During the last 19 years, The Stateline Band has gone from a group that could only practice in an old barn to opening for Roger Kramer and Rick Trevino to recently producing a top-ten single and winning an award.
Patrick Quain, who is the drummer as well as the original founder of the group, knows just how far the Midland-based band has come.
“It’s great just how much the lord has blessed us,” Quain said. “From having to practice in a barn that was either freezing cold or burning hot to being in the same room as all the Texas country music guys and being nominated for anything was unbelievable.”
Now, the Stateline Band performs on average up to 80-90 gigs a year, traveling all over the southwest.
One of those gigs will be at 8 p.m. Aug. 20 at The Destination in Midland.
The Stateline Band merges honky-tonk with a “rock’n’roll edge” to create their self-proclaimed genre, Texas Dancehall Country.
The band is composed of lead singer Jody Dominguez, producer and fiddle player and vocalist Haydn Vitera, bassist Scott Zajicek, guitarist Steve Anderson and steel guitarist Stan Scantling.
Quain started the band in 2003 with a group of friends including David Houston and Stan Williamson.
“The three of us got together and hired a bass player and a lead guitar player and we started the band in 2003,” Quain said. “Over those years, we played a few small gigs.”
Their first gig was at bar called Your Place in Midland, mostly just performing to have fun and singing covers.
“We would play six or seven gigs a year and we did it for fun and we had delusions of grandeur,” Quain said. “That’s where we started, in Midland and in David Houston’s warehouse. We could practice three or four times a week and try to get a couple of songs together, enough to cover a two-hour show.”
Over the years, the group would see members come and go and it was one member who helped change the band’s style just a little bit.
“In 2011, we brought on Sergio Ojeda and we changed from a honky-tonk, two-step style of music to doing a Tex-Mex slayer on every song that we did,” Quain said. “We did that from 2011 until 2016.”
Dominguez would join the band in 2016.
“I had just moved back to Midland in 2016 for work,” Dominguez said. “I had just gotten out there and got a call from Patrick. I didn’t know who he was and I had never heard of the Stateline Band. At that time, I hadn’t played music in quite a while but he brought me in for an interview and a couple of songs and he said I was in. we started getting really serious about it and getting really good. We’ve been going at it ever since. We went from playing in a barn in Midland to cutting songs with George Strait’s players. It’s been a lot of fun.”
Quain remembers the first gig the band performed after bringing Dominguez in.
“We were opening for Roger Creager and that was in two months,” Quain said. “Jody had just walked on with us. It was all brand new players. We didn’t know what we were going to do. We only had an hour’s worth of music so we put as much music together as we could. We got them as close to the record as we possibly could.
At that time, the band still didn’t have any original music.
“It was all just covers,” Dominguez said. “We got nervous and we opened for Roger. It was ok. No major train wrecks on stage. We got through it.”
Quain said Ojeda would soon leave the band due to work and family matters.
“We were starting to get pretty heavy and it was too much time away from family,” Quain said. “We went after one of our big name players now.”
That member would be Vitera who had been on tour with Trevino.
The group met up with Vitera while opening for Trevino in San Angelo in 2017.
Vitera would eventually join and it wasn’t long before Quain said the band started getting serious.
“We started working and learning how to read music charts and learning Nashville signatures,” Quain said.
In 2020, the band made their first top ten single “Full-Time Fool’ peak at number four.
A year later, they won “New Group/Duo of the Year” at the T3R Texas Regional Radio Report Awards.
The band continues to consistently perform across the state while opening for country music household names including Mark Chesnutt, Josh Turner, Pat Green and Aaron Watson.
So far, they currently have three singles with their fourth “Dancehall Devil” currently climbing the Texas Charts.
Next week, the group will release its new single, written by Dominguez called “Lonely”.
“We’re excited about everything to come,” Quain said. “It’s really good. I think (Dominguez) wrote a top-5 song. I think this is the song that will go all the way.”
The song centers around a musician who’s on the road and the hardships of being away from family.
“He’s alone but not lonely,” Quain said. “He’s got a lot of people around him, playing at shows, but he’s still alone. It’s a cool song.”
Dominguez said the lyrics came to him while he was going through a marital split.
“At the time, I was going through a divorce and was getting over that,” Dominguez said. “Being on the road, I lived out in Midland at the time and after the divorce, I went from a house full of people and kids to zero. I just had this thought one night where we were playing music and the thought was I’m alone but not lonely came to me.”
Dominguez said he wrote the song in about 30 minutes and recorded it on his computer so he wouldn’t forget it.
“There’s a line in there called “lord, hear my prayer, they know their daddy can’t be there, so guide me across Texas tonight,’” Dominguez said. “So basically, all the stuff that I’m doing, I can’t wait to turn around and get the kids and spend time with them and get away from it all while appreciating the fact that I can still do this. It’s kind of thanking the crowd that comes out to see us, but also letting them know that I’m a dad too and that I need time to be a dad to my kids.”
The song is a change in style from what the group has usually done.
“It’s a little bit different,” Quain said. “It kind of strays from what we’ve always done. We’ve usually done hard core, 90s driven honky-tonk. This is certainly a different style. All the other ones were fun-loving, beer-joint style. This one has some meaning to it. We’re pretty excited about it.”
The group is also excited for next week’s show in Midland.
“(The Destination) they go above and beyond in helping promote us and following us,” Quain said. “They voted for us and the voting process isn’t easy. They go above and beyond in promoting the band. Even if it’s a competing place, they go on and on about us. They’re just a class act. They’re super involved in the music and that makes it fun to play there.”
As far as the future of the band, Dominguez says they’re going to continue to work hard.
“We’re going to keep going with it and we’re not going to change what we do or who we are,” Dominguez said. “It’s truly a band. It’s not about the lead singer or one person.”
Quain says the ultimate goal is to continue to play and to perform in sold out venues.
“From the time I was a kid and got my first drum set, my goal was to play in front of a sold out stadium. That’s what we want to do,” Quain said. “All the record stuff will come with that. We’re going to continue working hard and making music and staying true to country music. Not straying off. We’re not going the bro country rout. We’re going to stay a dance hall band and if that gets us into some sold out arena, then that’s where our goal is.”
For more information about the Stateline Band, visit https://tinyurl.com/y3xjfcvd.
IF YOU GO
>> What: The Stateline Band
>> When: 8 p.m. Aug. 20
>> Where: The Destination in Midland
>> For more information: tinyurl.com/yn2hvenm
