~Mike Renick's goal for the new year? Put out his first real studio album with the Mike Renick Band and try to spread the band's area of influence.

In the three-plus years he's been on the local music scene, Mike Renick has developed a devoted local following. There's a reason: Renick's shows are fun, the music feels good, it has rhythm. And he plays with some talented musicians.

As he looks to 2008, Renick's first real studio album with the Mike Renick Band will soon be complete. This weekend he plays a New Year's Eve bash at Club Moxy.

Matt Sanders: So you're playing Club Moxy this weekend, one of the newer venues. How do you rate the place for live shows?

Mike Renick: The last time we played there was with Steve Ewing [of The Urge], and it was a packed night. We had tons of fun.

MS: So after that show on New Year's Eve, where does the Mike Renick Band go?

MR: ... Right now we're recording some stuff ... Our goal is to be done recording by January 11. Whether we will hit that, I don't know. We've got most of it done, as far as recording the tracks go. We lack a few lead guitar parts and backing vocals and that sort of thing ... I would like it, by late February or early March, to have the CD in hand to be able to give to people.

MS: Looking at a big release party?

MR: I'd like to do something ... Again, once we figure out when we're going to have it done ... We're recording it over with Ken Keller, who plays bass in our band, he's got a studio there, so that's where we're doing the recording.

MS: The last was 2004, maybe?

Mike Renick (Aaron Eisenhauer)

MR: I kind of did my own solo project-type thing. I think that was '04, like August of '04. Then, as a band, we went and recorded at Echo Echo Studios, and we did like 13 more songs that we had just kind of been playing together as a band for awhile, and we just wanted a decent recording with a hard copy that we could give to people. One we'd done that, we just burned copies of it and gave them out. So we never sold them, never put them on shelves ...

We just went in the studio and played live, and that was it. We tweaked it some ... but we called that, right on the CD, "Studio Sessions 2005."

A lot of the stuff we play out now is on that disc. Especially in Cape, we would just burn copies of them and just hand them out. When we go to St. Louis and we play, and have some with us, you know, we might like charge a couple bucks for it. But around here we just give them out, because it's just a way to spread the music, you know?

So coming up, this will be like, I guess the first Mike Renick Band disc that's going to be packaged and sold for more than free.

MS: Are these going to be songs that people have heard you playing live recently or is it all new stuff?

MR: Probably, I'd say most of it, people have heard. There's definitely two songs that are brand new, that we've never played live before ... there's a couple that we've kind of played here and there, but, a handful, a few others, we've kind of incorporated over the past year into our sets.

MS: So what are the plans after that? Are we looking at touring more, going to other cities?

MR: I would like to use it as a way to get into more places to play. Hopefully it'll turn out decent, and it'll be a nice representation of what we sound like, you know, and just be able to use that to get into more places out of town and play.

Right now we play in St. Louis once or twice a month. We've talked, we'd like to get into, pretty well five or six hours from Cape there's ... a lot of nice places you can get into ... Chicago if you drive fast enough, or Champaign, Ill. To me that's something you can do pretty feasibly, and we'll see what happens from there.