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July 2007

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Published Articles24 Jul 2007 03:36 pm

Endless highway
The boundless drive of Valley band EastonAshe
By Molly Coulter
Published on 07/19/2007

EastonAshe. Photo courtesy of Diggs Communications.

If the band EastonAshe were tragically subjected to a high school senior class category, it would undoubtedly achieve “Most Likely to Succeed.” The band hails from Cave Creek and bares the title of “One of Music’s Hardest Working Bands.” The band books 300 gigs a year, leaving few scattered days to adjust focus from the members’ goals. The last tour covered 6,500 miles in eight weeks. The members invested $35,000 in to their album Can I Drive It? and the band will travel to Anchorage, Alaska, next week for 10 shows in 12 days.
     “We’ve always done it on our own,” acoustic guitarist, lyricist and singer Ryan Sims says of the band’s ability to play stages across the country with its gritty, yet precise rock ‘n’ roll. “We never used an agency. When you decide that you want to start touring you pick up a phone and start dialing numbers and that’s what we did. Do something big for yourself and your home town and start getting bigger.”
     Sims speaks like a veteran of the music business despite being a man in his mid-20s. He and his bandmates formed the current line-up in 2006, cherry-picking players from both coasts, but Sims got the band going when he was fresh out of high school.
     “I had decided when I was 19 I was going to forgo college and try to put together a rock ‘n’ roll band. Luckily I had the support of my family, so I went about finding the best players in the country,” he says. Sims found drummer Geoff Jouas among his high school alumni. In Baltimore, where the band grounded a home base for one year, they grabbed electric guitarist and singer Matt Henderson. And in 2006 bassist Nathan Marshall solidified the group. Now back in Arizona, three of the four members live together on a five-acre ranch in picturesque Cave Creek.
     “We’re four people with four completely different influences and you can hear those influences on any given night that we’re playing,” Sims says. He worries he’ll sound pretentious when he says the band makes “intelligently played music” that all comes down to the fact that “we’ve all taken a lot of time to really learn our instruments and hopefully that comes through in our music.”
     The band has a catalog of original songs that can easily fill a three-hour set, but the members aren’t shy to throw out some covers for kicks. As Sims explains the band’s stance on original versus cover material, his calculated reach for the audience takes priority.
     “We cover music from the early ’60s straight up to today,” he says. “We play everything from Simon and Garfunkel to Metallica and sometimes we’ll play Metallica in the middle of Simon and Garfunkel just to mess with you.”
     The band certainly can capture attention. Sims says fans encouraged the group to enter a contest by the producers of American Idol, but he isn’t concerned about the outcome.
     “We’re doing it for our fans,” he says. “People always tell us to enter contests, so we just made a DVD and submitted it. I’ve never even watched one episode of American Idol. I always thought it was kind of the cheater’s way of making it into the music business. I think we’ve worked too hard to make it that way, but I guess after five years of doing this, I’ll take my big break any way I can get it.”
     As the band inches closer to national stardom, Sims says the work ethic behind it keeps EastonAshe identifiable.
     “We’re willing to do whatever it takes,” he says, including playing five to six nights per week “because we have to.” Sims says the members don’t have real jobs and haven’t for awhile. They’re able to support themselves gigging night after night, but from our conversation I sense this is the only job Sims and his bandmates would ever dream to occupy.
     “If it’s in your blood, it’s there forever,” Sims says. “I’m OK being poor. I’m OK being hungry, but I’m not OK not playing music.”
     Be sure to see EastonAshe Sat, July 21 at the Party on the Patio at Flagstaff Brewing Co., 16 E. Rte. 66., to celebrate its 14th Annibeersary party, so don’t miss out. The show starts around 10 p.m. and the cover charge will be $5. For more information on EastonAshe, see www.eastonashe.net. For more information on the show, call 773-1442.

Published Articles17 Jul 2007 03:41 pm

What Laura Says

Neo tent revival
What Laura Says Thinks and Feels brings a traveling musical spectacle
By Molly Coulter
Published on 07/12/2007

Ennui before the storm: the five members of What Laura Says Thinks and Feels. Photo by Jeff Ambrose.

It’s mid-afternoon and the wind is picking up speed as you park your bike inside the garage. Cloud clusters dampen the sun’s rays and the temperature drops while you search your backpack for your house keys. Heavy rain on the horizon catches your eye, so you stand still and watch the rolling thunderstorm gain ground. Your serenity is shattered as a lightning bolt strikes within feet of your doorstep. A woman appears in the millisecond flare of light that surrounds you and a handful of witnesses. She says her name is Laura, and you say you’ve got a name for that band you’ve just started.
     That’s pretty much how four boys from Tempe came up with the name for their band What Laura Says Thinks and Feels.
     “It started one night during monsoon season,” says percussionist Jacob Woolsey. “I walked outside to watch the storm. A large bolt of lightning flashed and I closed my eyes. When I opened them there were four other individuals standing there who had the same experience. The lightning bolt flashed and stayed and a person was walking toward us named Laura.”
     The band name may sound emo, but the group’s style is anything but. It’s a breezy mix of pop and rock with folky undertones. Picture Brian Wilson or Ben Folds divided into five and outfitted in logo-clad T-shirts. Guitarist James Mulhern says the group incorporates “Southern blues, a little bit of swamp buckets, sandy, Beach Boys, three-part and four-part harmony, sugar, ‘Oklahoma,’ Rogers and Hammerstein, classic core and the dirt between your toes.”
     The five-piece formed 10 months ago in the Valley in a recording studio upon suggestion from outside players.
     “We all were in different projects and they put us together,” says bassist Mitch Freedom. “It all worked out because the first time we actually sat down in a room together it was magical.”
     The players’ median age is 24 and their aims are ambitious. However, shooting high from the get-go could pay off as the band’s sound is original and has great potential to launch.
     “We have an album out now that came out in February,” says Mulhern. “We want to take it as far as we can. We have some recording time coming up and a tour. We’d like to tour with national and international acts.”
     Thus far, the band has enjoyed heavy stage time in Phoenix and traveled to Tucson and Flagstaff.
     “The energy of the crowd is amazing and that’s mostly what we feed off of,” says keyboardist Danny Godbold. “One of our biggest assets is that our live show is a lot of fun. People dance a lot and generally good times are had. There’s not much of people standing around and twiddling their thumbs. It’s almost a church revival, I imagine.”
     The band members laugh as Godbold suggests the band’s shows are religious experiences, but their bassist Mitch Freedom expands on the sarcastic comment.
     “The dancing and the overall positive vibes that occur at our live happenings goes back to the whole revival thing and blues,” he says. “People think we play a lot of different genres, but it’s all very roots oriented, like the White Stripes. Old school is the new school. It’s really coming back around. That’s where we really strive to fit in.”
     What Laura Says Thinks and Feels will play the Monte Vista Cocktail Lounge, 100 N. San Francisco, Fri, July 13 with an opening act to be announced. The show starts at 9 p.m. and there is no cover charge. For more information on the band, see www.myspace.com/whatlaurasaysthinksandfeels. For more info, call 774-2403.

Published Articles09 Jul 2007 10:11 am

Hey Mr. DJ!

Variable vinyl
Three local DJs sweep the scene with synergetic sounds
By Molly Coulter
Published on 07/05/2007

DJ Marty King spins as part of Mogollon’s Wednesday ’80s night. Photo courtesy of Emmett White.

Madonna pulses from the speakers as Prince fervently waits his turns. Sporadic bursts of neon light blasts the packed, dark room. “Get into the Groove” ignites the hip kids busting moves on the dance floor. Just outside and around the corner the introduction to Michael Jackson’s “Billy Jean” impels a whooping roar from the crowd and a stampede of dancers follows. No, it’s not 1988 on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles. It’s the stages at the Mogollon Brewing Co. and the Monte Vista Cocktail Lounge every Wednesday night.
     Local DJs Marty King and Emmett White spin a funky mix of ’80s music for Mogollon’s weekly madhouse, ’80s Ladies night. Their buddy Johnny Swoope hangs solo at the V, mixing a wider variety of dance music not obliged to the decade. The drink specials might draw in a few, but most crowd members come back for the party music, courtesy of the selectors who assert the crowd selects the playlist.
     “It really is so much about who’s there, not about who’s playing the music,” White says. “The vibe and the element—we’re one small part of that. I feel incredibly privileged to be a part of that.” The DJs consider themselves to be more like mood lights than the spotlight.
    “A lot of people can beat you over the head with whatever they’re feeling. You can have an idea of where you want to take it, but you have to build to it,” White says of DJs with poor party etiquette.
    “We have our music that we are really into, but I don’t know what I am going to play first,” Swoope says. “It depends if people are hanging out. You can feel right away when you walk in what the mood is.”
     Swoope first walked into the DJ booth 15 years ago. After raving through early ’90s parties in Los Angeles, Swoope moved to Flagstaff to help a friend bust open the local dance scene. Deep Down House came about, filling former nightclub the Alley from 1999 to 2002 on a weekly basis. Swoope joined King in a DJ crew fashioned by their mutual friend (and former Flag Live columnist) Reymont Cantil, a.k.a. DJ Rey Luv. Known as blume, the crew played bars and broke up the genre-specific format that dominated downtown. Crowds could hear a range of artists and songs instead of attending “jungle night” or a break beat show.
     “That kind of set a vibe for a different type of dance night in Flagstaff,” King says. “We were incorporating all over the map kinds of styles.”
     Swoope says the response was bright. “It was perfect for the time here. Everybody was ready for it.” White, a relative novice, spun a one-man-show every week before linking into blume two years ago. White says he’s been spinning for about three years, while King’s 11 years of experience developed from the rave scene in Phoenix.
     “I got into it because I needed a drastic waste of time and money,” King says. His retort is part joke, part concession to the records in his repertoire. King says the number of milk crates carrying his vinyl records stacks up to about half the floor space of his bedroom, or about 120 gigabytes in MP3 format.
     White says he’s gathered between 1,500 and 2,000 records over the years. Swoope says he has “probably about the same, but I’ve gotten rid of a lot of records. You’ve got to recycle it if you don’t play it.”
     Recycling is elemental in gathering a collection. The DJs scavenge record and thrift stores in every city they visit. “A lot of stuff we’re getting are hand-me-downs,” King says. “This is someone’s record collection from 15 years ago that they’re finally selling.” Swoope hints at the social anthropology of record shopping when he says “record hunting out of town gives you a feel for the neighborhood.” The trio agrees Bookmans, 1520 S. Riordan Ranch Road, supplies the best pickings locally and gives props the music manager Eric Polchowne.
     While the DJs don’t tote all of their records to each show, they set up with plenty of music at their disposal. King says he and Emmett bring 400 to 500 records to each ’80s night.
     “It’s like being a Boy Scout or a Girl Scout—you’re always prepared,” White says. “That’s the key to being a really good DJ. They can tap into the feeling.”
     These days DJs can pull up just about any song they want and throw it into the mix with technological aids, which adds to the discussion of analog versus digital music.
     “Every B-level actor and any guy in an indie band calls themselves a DJ,” White says. “Any person off the street can download MP3s. You can get up with an iPod and call yourself a DJ and plenty of people do, but the physical element, the technique, the finesses isn’t there.”
     King says technology is blurring the lines, but a good DJ can use both analog and digital means to “switch seamlessly from a regular record to a file on your computer using the table as a medium.” Regardless of its sources, the final product is what’s important.
     “Part of the DJ’s job is to put together two parts at a time,” King says. “It’s going from one song to the other and making that ‘to the other’ as exciting as possible.”
     The DJs kick off a new night of dance music on Thursdays at the Monte Vista Cocktail Lounge, 100 N. San Francisco, starting July 5 around 10 p.m. Called Club Soda, the weekly gig will feature everything from Roxie Music to Technotronic. For more information, call 774-2403.

Additional photos for this story:

DJ Emmett White spins as part of Mogollon’s Wednesday ’80s night. Photos courtesy of Emmett White.

July 2007

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