Ten years ago, in the small town of Quimby, Iowa, a dream began to take shape when the four guys who make up rock outfit Miker’s Mad decided to form a band.

Five years ago, guitarists Dan and Mike Wips, drummer Josh Scherb and bassist Justin Kurtz decided it was time for a change in location and moved to Des Moines so they could have a base to share their love of music with a greater audience.

“We just came down here for the music scene,” Kurtz says. “At the time that we moved down here, really nowhere around the Midwest was having anything going on other than Minneapolis and Chicago, and we were about 18 years old when we moved down here and started playing. Des Moines is really receptive.”

Kurtz says the guys in Miker’s Mad are hoping to eventually break outside of Iowa.

“We want to be professional musicians,” he says. “We’ll be releasing a CD here soon. I can’t really put down a date, but it’s almost finished. So I’d say by the end of the year we’ll be releasing a CD — our self-titled album. We’re doing that and then we’re touring Iowa right now and then working on getting some shows in Minneapolis.”

Kurtz says he is using every resource he can in order to get Miker’s Mad’s name out there now that the band is performing shows regularly.

“Mostly what we’ve been doing right now is getting on midwestvenues.com,” he says. “Basically, I’ve just been looking up every venue in this area and contacting and sending our demo out to them and doing shows. And this last six months, we’ve gotten out there and really gotten the shows hooked up. I’m thinking by this next summer, we’ll be out of Iowa, playing.”

The band has been spending most of the last five years building up its large library of original music.

“When we play shows, we have about three hours worth of original material,” he says. “We’ve done three-hour shows before.”

Kurtz says he feels bad when people show up to watch Miker’s Mad and then leave before the other bands are done performing.

“The last few shows we’ve had, our crowd shows up early and they end up leaving about halfway through the night,” he says. “So we’ve been playing the first or second set.”

Kurtz says one of the reasons the band has so many original songs has to do with how much they practice every week.

“We play numerous times throughout the week,” he says. “It depends on what the week is — at least twice a week.”

The writing process, he says, is a collective effort and is usually very guitar-oriented.

“It’s a group effort,” he says. “The whole band writes music. I’m more of a storyteller and kind of [write about] life experience. Basically, all of our music is like that. The intensity of us on stage and all of our songs and solos and stuff is just what we live for.”

Kurtz says the band’s intensity on stage is part of what helps Miker’s Mad attract a crowd.

“We pull in the crowd into just feeling what we’re feeling as we’re playing the music,” he says.

“We’re pretty crazy. You couldn’t really tell if we were drunk or not while we’re on stage. We’re just really intense — jumping around the stage and in the crowd’s face, getting the crowd up real close to the stage rocking with us and everything. It’s more of a fun crazy, not pissed off or anything.”