to basement shows and bardives. The Lows, on the other hand, demonstrates a control of musical moving parts, combined with Guida’s gut-wrenching vocals. U Might Be Mine is no longer a high school band, but a serious artist to watch.

The band also shared two unreleased songs with me prior to the interview, including one titled Neverland, an especially important song to the band. It was the first song they wrote together, Powers explained. “I remember being like, holy crap, that doesn’t sound like a group of kids hanging out, it was like, wow that sounds really cool.” 

As of right now, U Might Be Mine is an independent artist, and they aren’t exactly seeking out a label. “There’s a real thing to being an independent artist right now, never has it been so accessible to do that. We do all of the promotion ourselves, all of the distribution entirely on our own. It’s a lot of work, but it’s also really rewarding…If something came up where we had that opportunity, maybe, but as of right now we’re totally chilling in the land of independent music and it’s really cool.”

When asked what their ultimate goals for the band are, Guida mentioned performing on Audiotree, while Abbatichio and Powers said they want to take the band as far as they can career-wise. “I want to write music that really means something,” Powers said. “I want to put together things that are...a full body of something.”

In terms of releasing new music, the band has been hard at work despite COVID-19 and being scattered across the state. While a full album doesn’t make sense financially for them right now, they do have singles and EPs on the way. “We’re going to put out an EP that follows the same themes as [The Lows]...all the songs are tied together...We’re going back to the studio soon and going to be able to put out the whole thing.” The band noted influences from the Menzingers, Frank Turner, Modern Baseball, Green Day, and The Strokes.

As dull as a town it may seem, Hazlet was incredibly integral for U Might Be Mine’s growth. Powers and Abbatichio would film videos promoting the band every week, which would more often than not be featured on their high school’s morning show, and Powers and Guida both played in marching band all four years, giving them even more recognition among teachers and staff. Faculty and students would show up to local shows and buy the band’s shirts to wear around school. 

“He’s retired now, but the band director that put Gabby and I on the talent show together, Mr. Chach, he pushed me pretty hard, man, you know? I honestly don’t think we would have done anything if it wasn’t for that.” Powers said. Guida also commented on how Mr. Chach pushed her to be confident in her voice. “I owe everything to that guy.”

“I feel like everybody likes to sh*t on Hazlet,” Powers said. “I didn’t think it was that bad, but, no one knows anything about it, so it’s like a blank slate, you know?” Guida added, “I want to be to Hazlet what Bruce Springsteen is to Jersey. To have some random teenagers in a small town be like, oh, U Might Be Mine did it, so why can’t we?”

“If people could be like, oh, Hazlet, that’s where U Might Be Mine is from, that’d be really cool,” Abbatichio agreed.

UMightBeMine’s music is streaming on all major music platforms, including Spotify. Videos of their live performances can be found on their Youtube channel, and they can also be found @Umightbemine on Twitter and Instagram.