Rock ’n’ roll therapy

Singer/songwriter Josh Blevins knows Gunner Gunner’s reputation as the band that really hustles with posters, social media, and intense person-to-person lobbying. Blevins tells the Reader that it’s the best way to keep getting the prime gigs.

“There are a lot of bands with pride or whatever who expect things to come to them. It’s the bands’ responsibility to promote, not the promoters. We are always marketing ourselves. When we play L.A., we put, like, 30 to 40 posters on Sunset [Boulevard]. Same thing in Hillcrest. Our main goal is to make people see our poster at least five times.”

Despite the hustle, the all-original hard-rock quintet will still pay to play. “For our upcoming show at the Viper Room we had to sell $350 worth of tickets,” Blevins says, “but that’s nothing to play at a renowned place in L.A. We’re going to rent a party bus or two.”

After graduating La Jolla High in 2011, Blevins attended Pepperdine. “My mom owns a gym and my dad and mom were both ballet dancers. In high school I was super athletic and did some modeling. In my sophomore year [at Pepperdine] I started gaining weight. Then I started having side effects like blurred vision, depression, insomnia, and asthma. No one could explain it. The doctors always diagnosed it as something else. I told my mom there was something else wrong with me. I went through four months of tests. They finally found a tumor on my pituitary gland. I had 12 times the growth hormone called cortisol in my system.”

After surgery in December of 2012 and a year of recovery, Blevins enrolled at SDSU. He launched Gunner Gunner ten months ago. “I had to relearn how to eat properly and walk one block rather than run five miles.... The whole experience of recovery made me realize what was most important to me in life. Rock and roll and singing took me to a place where my worries were irrelevant.”

Gunner Gunner appears August 15 at 710 Beach Club, August 17 at the Viper Room in Hollywood, and August 30 at Brick by Brick in Bay Park.