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Last gig
Two very different Columbus bands will play their final shows this weekend.
By STEPHEN SLAYBAUGH
By definition, rock ’n’ roll is ephemeral, an ever-shifting mishmash of culture, trends, technology and sonic ideas. So despite grotesque anomalies like the Stones, bands aren’t supposed to last but, rather, encompass a time and a place before making way for new ones to do the same.
Still, no one likes goodbyes, and this weekend sees Columbus bidding farewell to two bands that have been musical stalwarts for most of the past decade.
Friday at Ravari Room, Miranda Sound will say “adieu” to the large hometown fan base it’s cultivated with an exacted pull of indie-rock tension and release over the last nine years. Singer/guitarist Dan Gerken is leaving Columbus to pursue a law degree in Washington, D.C., and the band has decided it best to call it a day as a result.
Appropriately for a band that has always conducted itself in a professional and courteous way, this is no messy breakup, but rather a planned and collective decision.
“Dan told us two years ago when he started studying for the LSAT, but we weren’t sure how soon it would be,” says Gerken’s songwriting partner and fellow singer/guitarist, Billy Peake.
“He was real open and honest about it. It was perfect because then we decided to put out one more record and end this the right way. It was cool, no hard feelings or any drama at all.”
During those two years, both bassist Sean Sefcik and drummer Dan Bell had children, while Bell was also in the process of opening his own dental practice. As a result of these commitments, which limited Miranda Sound’s ability to tour and the amount of time the members had to play together, the band had already started to slow down before Gerken’s departure was finalized.
Peake says he learned to take the changes in stride.
“I was always the really pushy one about scheduling shows and doing this and doing that,” Peake says. “But knowing we had an end date, I started to take it less seriously and enjoy it a little bit more.”
More stressful, though, was making the last album, the band’s recently released self-titled record on Sunken Treasure.
“We didn’t even start writing songs for this record until this past winter,” Peake recalls. “There was a sense of finality the whole time, and it was weighing on us a ton. The songwriting process was going so slow, we finally decided to just start booking studio time with (engineer Jon Chinn)—that way, whether we had a full song or not, we were going to record something.
“It felt like a train wreck, and we didn’t know if it was going to come together. It did, and everyone’s pumped about it.”
So pumped, in fact, that the band members now feel a tinge of regret that this album will be their last.
“But I think that’s the best,” Peake says. “It’s like when you end a set: If people want to hear more when you’re done, then you probably did it right.”
Gerken seems similarly satisfied.
“Knowing that this was the last record made the process sort of liberating, in that way that traveling without a map is more exhilarating than having everything planned out,” he says. “It’s been a celebratory kind of finale.”
Fittingly, the album exhibits a certain amount of looking back over the nine years that Miranda Sound played together. “Sleepfighting” at once celebrates and mourns the band’s collective anticipation of what would come, with Peake singing in a sort of past-future tense, “Can’t wait for Sunken Treasure to come along... Can’t wait for Little Brother’s to come along.”
While he wishes the band could have become a self-sustaining entity, Peake has fond memories of many of the shows it’s performed over the years, from a Columbus Lollapalooza date to a high school graduation in Hilliard to opening up for some of his musical heroes.
“We got to play with the Posies,” he exclaims. “If you told me when I was 19 years old that I was going to get to play with the Posies, I’d have hugged you and peed my pants.”
Both Peake and Gerken say they’re happy not only about what the band did but about the way it did it.
“I’m proud that we have always been good to everyone we’ve met along the way, especially because there have been so many people along the way,” says Gerken.
Peake concurs. “We got along with everybody and were really honest and did our own thing,” he says. “Our first record is a giant piece of crap, but it was us. We gradually became a better band without making a concerted effort to alter what we were doing to appease anyone. We were always ourselves.”
The Feelers, who will be playing one last set of spastic punk noise at Café Bourbon Street on Saturday, similarly never sought to please anyone but themselves during the last six years.
“The band started because I looked at my best friend, (singer Dan Feelings, née Riffe), and said, ‘Hey, let’s start a band,’” recalls guitarist Aleks Red Menace (née Aleks Shaulov). “We used to just grab a jug of whisky, write songs and hang out.”
That lax attitude has made everything the band has accomplished—six 7-inch singles and a full-length album on several national indie labels, among other things—seem like gravy.
“For what we started out as, which was a drunk-ass band playing Bernie’s, to do the things that we did was great,” says drummer Q.T. Thundguns (aka Joe Riffe). “It was better not to have any expectations. It’s almost Zen-like to not give a shit about anything.”
The Feelers’ seeming lack of ambition didn’t stop them from cultivating a large group of fans, one that stretched the world over and allowed them to tour throughout the country and in Europe, even if back home in Columbus people never really caught on.
“We did want to get out of town and go on tour,” Aleks says. “But bands go on tour all the time and play to empty rooms. The fact that we could get 50 people to come see us in any state was good enough for us.”
Thundguns agrees.
“Because we had people in different cities who liked us from hearing our records and had already gotten ahold of us to know when we were going to play their town, we could call them and get them to put on shows,” he says.
“We’d go to Chicago and have 200 people in a bar the size of Bernie’s and more people in bigger bars. Here nobody knew who we were.”
Indeed, it seems only in recent years that Columbus, as well as the country at large, has caught on to the lacerating sound in which the Feelers specialized. With acts like Jay Reatard and the Black Lips gaining recognition, could similar fame have been awaiting the Feelers?
“Not that anyone has shown interest,” Aleks says, “but if it were to have happened, I don’t think we would have handled it properly. We were a disjointed group of friends.”
The band announced its breakup earlier this year after Thundguns decided to quit.
“I just got bored,” he reveals. “It was fun for a long time, but after a while it felt like we weren’t doing anything new, and writing songs wasn’t as fun. Just going to practice was a chore, and I didn’t want to tour. It wasn’t fun enough to make that shit worth it.”
That fun includes fond memories of playing in strange towns and meeting strange people. Thundguns is particularly wistful over a day spent in Italy, drinking local wine and riding through cornfields with a girl named Guicy and two older Italian men in a Suburu Outback.
“Going on tour and hanging out with cute girls and getting wasted and doing ill-advised stupid shit—that’s why I got into a band.”
“The friendship and adventure,” Aleks agrees. “That’s what was phenomenal.”
Like Miranda Sound, the Feelers have no regrets. Saturday’s farewell show wasn’t even their idea, they say.
“It’s the perfect time to end it,” says Aleks. “The show is basically because we were asked. People wanted it.”
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