Malan Darras has shown off his ink before. The last time I saw his
tattoos, the name of his band, Rewake, trailed down one arm in old
Gothic script. Along the other were Oriental pictograms that translate,
"Destroy everything." On his chest, another set meaning, "Rebirth of the
spirit." During an interview this week, he hiked up his sleeve to
present the latest addition: bubbles.

Around some curvy tribal spikes on his left bicep, Darras has inked in
some sudsy bubbles. They wrap around the solid black tribal hooks and
soften their edges. They deepen the effect of the art, giving shades of
gray where once there was only crisp black and white (or black and
pink). The image is just as striking, but it's easier to absorb.

Of course, we could just as easily be talking about his music.

Darras has softened his own edges over the years, deepened the effect
of his own art. Just a few years ago, he was screaming his way down the
road to nowhere in a metal band called Rodeo Christ. He had a lot to
say, a lot to express, and the only way he knew how to get it out was to
scream it, rant it and crank it. This, of course, is surely the first
mention of Rodeo Christ you've run across; the screams were met with the
sounds of silence from labels, crowds, even friends and family.

"We were out of control. I was out of control. I was a maniac. I moved
to Oklahoma to settle down, get it together. This band (Rewake) is a
reflection of that," Darras said. "I had moved to Dallas with a girl,
and I was ready to take the city by storm, to take on the whole world.
Nothing was ever accomplished. It was all mohawks and green hair, which
no one around me would probably believe now. It was a disaster."

Returning to Oklahoma, to his native Tahlequah and then to Tulsa,
Darras didn't trash his hard-rocking experience and start from scratch.
He knew he still wanted to -- had to -- make music, and he wanted it to
be as intense the original visions that led him to a band like Rodeo
Christ.

He just didn't want to scream so much.

"The thing I learned from heavy metal is that you don't really have to
expend that much energy to get your point across. You don't have to say
it as offensively, either," he said. "Our stuff now cuts deeper than all
that stuff. We're still as intense. If you look at us when we play, you
know we're not casual and we're not joking around. Even guys from the
heavy bands come up and say, `Man, could you be any more intense?!' We
kept the power even when we unplugged the guitars."

Rewake has been climbing slowly through the ranks of Tulsa's original
music scene for a couple of years. Darras started the group as a trio,
and it's grown into a quintet featuring a new percussion player pretty
pivotal to the band's rhythmic attack on rock. They are a musician's
band, a favorite of other local players, and revered by fans as one of
the best values for the Tulsa entertainment dollar.

Last year, Rewake released a six- song EP of live tracks called
"Foreign." Following that, the band showed up on local compilations from
the Spot Music Award-nominated "Woo Hoo Bank" collection -- released
last summer by Rewake's label, Yawn Records -- to the Tulsa Band
Coalition's compilation, which hit shelves in December. By then, Rewake
had entered the studio with the omnipresent Hank Charles to track the
band's full-length debut.

Meanwhile, the band itself received a Spot Music Award nomination --
and then won the award. The category: Best None of the Above, a
classification created to recognize such bands who permeate all musical
membranes and can't be pinned down to one particular style.

"We always laugh when people ask us what our music is, so we like that
category. It suits us," Darras said. "We like being something that's not
specific. If it's harder to explain our stuff, that's good. It means
we're doing something different, something above the norm. Bands that
are easily categorized are usually the ones I don't like."

On the heels of that, the debut CD just hit shelves. It's called "Air
Bubbles." Thus the amended tattoo on Darras's left arm.

"Air Bubbles" is certainly buoyant and bubbly -- a whirl of good
witches, a swirl of Fizzy Lifting Drinks, a race through fluid musical
forms without getting the bends. Driven by Darras's acoustic guitar
(other guitars are handled by Paul Karleskint, who studied under Tulsa
resident and rockin' country legend Junior Brown) and the cardiac time
of drummer-percussionist Mike Cox (percussionist Jeff Porter, from the
Kindred Spirits drum troupe, was just added to the band), the CD is
tuneful, uplifting and resonant. It rocks, it reels, it even sails just
offshore of reggae.

The real resonance, though, is not only in the songs themselves, which
speak colloquially to large issues and big ideas, but in Darras's
ringing voice -- the kind of unwavering wail we hear from singers like
Bono or Perry Farrell (Jane's Addiction was a huge influence on him).
Its clarity and precision help the songs burrow deeper into a listener's
psyche.

Of course, most greenhorns say he sounds like Dave Matthews.

"Aagh!" Darras gritted his teeth at the mention of the name. "For some
reason we keep getting that. It's the acoustic guitar and the high
voice, I guess."

As far as the big ideas are concerned, Darras is not shy about tackling
them in his music. In fact, he sees it as the only logical forum to do
so.

"I'm always trying to figure out the huge, gigantic questions. There
are two ways to delve into things beyond yourself: drugs and music.
Drugs kill you fast. I've tried the drugs route. I've tried everything,
every possible way of dealing with myself and my existence. Music
accomplishes more, and it doesn't hurt anybody. It doesn't hurt you. It
can even make you a little money," he said.

The album is fine, but Rewake's natural element is on stage, performing
the songs in front of living, breathing human beings. Darras likes the
reaction of playing to a crowd -- the give and take between performer
and audience.

"It's fun to be in a venue and confront people. I don't mean that in a
threatening way, but I mean, I get up there and basically say, `C'mon!
Are you ready for this? Have you heard anything like this before? I
don't think you have.' And then playing off each other, taking us all
for a ride."

But really, when it all boils down, Darras -- like all great artists --
comes to the realization that he's really doing all this for himself.
Entertaining others is great, wonderful, uplifting, but Darras makes
himself vulnerable to the brutality of the musical process because he
has demons to exorcise, burdens to lift.

"If I didn't do this, if I wasn't making music, I'd tear the walls of
my house down," Darras said.

Who was it that said the creative and destructive impulses are really
not that different? Did they, too, have "Destroy everything" and
"Rebirth of the spirit" tattooed on their body?

---

Thomas Conner, World entertainment writer, can be reached at 581-8473 or via e-mail at thomas.conner@tulsaworld.com.