For a full schedule, including performer listings and participating venues, go to www.providencesoundsession.com

When those moments strike, you will be lucky if SweatLodge happens to be playing the Living Room, or an illegal basement show near you. Consisting of Jonathan Wisehart on vocals and guitar, Eric J Grieshaber (also of the Chine Stars) on drums, and Mike Grigelevich on the bass, SweatLodge brings a raw, stripped-down, oddly hypnotic sound to the Providence music scene. The band was formed in 2005 when Jonathan and Eric met working at downtown bar and restaurant the Red Fez, and they’ve been bringing their brand of driving, feedback-filled “post punk” to clubs, basements, and loft spaces in and around the Ocean State ever since. Mike joined them after his previous band, Hulk-Out, toured with them in the summer 0f 2007.

Their sound is unapologetically cacophonic and violent. SweatLodge is not for everyone, and they don’t try to be. The music focuses on establishing a mood rife with frustration and anger. Jonathan, who writes the majority of the songs, admits, “I got a lot of rage.” Mike and Eric have a palpable chemistry as they create solid, winding rhythms, some of which sound strangely Middle Eastern. Jonathan layers long, held chords and notes, crunchy riffs, and consciously utilized feedback over them. He doesn’t sing so much as rant and scream. Songs like “Easterland” and “Useless Hinge” start off moody and understated, building to a purgative climax as steady and compelling as a heartbeat.

Although the band has ties to the noise scene that so strongly characterized Providence music several years ago, the members of SweatLodge categorize themselves as a rock band. Eric’s drumming style is notably expressive, even jazz-tinged, which may be explained by the jazz lessons he took back in high school. Mike, who Jonathan calls “the emotional soul of the band,” holds down heavy, traveling bass lines influenced by his love of Dinosaur Jr. and Six Finger Satellite. Jonathan’s guitar is simple, loud, and effective at conveying a frustration that he says originates from staying in one place for one’s entire life—definitely a New England, and particularly a Rhode Island, trait.

Their first album, A New England Girlhood, was inspired by one of Jonathan’s ancestors. His great-great-great aunt, Lucy Larcom, was a poet and abolitionist from Lowell, Massachusetts. The album title comes from a book of her poetry. Their next album will be entitled Rehoboth after the Massachusetts town where Eric grew up. Jonathan describes it as being about “living a pathetic life in New England.”

For now, SweatLodge is focusing on finishing the album, which they hope to put out on vinyl, and on putting together a “mini-tour” later this summer. The next time you feel like putting your fist through a wall, check them out – they can empathize, and their music will help you work it all out.

 

SweatLodge performs at the Grant Building (250 Main St. in Pawtucket) on June 23^rd and at AS220 with Six Finger Satellite on August 8^th. For more information, go to www.myspace.com/sweatlodge.

“We all have undiagnosed ADD.”

Photo by Ara Ghajanian

So says Justin Abene, bassist for Ebu Gogo. It’s almost midnight on Sunday, May 18^th, and the band has just finished playing a set at Club Hell. I am interviewing them, or trying to. It’s a bit like herding cats.

If you’ve heard Ebu Gogo, you probably aren’t surprised by Justin’s observation. For the past two years, this Providence-based band has been making instrumental, hyper-frantic tunes influenced by the music of the band members’ childhood: eight-bit video game themes and the soundtracks to eighties action-adventure-sci-fi movies. The resulting sound is an impressive collection of high-energy, infectious songs that the band crafted as an aural accompaniment to imagined scenes and stories that developed while they were writing the music. Like the film soundtracks that inspire them, Ebu Gogo’s songs convey action and emotion in a direct, inherently recognizable musical short-hand. It’s a fun, bizarre, and (despite the band’s protestations) utterly original sound, as their nomination for “Best Genre-Defying Act” in this year’s Providence Phoenix music poll reflects.

                           
Photo by Ara Ghajanian                                Photo by Ara Ghajanian

Ebu Gogo is a stripped-down trio of top-notch musicians: Justin on the bass, Gavin Castleton on keyboards, and Brendan Bell on the drums. Compared to many other bands, their gear is almost minimalist: Justin doesn’t use effects on his bass guitar, the drum kit is compact, and the band never uses microphones, even on the rare occasions that they address the crowd. The decision to keep the instruments to a minimum was very conscious, according to Gavin. All of the band’s members were previously in Providence band Gruvis Malt, and their experiences touring in that outfit informed their current, minimized set-up. Gavin explains that they “came from a band that was huge, and that toured with a bunch of equipment, and that was very stressful and had a lot of people involved, it was like an entourage…. [So] everything has to be small for touring….”

Perhaps most striking is the lack of that key ingredient in almost every band: the guitar. Actually, Justin is quite skilled at guitar, but he never felt comfortable with the guitarist’s role: “What I didn’t like about the role of guitar in rock bands, is the solo. I hate fucking soloing. I hate it. It’s like ‘me, me, me’….” While there are no solos in Ebu Gogo’s music, Justin brings a guitarist’s sensibility to his role as the bass player in that he plays all over the fret board and tends to follow Gavin, rather than Brendan, closely. He likes the fact that this project forces him to “find the best of both worlds.”

All of Ebu Gogo’s members are charged with having to play dual roles. According to Gavin, when the band “first started writing, we realized that we wanted to be able to have a big sound with as few people as possible….[M]usically, it’s important for every member to use both limbs all the time, so that it sounds like six people playing.” This explains the only exception to the “minimal instrument” rule, Gavin’s two keyboards.

Live, the band plays wearing huge white snowboarding goggles, and they sometimes sport orange haz-mat suits (they’ve thought about getting more elaborate costumes, but haven’t found anything that they feel fits them quite right yet). Justin stands in the center, flanked on his right by Gavin and on his left by Brendan, both of whom play facing each other. Eye contact is crucial, and you can see Gavin conducting with his facial expressions at certain points, alternately grimacing and beaming as they navigate through their set of tight, dynamic, breathlessly-paced songs. Justin occasionally gyrates in a Muppet-like fashion, bending his upper-body from side to side in time with the music, but this band isn’t interested in jumping around on-stage, and their faces and hands supply almost all of the movement. Justin loves the fact that their faces are so expressive, enthusing that “I like it when everything’s contorted.”

Ebu Gogo began playing out a little over two years ago. One of their first gigs was supplying the music for a tricycle race at the Steelyard’s annual outdoor summer dance party and carnival in 2006, which Gavin claims fit the band “better than any show we’ve ever played.” Their first album, Chase Scenes 1-14, came out later that year. The album is aptly titled, as the music has an adrenaline-fueled, kinetic feel.

Several of the songs written for the tricycle race, including “Torch of the Olympiad” and “Training Montage,” appear on their follow-up album, Worlds, which came out in the fall of 2007. The concept behind Worlds developed as the band was writing the music (they write collectively in one room, a process Gavin describes as “33%, 33%, 33% exactly, and the extra one percent…”). As they wrote, the band began to notice, as Gavin puts it, that “there were clusters of songs. We’ll write a huge chunk of music, hours and hours of music, and then we’ll break down songs, and we’ll go, ‘well, that’s kind of a surf song, that’s a surf song, that’s a surf song’…so we started realizing they were in clusters of threes and twos, and Brendan was like, ‘Yo, this should be called Worlds,’ and each one is like a different area. So we had Waterworld, Robotworld, [which is] like a sci-fi world, forest groves, [and] DNA music like inner space. So this was a collection of worlds.” The songs are instrumental accounts of adventures within these worlds. Gavin describes the music as “talk[ing] in scenes” and says that the band feels that “if we could animate what we’re seeing behind this music, it would make perfect sense.” Justin elaborates: “Not always the storyline comes first. It kind of develops at the same time [as the music].”

In terms of their influences, the band thinks of themselves as “stealing” from eighties film soundtracks such as The Goonies and Better off Dead; they also cite Danny Elfman’s oeuvre as a huge inspiration. Because the band members all had an eighties childhood, they share a common pop-cultural pool of reference; Gavin describes it as an era which might never “happen again. We were of age at the exact time when people were making…adventure movies. It was like, all of a sudden, they were catering to our age group, [all] at once. We were very lucky, and it was so good for our creativity.” Regarding the often-observed video game sound, all of the members are quick to point out that while they grew up playing Nintendo eight-bit games, there was no conscious decision to make their music sound that way; instead, it was a natural, almost subconscious influence.

Still, they all agree that young gamers instantly identify with Ebu Gogo’s music, probably because they recognize the music’s story-telling elements and creation of imaginary worlds. The audiences that get them the most, according to Gavin, consist of “young kids. Like really young kids…we played a show on a beach in Narragansett that we thought was going to be a wash-out, and it ended up being one of the greatest shows we’ve ever played…it was sunset, and it was these young high school kids, and they freaked out. They were acting out all the parts the way we hear them. They knew exactly: ‘the hero parts are hero parts’…it really turned out to be the coolest show. The cops came at the very end, there were flashlights and headlights, and we had to bounce. It was kind of like the beach scene in Lost Boys.”

Currently, Ebu Gogo’s line-up is somewhat in flux. Brendan, who creates all of their artwork, is pursuing a degree in graphic design at UMASS-Dartmouth, so they recruited Chase Leonard of Providence band Cowgirl as their touring drummer for the summer. When asked to comment on the differences Chase brings to the band’s sound, he and Brendan interrupt each other in telling me that the other is a superior drummer. Chase insists that “Brendan Bell is the best drummer in the world. I have big shoes to fill that I cannot fill, and I mess up every song…” Brendan cuts in: “He’s a better drummer….He plays the parts how I would have imagined [them], like how my brain tells me to play them, but I can’t actually physically do it, so he’s actually like me on a different level. It’s very fun to watch him play, because he’s actually reinterpreting the parts in the way they were first interpreted.” Chase was involved in some of the writing process, and his style, while noticeably different from Brendan’s in some ways (he tends to do more rolling fills), does the job nicely; in spite of his assertions to the contrary, he is more than up to the task.

Photo by Ara Ghajanian

For now, Ebu Gogo is focusing on promoting Worlds and getting more gigs for their summer tour. Presently, they aren’t in a position to write because of their touring schedule, Brendan’s preoccupation with school, and Justin’s and Gavin’s permanent residences in Brooklyn and Oregon, respectively. Still, Gavin is thinking about the next album, which he wants to include sequels and “threequels” to songs from both Worlds and Chase Scenes 1-14.

For right now, though, one of the band’s primary concerns is remaining faithful to its founding ethos: to enjoy making music. Gavin says that they all “realized that if you hold onto, and make it always a priority…and defend it literally to the band’s death if you have to, the success is actually tenfold…I actually think that bands that maintain that and defend it, they actually end up doing way better than other bands, both financially and their headspace is way better, their music is better, it’s amazing…it’s always the bands you see just smiling and they kind of forget that the audience is there, and I always feel that people are more drawn to that, because it seems more honest….I know way more bands that are miserable than bands that are psyched to just be playing.” With a candor that is both surprising and refreshing in this era of seen-it-all hipsterism, Gavin insists that it’s “the bands that remember to stay happy and to stay friends” that triumph in the end.

Ebu Gogo’s albums Chase Scenes 1-14 and Worlds are available at the Integers Only On-line Store at: http://www.integersonly.com/store.
For more information, visit http://www.myspace.com/ebugogoband and www.ebugogo.net.

 

For me, it was the living room of a babysitter’s house in 1989, watching Metallica’s first video, “One,” on MTV. It gave me nightmares. At the age of eight, I was not yet ready to appreciate what I’d seen and heard. It was too intense, too raw, and too graphic for my unformed, sheltered perceptions. My parents were pacifistic hippies and I had never in my life been exposed to something so unabashedly aggressive (and consequently, they never hired that babysitter again).

Almost twenty years later, sitting on one of the speakers that line the front of the stage at the Living Room, I drink in a forty-five minute set by Mustang Cobra, and I appreciate it fully.

Mustang Cobra plays metal. Not nu-metal, not hybrid metal. Old metal. The kind of vigorous, organized musical chaos that only plays on the airwaves of college radio in the wee hours or 107.3’s “Harder, Faster” metal show from 11PM to midnight on weekdays. Some of the band’s influences are well-known (Metallica, Slayer, Iron Maiden) and some are—for a novice like me at least—more esoteric (Motorhead, Blitzkrieg). After taking the world by storm in the eighties and being absorbed into corporate music in the nineties, the old metal has once again been banished to the margins, where it is revered only by those who truly love that sound and everything it embodies: raw energy, superb musicianship, and unapologetic spectacle.

But here in Providence, Mustang Cobra aims to change all of that. Made up of veterans of the Providence music scene, including former members of Shed, Sasquatch and the Sickabillys, The Cringe, and The Honeymoon’s Over, this outfit fully intends to triumph. After only a year of playing out, their nominations in this year’s Motif Music Poll for “Best Breakthrough Band” and “Best Live Act” indicate that their quest is going quite well. And it is a quest, make no mistake about that. This band’s vision, like its music, is larger than life.

Guitarist Aaron Leidecker, who founded the band with fellow guitarist Dino Paolantonio a year ago, always had a very clear plan: “We wanted to start a metal band that wasn’t doing the same old shit. We didn’t want ‘jud jud,’ we didn’t want violent, screaming vocals. We wanted to keep it more traditional.” Drummer Natalie Courville agrees: “We definitely try to bring a lot of the old-school metal flavor back to what we’re doing. You know, new metal has its place, but it’s lost so much of what the old-school metal used to be….It’s the showmanship, the love for what you’re doing on-stage, it’s the synchronized head-banging, and the obvious love for what you’re doing, which I think has really been lost, so we’re trying to bring that back.”

Their sound certainly brings everything the true metal connoisseur could desire to the table. Aaron and Dino are perfectly in synch as they rip through their harmonized solos, bassist Paul “Zeus” Sousa brings a level of musical chops and sophistication that is rarely heard on the four-string in these parts, and Natalie’s unrelenting, driving beats, frenetic fills, and theatrical cymbal crashes could motivate an advancing army. The songs are intricate, most of them boasting the aforementioned harmonized solos as well as lightning-quick time changes. Paul hasn’t slept in three days and he’s still spot-on as he and Natalie hold down the rhythm. During many of the songs, Aaron steps onto the speakers lining the stage to shred a solo of his own; on a couple of tunes, he executes them with his guitar held behind his head (his bandmates brag that he can play Van Halen’s “Eruption”).

Then there’s Christian White, the front man, singer, and newest addition to the line-up. Although he’s only been performing with Mustang Cobra for a couple of months, his vocals and on-stage persona are a perfect complement. He slinks around the stage like an angry Gollum and jumps into the crowd to stare down and serenade individual audience members. His voice, a strong tenor, commands both harmony and force as he belts out lyrics about dragons and war into his microphone, which is attached to a stand jerry-rigged from a Halloween-prop battle-axe. When asked about his on-stage antics, Christian replies, “I feel that, if you’re going to do metal, you have to bring some wizardry to the table. And, when I reach the top of the mountain, I have nothing better than do than to throw lightning bolts….Metal to me is musical theater all plugged in. It’s show tunes, just loud.”

Christian’s sense of showmanship, which the band says he brought on-stage from the very first time they performed together, is definitely shared by the other members. At the Living Room, the stage is littered with chains and skulls, colored lights have been strategically placed in front of the drums and guitars, and a fog machine hisses behind the drum kit. Strobes pulse during the solos. The band has its own lighting technician. Paul refers to the effects as “smoke and mirrors” and compares them to the techniques used by the Wizard of Oz to inspire awe among his subjects. Aaron envisioned this kind of spectacle from the band’s inception: “That was the whole point, to have a show that no one else was doing, with lights, and make it basically like an arena-type show inside a club.” Watching him, Dino, and Paul play in a tight diagonal line, their legs spread in a wide, old-school stance as they bend over their instruments and the strobe lights flicker, one can only say, “Mission Accomplished.”

Another reason that Mustang Cobra is so engaging to watch is that they play on top of each other: Natalie’s drum kit is set up on the floor in front of the drum riser (“I hate drum risers,” she tells me. “They separate you”). Paul, Dino, and Aaron play in the line. Christian weaves among them, sometimes throwing his arm around Aaron while he sings, sometimes hitting Natalie’s cymbals with a spare drumstick. At one point, Paul accidentally kicks over a couple of the drums, and a crew member rushes onstage to repair the damage while the bandmates look at each other and laugh. The decision to play in a tight cluster was serendipitous, as Natalie explains: “We played this basement show, and we were on top of each other, and we fed off of each other so much more than we usually do, so we decided to make it a habit from here on out.” They made the right decision. The connection between them is palpable on-stage, and speaks to the band’s dedication to their craft—they practice several times a week—and to the collective process with which they write their songs.

The tunes vary: “God is angry” is a Cassandra-like rant against consumerist-driven apathy, “Deliverin’ the Goods” brings a heavy, almost groovy, dirty-blues feel, and “Hyboria,” an ode to Conan the Barbarian, is an unrelenting, hyperactive catharsis. When asked to describe the band’s sound, Dino answers that they strive toward being “the house band for Dungeons and Dragons or World of Warcraft.”

There’s an epic feel to the live show as well as the music. In between songs, Christian preaches to the crowd, explaining the meaning of metal in a histrionic, quasi-British accent while using his battle-axe mic stand to knight audience members and baptizing them with his water bottle. Such gravitas is necessary, he says, because it’s “impossible to sing about some of these subjects, like wizards and dragons, without owning up to it.” Dino concurs: “That’s the point; if you believe what you’re singing, it brings it to another level.”

This is a major reason why Mustang Cobra’s live set is so riveting: the entire band obviously believes very much in what they’re doing. They hold nothing back. For them, it’s that kind of candor, dedication to musicianship, and unabashed emotional intensity that embodies the true spirit of metal. Metal is their passion, their lifelong love, and their gift to the Providence music scene. As Natalie explains, “Musician-wise, [metal’s about] showmanship….You can get on-stage, you can play your instruments, you can do a good job, but it’s all about the show. You can’t fake it.”

All of the members agree that a true love of metal demands life-long dedication. Dino describes it as “a cult. Once you’re in, you can’t get out. It’s like a mob, like a music mob. I like all kinds of music, any kind of music that’s done well, but I’ve never met anybody who was once a metal fan who ever said to me, ‘I was into Maiden in ’85, but they don’t do it for me anymore.’” Natalie agrees: “It’s not something you just go through a phase of. If you love metal, you love metal for life. You never grow out of it, you never get sick of it. You’re always gonna be a Maiden fan, you’re always gonna be a Slayer fan.”

Aaron elaborates: “Metal is the most extreme type of music….It’s emotional without being lame; it’s triumphant.” He recalls, “When I was six, I was handed a copy of Shout at the Devil, and I knew I was into metal. I’ve gotten into different things over the years, because you’re turned on to different things, but it’s always been right back to metal for me. I’ve been in different bands that weren’t metal, but I’ve never gotten the same kind of charge, or the same satisfaction that I have in this band, because…it’s the kind of metal that, when metal was at its highest point, it’s that kind of metal. It’s triumphant, victorious, and it doesn’t back down.”

After recovering from temporary tinnitus, I can’t help but agree.

 

Mustang Cobra plays Jerky’s Live Music Hall in Providence on May 23^rd. For more information, go to www.myspace.com/mustangcobraband.

 

 

 

Mark Anderson

Mark Anderson fled New Orleans after Katrina and has been making Providence his home. You might have seen him at a local fund raiser or at Gracie’s restaurant where he plays every Thursday night. Mark’s an incredibly talented classically trained jazz guitarist with the business sense to match–not always a common thing among musicians. Besides his Manderson Jazz Trio, he also plays in an electric band called JunkRabbit and an 80’s band called Split Infinity. He even plays bass for the legendary Rhode Island musician, Kim Trusty.

This interview and the links above might give you an introduction, but the only way to really know Mark is to hear his music. Go see him perform live; he’s everywhere.

When did you come to Rhode Island?
I moved to Rhode Island in September of 2005, right after Hurricane Katrina ravaged my home in New Orleans, La. My mother had recently moved back to Rhode Island from Mississippi, where she lived for 25 years. I didn’t really have anywhere else to go and all of a sudden, there was an opportunity to move to the northeast that I couldn’t pass up. Having a hurricane destroy the city you live in gives you the chance to start over. I chose Providence because most of my family lives here and I am so close to both Boston and New York.

What did you learn as a musician about getting involved with the local Providence music scene?
One thing that really sets musicians that have gigs apart from musicians that don’t have gigs is their level of professionalism and business sense. Having talent and chops is one thing, but at any given time, there are 1,000 other musicians that are as talented as I am. Restaurant owners and event coordinators like to hire me because they know they can rely on me to present them with top notch music with a high sense of professionalism. The Providence music scene is very tight knit so as a musician, you don’t want to burn any bridges because it can ruin your network.

Bad things include the occasional crack heads, the grafitti, and the fact that we can’t park overnight on the street without getting ticketed.