BY THOMAS CONNER
© Tulsa World Scene One: Bailey's Bar and Grill, Round three of the Musician's Cup It's good to be out of the Oklahoma wind, though the club isn't exactly warm. A smattering of people — mostly band members who will play later — mill around the long room, Korn blaring from the sound system. The bright flash of the video trivia game is distracting. The refrigerator behind the bar has about seven Shiner Bocks in it. Long night ahead. First band up: Ester Drang. They're kids, or they look it. Greasy hair, ratty T-shirts, lots of grey and black. They set up — a xylophone? — take their places and begin playing without so much as a glance at the crowd. Great, more sad, shoe-gazing geeks. The set starts with a sample, someone talking, spitting out something and getting excited, though the sound is distorted, muffled. The sheepish red-head starts playing a light, dreamy melody on a Fender Rhodes piano. Drums burst in with a whack and a skitter. The shyest-looking kid in the world — black hair too short to hide his eyes, but still he tries — starts moaning into the microphone. A song has begun. Hasn't it? The drummer plays complex structure, the bass player, too, though the guitars, keyboards, eerie sounds flood the room, filling it instead of demanding their own space. It rocks, carefully. When the song seems to end, tinkling piano and more subtle samples keep the sound alive. A few people clap, then feel embarrassed. It's not that people don't want to applaud, it's just difficult to tell where one song ends and the next begins. It's thrilling confusion, and no one in the typically hard-rock bar knows what to make of it. Even the ones in back who started out giggling are now mesmerized. Several bands follow, great ones — grinding guitars, roaring vocals, good ol' modern rock. But when the last band folds and the four judges lean into the default contest director, the verdicts are swift. "No brainer. Ester Drang." "Ester Drang." "Yeah, me, too." "Who was the first band?" Scene Two: Bryce's room, one week later All five of Ester Drang are hanging out at the rehearsal pad, the bedroom of Bryce Chambers — the shy singer. It's an add-on to the front of a cookie-cutter shack in Broken Arrow, and it looks like an aging, decrepit set from a "VH-1 Storytellers" episode: orange carpet underneath the traditional, crumb-laden Oriental rug; gear stacked and piled everywhere, with cords underfoot; dusty toys on shelves; a couch standing on its end and leaning against a wall; a Teletubby doll, Po, perched on top of it; a box of Vivarin; the sole source of light a honey-pot lamp with no shade; and on the walls, other than peeling wallpaper — a bull-fighter on black velvet, a poster for "The Princess Bride" and a painting of Jesus with his arm around a young man, his head hung sad and low. The band, slumped in various seats, is talking about the reasons behind the mesmerized crowds at local bars. It's nothing, they say. "Around here, nobody's doing what we're doing. It's been done other places. We're just not copying what's going on around here," says David Motter. He says he plays keyboards, but he's the one who kept ducking under the decks at the Bailey's show, changing cords, twiddling knobs and plugging in new samples. "It's not that we're that good, we're just different here," says piano player James McAlister. They begin the requisite citing of influences, which is actually pertinent, for a change. They list a lot of bands from a wide variety of styles, the common threads being moody and ambient: Massive Attack, My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive and "emo" bands like Sunny Day Real Estate ("Although, it's getting cliche to say you're influenced by them," Motter says). McAlister even admits an admiration for the Beach Boys. (In the past, when he still went by J.J., he confessed to liking Toto.) Somehow, all these influences gel into Ester Drang's melancholy, down-tempo dreamscapes. "I don't think anything we've done to date is all that innovative," says McAlister, shamelessly modest. "We still have a lot more maturity to go through before we've created something truly unique. I'm just a product of what I think is cool. Any band is. Nothing you create is solely of yourself." Then bassist Kyle Winner nails it: "But it's not as much about creating a sound, it's more of a feel." Ester Drang is all about feeling. McAlister's right -- they're young and have a lot of growth ahead, and the band's current phase is very child-like. The music is purely emotional, concerned with sensory communication more than intellectual declaration. The band, in fact, is still learning how to control this subconscious exploration. The band's first gigs were on the local Christian rock circuit. With averted eyes, mumbled lyrics and no W.W.J.D. lanyards, Ester Drang was the Christian fish out of water. The members still consider Ester Drang a Christian band, but they try not to limit their expression. And they'll play absolutely anywhere, not just churches and sanctioned events. "Anywhere where the door's open and the electricity works," Williams says. Scene Three: Bryce's room, a knock at the door Bryce Chambers hops up, steps outside. Moments later he trudges back into the room. "That was a cop," he says. "Somebody complained about the noise." Everyone chuckles. "Man, we stopped playing an hour ago," Winner says. "Yeah, but you guys were playing metal. I could hear it. It was ungodly loud," Motter says, laughing. McAlister, typically stoic, seems vaguely perplexed. "We've been practicing here for five years, and that's our first noise complaint. Then someone adds, "People are taking notice." Comments are closed.
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Thomas Conner
These online "clips" reproduce a self-selection of my journalism (music etc) during the last 20+ years. It's a lotta stuff, but it only scratches the surface. I do not currently possess the time or resources to digitize the whole body of work. These posts are simply a bunch of pretty great days at the office. Archives
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