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"We're friends more than we are band mates," said [velvet] frontman Joe Brewer of guitarist Joe Calvarese. The pair, who met at DeMatha Catholic High School in Hyattsville, started their 12-year friendship in a way you might find in a teen comedy.

"[Calvarese] was a year ahead of me [at DeMatha], and I would get in trouble, so my detention was to sit in his honors English class," Brewer, 27, said. "We kind of struck up a friendship, and he came over to band practice one day. He played guitar, and we just kind of hit it off from there."

Now, 12 years later, [velvet] is still around and playing shows in the Washington area. The band will release its fourth independent studio album, Well Thought Out and Well Planned Out, with an album release party at the Black Cat on Dec. 21.

The band's four members were all university attendees at one point, with Calvarese, 28, and bassist Andrew Walker, 30, both graduating in 2001. Brewer dropped out but received an associate's degree later, and drummer Udi Farber, 26, the newest member of the band, is a current student.

The band's name dates back to its inception but doesn't mean much to the band - it was just what they came up with when they were 15, Brewer said. To make what Calvarese called a bland name a bit more interesting, [velvet] uses a very specific punctuation, with brackets around the name and an entirely lowercase script.

"It's hard to really make that name look appealing," Calvarese said. "It's a capital V and a lowercase v, and as far as a logo goes, it just looked like crap when you write it out like a normal word. So, we tried different stuff for a while. We had it in cursive, but that kind of looked a little too pretentious - a little too emo. I don't know where the brackets exactly came from, but they looked good. … It's a visual cue."

Because Walker, Calvarese and Brewer have been playing together as [velvet] since high school, the band has a sound steeped in that era. The band's sound has matured since then, however, with touches of emo and punk mixed in with the grunge.

"When we started off, we were more on the punk side, maybe because that's all we knew how to play," Calvarese said. "Then we moved into a much heavier phase - the music was a lot heavier - but then it sort of got a little more melodic and ... now we've just kind of found a happy medium."

Brewer breaks it down a bit simpler.

"I like to rock, I like to be loud and I like to scream," Brewer said.

"I hope that never goes out of style," Calvarese added.

As students at the university, [velvet] played at the All-Nighter in the Stamp Student Union and house parties on the outskirts of the campus, Calvarese said.

Perhaps [velvet]'s longevity comes from the band's relatively light schedule. Because all four members have day jobs - Calvarese at the United States Attorney's office in Washington, Brewer as a city inspector for the Hyattsville government, Walker as a horticulturist and Farber as a student and Hebrew teacher - [velvet] only plays three to four shows a month, Brewer said.

"We like to be able to have money along with playing shows, so we can go out and buy all that nice equipment," Brewer said. "We're kind of like the responsible rockers. No one makes money in a band. It's like a one-in-a-million shot to actually make it. We'd love to be out touring, but we also like our 401(k)s."

Both Brewer and Calvarese contribute [velvet]'s longevity to the band's close friendships.

"Whenever we have band arguments or band problems, it all boils down to the fact that we're all friends and we'll always be friends," Calvarese said. "We're involved in each other's lives to the extent that ... if they made it illegal to have a rock band tomorrow, we'd still hang out all the time."

"It's really a simple formula," Brewer added. "Just practice. Play shows. Be friends."

[velvet]'s album release party at the Black Cat in Washington on Dec. 21 also doubles as New Rock Church of Fire's album release party. Doors are at 9 p.m. and tickets cost $10. The band will also perform at The Red And The Black in Washington on Dec. 12. Doors open at 8 p.m. and tickets are $8.

rudi.greenberg@gmail.com

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