Frognot's happy it hopped onto the Internet
by Malcolm Mayhew
Ft. Worth Star-Telegram, Star Time
Bands reluctant to take the plunge into promoting themselves on the Internet should consider the case of Frognot, a self-described "alternative groove" band from Dallas. To strengthen publicity for its debut disc, Welcome to Frognot, the band set up a rather impressive -- and amusing -- Web site, at www.frognot.com. Looking for new American bands, a radio- station DJ from Australia ran across the site late last year, and next thing Frognot drummer April Samuels knows, they're in regular rotation in a foreign country.
"It' pretty amazing how the Internet gets you a lot of attention," she says, adding that a college radio station in Tennessee picked up on the band via the Internet, too. "These people would have never heard of us if it wasn't for the Internet. I've gotten e-mails from people in Kansas and New York. It's easy to do, and it's so beneficial to the band."
At this point, though, airplay is nothing new for the quartet, which is rounded out by vocalist Dennis Leonard, guitarist Kenneth Allen and April's bass-playing brother, Todd Samuels. Welcome to Frognot has made the local-radio rounds, getting played on The Eagle, The Zone, Q102 and Mix 102.9. The latter station has been the most receptive: During May, the band performed the go-to- commercial/we're-back-from- commercial background music.
"We did it once and they asked us back four times," April says.
Frognot formed a little over a year ago amid a right-place/right- time turn of luck. Todd had just returned from a stint in Denver, where he played in a handful of industrial bands. Leonard's Dallas-based group, Pulp Society, had just split up -- and April just so happened to manage them.
Allen came into the picture through April Samuels, who played with him in an early-'90s band called 100 Proof (some pretty hilarious photos of these guys can be found on Frognot's Web site).
The group took its name -- and ghostly cover art for its CD -- from the small town of the same name near McKinney. "We were looking through a photo album that belonged to a friend of ours when we ran across that photo, and we were like, `What is Frognot?' " April says. "It was an eerie photo, and the name just stuck."
Each member of Frognot had played in same-ol'-thing bands, so the urge to do something different was overwhelming. In stepped "alternative groove."
"Alternative has become such a broad category these days," April says. "We just want to do something that hasn't been done to death."