Sometimes the best thing to do is to start from scratch. Jeff Krantz, vocalist and guitarist, and Elliot Tommingo, bassist, know this all too well.

The two were members of the pop-punk band Half The Facts, but Krantz says they needed a change.

“We pretty much just started over,” Krantz says. “Changed our name and all our songs to get a fresh start.”

With the addition of Bradford Johnson on guitar and Aaron Buzbee on drums, the remaining members of the band renamed themselves Rosefield Rivals, and have been bringing their new sound to the masses.

“As this whole band, we have been together eight months,” Krantz says.

One of the changes that Krantz is happiest about is the shift of the band’s emphasis from a pop-punk sound to a more rock sound.

“Back in Half the Facts, me and the old singer were the primary writers. He was really into pop-punk and we weren’t as mature writers, so the simple four-chord stuff was pretty much all that we knew how to do,” Krantz says.

In the past eight months the band has played nearly anywhere in the area where they were able to get a gig. The band has performed in places like Gabe’s Oasis in Iowa City and the Ranch Bowl in Omaha. They even recorded an EP at Echo Bay studios in Minneapolis, where Tommingo resides.

Although it may seem troublesome to live three and a half hours away from his bandmates, he notes that there is a hidden advantage.

“It helps a lot with the connections that I have made up here with the people that I work with,” Tommingo says.

In addition to connections, the band has showcased their talent, winning a few of the Iowa area’s “Battle of the Bands” events, including one at Drake University and one at the Maintenance Shop. Despite having played in Ames, Krantz admits that he doesn’t know much about its music scene.

“I honestly don’t know much about [the Ames scene],” Krantz says. “We played the M-Shop once and that was a cool venue, we played the Bali Satay once and I personally hated it because it’s so small and the sound system wasn’t that good. I hear they are ripping out the wall there and making a bigger stage and stuff, so it might be cool to do once they get that done,” Krantz says.

Apart from getting on the road and playing shows, the band has also managed to balance their work with play time.

For any band that tours to some degree, alcohol can normally be a catalyst to a zany story. For Rosefield Rivals, Tommingo claimed to have the best story.

“We were about three months in and we had to get our stuff together really fast to play this thing called the Midwestern music summit,” Tommingo says. “There was a lot of label people there. We were at our hotel and I had a few drinks in me and we were just kinda running around and I was wearing one of the cases of beer that we had as a hat.

“I started talking to this one guy in the hotel — he was a VP … for Universal records — and I was just drunk out of my mind, bullshitting with him, not realizing how important he is. I was making a fool of myself, and it was pretty crazy.”

The band may have had some crazy times, but it is dead serious about its music.