After playing with other bands, four high school friends came together to form the rock ’n’ roll band The Donkeys.
The San Diego band is bringing its mix of psychedelic surf rock to the Red Stick. The band will be playing at 9 p.m. Tuesday at Spanish Moon.
Drummer Sam Sprague said the band members met in high school 20 years ago and have been friends ever since.
However, The Donkeys didn’t form until 11 years ago, when the members had finished playing in other bands and decided to form their own.
Having known one another for so long, Sprague said the band has a strong method of writing music by working naturally through jam sessions. He said they can sit down and write songs together, or other band members can work alone to make original songs.
“Most of our music comes from sitting together and playing together, which makes it sound organic and not forced,” Sprague said.
He said The Donkeys’ music has improved over the years.
At the beginning, the band did not know entirely what it was doing and was still learning to get a grip on singing and recording. Each album the band produces is an effort to create music the members had in their mind, Sprague said, and each album is a better record than the one before.
The band’s current nationwide tour, which started Sept. 3, is the band’s 13th or 14th tour since it formed. Sprague said the tour started in California, and when a venue in North Carolina offered them a place to play, the tour formed around that.
This tour falls between The Donkeys’s latest full album, “Ride the Black Wave” and an EP coming out in the next few months. Sprague said the response to the album has been great so far.
He said the band loves to perform in Louisiana. It has played in New Orleans before, but the concert at Spanish Moon will be its first performance in Baton Rouge.
“Every time we play in New Orleans, there always seems to be so much going on at the same time,” Sprague said. “That makes it hard to draw people out to the concert.“
The Donkeys decided to play in Baton Rouge after speaking to other bands that performed in the area.Sprague said those bands spoke highly of the area, so The Donkeys wanted to play a show here.
The band loves to perform in what the members consider to be “cool places,” and the Spanish Moon fits their description of a good place to play, Sprague said. He said the size of the venue does not determine if a performance will be good or bad.
“It really depends on the crowd,” Sprague said. “We have played some really [bad] small places and some really [bad] big places.”
Admission to the show is $8.