Band of Heathens
With Shovels and Rope. $12-$15. Aug. 13. 9 p.m. Visulite Theatre. www.visulite.com
They call themselves the Band of Heathens, a six-man tribe based in Austin but with roots intertwined in musical genres from all over. Merging snaky fonk with soul, R&B and a touch of foot-stompin’ gospel, the Heathens recall a glorious era in American music when roots and rhythm merged with soul, expressed best by groups like The Band and Little Feat.
Ironically, the band gets branded with an Americana label, and has had two albums, 2008’s Band of Heathens and 2009’s One Foot In the Ether, hit the top of the Americana charts. Yet the band members say they’ve never called themselves an Americana band. “It’s just rock ‘n’ roll,” guitarist/vocalist Gordy Quist says, speaking by phone from his Austin home. “Americana to some people leans harder on the country side. I think that we have an R&B/soul-influenced style that most people don’t really associate with Americana.”
Whatever you call it, Heathen music has gotten the band a large national following since the band merged three songwriters who were performing solo sets on the same nights at a popular Austin club with a rhythm section in ’06. Colin Brooks, Ed Jurdi and Quist still share guitar and vocal duties for the band, backed by Seth Whitney on bass and John Chipman, drums. Brooks, Jurdi and Quist are all still songwriters for the band, which has them occasionally stepping on one another’s toes.
“In any band, if you’re open to collaboration and you’re letting everyone in the band be creative and have input, there’s going to be a little bit of trying to avoid conflict, because creative people generally have strong opinions,” Quist says. “When we all come together, it’s enough fun to put up with the stepping on the toes. We’re pretty open about sharing stuff with the band. It’s not like we’re holding things back trying to finish on our own.”
Quist says they have safeguards in place to avoid one person claiming all the publishing, like Robbie Robertson did with The Band. “We share all our songwriting credits equally. We try to split everything down the middle, even if somebody wrote a song entirely by themselves,” Quist says. “Obviously The Band is a great example of one person makes out they wrote something by themselves when everybody else is feeling like they had something valid, creative input in a song.”
With all the creative input, Heathen music is all over the place. Quist says band influences range from James Taylor to Led Zeppelin. On their latest, Top Hat Crown and The Clapmaster’s Son, you can hear the snaky rhythms of Little Feat in “Medicine Man.” “Should Have Known” sounds like The Faces in a head-on collision with the Black Crowes. The acoustic soul of “Gris Gris Satchel” has them showing off their three-part harmony in a Dead/Byrds vibe.
And like the Dead, the Heathens want their fans to have free access to their music. “One of the most important attitudes to have with regards to grassroots movements is sharing the music and not necessarily ‘You can’t have this if you don’t pay for it,'” Quist says. At one point, the band had a program on its website that enabled fans to download and e-mail mp3s of their songs to friends for free. You can still download free stuff, including an entire live set of the band at Momo’s, the Austin club where the band started.
“The idea is to give people tools to share,” Quist says. “Don’t make people feel like they’re stealing. It’s great if people want to pay for music, but I know that a lot of people don’t, and ultimately my hope is people just become a fan of the music and then want to come to a live show.”
Getting people to come out to shows in Austin is no problem. Live music is well-supported in that town, and part of that is due to the artists’ attitude. He cites his own band as an example of the collaborative spirit in Austin where artists compete in a healthy, artistic way, instead of a cutthroat environment where one person’s success is viewed as a negative thing for your own career.
But attitude and collaboration are just part of the equation for a successful band. “There’s a lot of distractions tied to a career in music nowadays,” Quist says, referring to the gimmicks and hype that often pump up bands with little or nothing in their sound. “We strive to just put the music first and let that drive everything else. Ultimately, I think the music is the most important thing, and hopefully that comes through to people.”
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Band of Heathens
This article appears in Aug 9-15, 2011.
