Band Spotlight: The House Of Tomorrow

TONY ULRICH, JEREMY BURCHHARD, Alexis Burckhard, and Jojo Burckhard are all prominent members of Aberdeen’s music scene, but their band The House of Tomorrow is the first time they’ve all worked together on a single project.

“It went from a solo project to a passion project to ‘I’m too busy to do that right now’ to ‘Let’s form the band again’,” Jeremy Burckhard said. “It was a pile of songs, a pile of friends, so we put them together. It seemed like the natural progression to get songs from somewhere other than the basement.”

This iteration of the band formed during the fall of 2020. Working around the COVID-19 pandemic was a challenge, but Alexis said that it gave them plenty of time to practice.

“For the bad things that came out of it, there’s a lot of good things too,” Jojo said. “There’s a lot of artistic resonance that came off the stresses and things that were going on at the time. The only people we would surround ourselves with were our bandmates.”

“We were always playing music together, and we weren’t able to play shows for who knows how long, so we worked to develop a good foundation.” Jeremy said.

Some of the members have worked together on other projects prior to forming the band. Tony and Jeremy have been playing together consistently for about 20 years now.

“For as long as however old the Red Rooster is,” Tony said.

In fact, most of the quintessential downtown businesses have had a tie to when the members had performed together. Their first show as The House of Tomorrow was during Slacker ’s last night before closing in 2022.

“It was a great night of music, everyone bawled a little bit afterwards,” Jojo said.

Since then, they’ve performed at the Red Rooster Coffee House, City Lights, Kuhnert Arboretum, and at Club David in Sioux Falls.

Courtesy Photo

The House of Tomorrow has released two twosong EPs in 2021 and 2022. In 2023, they began working on their first full-length album Chrysalis, which was released on Halloween last year. Their music is available on streaming platforms like Spotify, and physical copies of the album can be ordered through their Facebook page or at Prismatic Dragon.

Each member of the band brings their own influence to their sound, so it’s difficult to assign a genre to their group.

“I just tell people, ‘Have you heard The Cure?’” Tony said. More specifically, if “The Cure and Slow Dive had a baby at a Swervedriver show, and The Chameleons were watching as they were listening to The Clash.”

“I’ve never really figured out how to put it, but other people have described us as post-punk,” Alexis said.

“We all cut our teeth in bands playing punk rock, so that’s always there.” – Jeremy Burckhard

“We all cut our teeth in bands playing punk rock, so that’s always there,” Jeremy said.

“I think everybody listens to different stuff, and then it just gets filtered through time, and there are certain things that just kind of resonate to the point of where it just starts coming out when you write,” Jojo said. “So when you’re writing things, you’re not necessarily thinking ‘Oh, I want this to sound like this, it’s just something that comes out. And you don’t even realize that it reminds you of this Joy Division song that you loved when you were 14 until it’s all done.”

As the band has developed, their songwriting process has developed with them. Some songs are created from a more fleshed-out process, while others come about from messing around during band practice.

“I feel like every song’s different,” Alexis said. “We started out with a lot of songs or ideas for songs that Jeremy already had. He had full ones written when he was doing it by himself, and so we just came in and made them bigger. Then we started writing together more.”

“We’d start out with an entire song that was finished with drums and bass and guitars and everything, and once we started kind of getting more comfortable, I just played the guitar part and let them come up with what they thought should go around my guitar part,” Jeremy said.

When they aren’t working on their own music, there’s a good chance that the band members are helping out with other local groups. Jojo plays for The Barstool Prophets, and Jeremy has performed with them as needed.

“We don’t have a big scene like you would get in a larger city, but everybody that plays is willing to play,” Jojo said. “That’s just kind of how it is here. The people that want to play music will take work where they can get it, and everyone is happy to be able to play.”

Aberdeen’s music connoisseurs can also assist in supporting local bands. Alexis said that showing up for local musicians is the biggest thing that people can do to support local music. Most groups perform for free at venues like the Red Rooster and the Kuhnert Arboretum, and if there is a cover charge for a band, it’s usually pretty cheap.

Photo courtesy of Jeremy Burckhard.

“Some excuses I hear are ‘I don’t know who they are so I’m not going’,” Tony said. “And it’s like, well, if you went, you would know them.”

“It’s kind of a requirement that’s part of being a part of a community. If you see something in Aberdeen that you go, ‘Hey man, this is lacking, I wish Aberdeen was more community oriented,’ that’s where we all have to step up and do that,” Jojo said. “Our parents aren’t going to do that for us. The lawmakers aren’t going to do that for us. We all have to be involved. So that’s why we keep picking up our instruments and writing our own songs and recording our own songs and doing our own artworking and sourcing local people, local businesses, local artists to help us out with those things. We’re trying to keep it all in the community, and we’re trying to do our part and all we ask is that everybody else shows up to be a part of it.”

“If there’s an art opening at the Red Rooster or at Northern State University or something going on at Malchow Plaza, go,” Jojo said. “If you don’t, you only have yourself to blame. If it disappears and you’re complaining that there’s nothing to do on Friday or Saturday nights, that’s just the real truth, because it’s not a self-sustaining sort of thing. It requires participation.” //

• For more information, visit their Facebook page at The House of Tomorrow or visit linktr.ee/thehouseoftomorrow. Chrysalis is available on all major streaming platforms.