When you think about indie music, the first thing that comes to mind is 20-somethings coming together in local scenes, living in vans, touring the country and living off gas station burritos while hanging out in rock clubs. There’s an idea of romance to it and it’s something that not everybody gets to do. There’s more to indie music these days. There’s the full-time mechanic that makes music in his home office when he gets a day off. Then there are the guys like New Jersey’s Brock & Sgro – older guys who never really had their best chance to make music in their 20’s, so they moved forward with life and played music as a hobby. That’s where Alan Brock and Chip Sgro were when they met a few years ago. They were doing other things, but they were still playing music because it was fun to do. Them just meeting was a chance event that turned into something great. Years later, they released an album called No Reason to Complain and they’ve been able to play shows around New Jersey and as far as Cleveland just by making music because it was something fun for them to do. “I was living in New York, in the city for twenty years,” said Alan Brock to Alternative Addiction recently with his music partner Chip Sgro. “My family and I moved to this area about five years ago. Chip lived across the street from me and we got to talking about his cover band to check out, so I went over there, and we started playing. We started out as just a fun cover band, but the guys who were playing with us had to take a break, so we started working on our own stuff. When I was living in New York I was writing songs and trying to make it that way. We moved out of the city and I thought that day was done for me. I still wrote a lot, but I didn’t play in any bands or anything like that. I had a couple of songs that I had wrote and I had a studio in my house, so Chip and I just started recording and it took off from there. I thought I was out of it, but it was really great to be back making music.” This was just supposed to be a fun cover band for both Brock & Sgro that turned into them writing and recording their own music. That happened organically because the two worked so well together. “It was kind of natural,” explained Brock on how they worked together early on. “I took more of the lead because I’ve been doing this for so long, but we always bounced ideas off each other and worked that way.” “It still works that way,” added Sgro. “I was playing around with an acoustic guitar over the weekend and I sent something to Alan to see if we could turn it into something. When we get ideas, we send them around to each other and see what we can do with them.” Brock & Sgro have some definite chemistry and their new album, No Reason to Complain showcases that. They’re not the next big thing is rock music, but they’re finding some success across the country in different pockets creating music because it’s something they love to do. It shows that you don’t have to give up on your dreams, they just change or evolve over the years. As a testament to that, tonight Brock & Sgro will play a show well outside of New Jersey, their home market. “We’re going to Cleveland to play a show at The Music Box,” said Sgro. “They wanted to book us for a show. That’s on June 5th. oWOW Radio plays us a lot there. They asked us to come out and we wanted to do it. It’s is a great place to play if you’re an up and coming band, so we’re excited for that. For the rest of the summer we’re really trying to get out there and play some more and we’re going to try and start laying down some tracks for a new record too.”-aa