Friday, July 4th, 2008

Belting out some noise

Exploding engines and a wall of noise

By Jessie Fetterling (Contact)

Thursday, March 6th, 2008

Barret Emke, Prairie Village senior, stands under the “Happy Birthday” sign that decorates the ceiling of the Eighth Street Tap Room. His eyes are closed behind his black-rimmed glasses, and he’s singing loudly enough to leave your ears ringing for a couple hours.

Surrounding Emke are the other four members of the band Boo and Boo Too, rocking out so hard that one of the guitarists has dropped to his knees on the concrete floor. Facing Emke in the crowd are his closest friends—not even a foot away from his mic—and they’re singing right back at him while violently shaking their heads to the music.

They play a song from their practice session, only this time the cops don’t show up to complain about the noise. The song is a new one, but no one else would know that except their most avid fans, who don’t miss a beat. The Indie-rock sound escaping from their instruments is fresh and a tough one to copy.

Their sound, described as a “loud wall of noise” by Derrick Solsberg, Kansas City, Mo., bass guitarist, is hard on the ears, vocal chords and especially the instruments. But the band members can’t think of anything else they would rather do.

All five members of the band—Guaraz Bashyakarla, Barret Emke, Drew Gibson, Allen Guinn and Derrick Solsberg—have loved music since they were very young, drawing inspiration from artists like David Bowie, My Bloody Valentine and Radiohead. And they have loved playing music even more. “I like music because I’m totally ADD, and it helps me think the least,” says Allen Guinn, Lee’s Summit, Mo., guitarist. “I can’t imagine doing anything else.”

Boo and Boo Too formed in December 2004. Emke had been playing guitar for a long time and wanted to start playing and writing songs with other people instead of just working by himself. He played with two of his friends from high school, Eric Ratzel and Stan Tanner (who are no longer in the band), and the trio would practice in his mom’s basement.

This practice space was also an inspiration for the band’s name. Emke’s mom was in the process of moving, so a lot of her things were in boxes, including a book called Boo and Boo Too. Emke fondly remembered the book, which was about two ghosts that lived in a house together. For Emke, the book represented a lot of what was going on in his life at the time, especially with his mother moving out of his childhood house. It also applied to the band because a lot of the lyrics for Boo and Boo Too deal with ghosts as a metaphor for memories. “I kind of felt like the house was haunted because no one was there anymore,” Emke said, “My mom didn’t even know that we were practicing there for a while.”

Emke and Tanner met Guaraz Bashyakarla and Luke Namee through friends when they first came to the University of Kansas. They all began playing together, but then went on hiatus in the summer of 2006, partly because Tanner was going abroad to Russia. During this hiatus, they met Allen Guinn and Derrick Solsberg and started practicing and jamming together, which led to them playing together.

“After a month of playing with Derrick, we decided that he really fit and the band had a different sound that we all wanted,” Emke says. “So, we decided that we didn’t want him to not play with us.”

While Boo and Boo Too’s members changed, their sound also transformed into something they all liked, so they started writing together. Whenever they write songs, it usually just comes from an idea one of them has or comes from something as simple as just a couple of chords that one of them likes. When they play their songs live, their songs change even more through improvisation, especially when they’re particularly energetic at a show and their other friends are there to cheer them on.

Because all members of the band were friends before they started playing together, they’ve based a lot of their band around their friends and their interactions with people outside the band. They even had a show called Chomp Womp—named after a silly noise that Gibson made up—that made it possible for all their friends to exhibit their own artwork from photography to jewelry to comic books to origami cranes.

They get a lot of inspiration from their friends and fans, but they also get a lot of inspiration on the road. “Being on the road is one of the most exciting parts about being in a band,” says Guaraz Bashyakarla, Wichita senior and drummer for the band, said. The band has gone on three tours, but this last summer was their first tour that was more than a week long. They went through the Midwest up to Ohio then Pennsylvania, New York, North Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee. “The thing that appeals to me is that when you are in a car for a certain amount of time, you aren’t paying attention to the world,” Bashyakarla says. “On the road, there is no sense of time.”

Guitarist Guinn likes the unexpected situations that arise from being on the road. He describes a time in Iowa when one of their fans invited them back home to stay the night at his parents’ house. Guinn thought of him as shy and awkward but loved the fact that the situation was so unpredictable. “People are so nice to bands. On tour we never really stay in hotels or sleep in cars,” Guinn says. He describes another time when a fan bought them all Mexican food and let them watch David Lynch movies at his house.

But driving across the country can lead to some unfortunate accidents, as well.

Guinn describes when he was stuck in Lodi, Ohio for a week after the engine of the band’s vehicle exploded. The town only had a truck stop and a car mechanic. They stayed in a hotel but refused to watch television the whole time. Instead, they did a lot of yoga and went on a lot of walks. Even in the worst situations, though, Guinn says that none of the members ever really got homesick because they were never gone for more than three weeks.

Rustine Bragaw, Olathe senior and bass guitarist for the Lawrence-based band Volunteers, describes his on-the-road experiences in the same way. He loves meeting new people but admitted to sleeping on a lot of inflatable pool rafts on floors and sometimes just in the band’s Chevy Astro Van.

Bragaw will graduate this spring and also wants to live his life as a musician. For Bragaw, it’s the best thing he can imagine himself doing because he gets to interact with his friends and write songs with them.

Volunteers’ goal is to be able to play music and make enough money to pay their bills. During spring break, they’re going to New York to speak with some record labels. If that doesn’t work out, Bragaw guarantees that they would still find ways to make music.

Brad Young, Lawrence musician, has already found ways to live out his dream. As drummer for the local band The Wilmotts, Young gets to play music while still working in a music store and teaching guitar to Lawrence residents. He has worked out a schedule so he can work during the afternoons and play music and write songs in the mornings and evenings. “My goal in music is to just continue creating and feeling self-gratification from that. It makes me feel whole,” Young says.

Of course, life isn’t always easy when you are in a band.

It’s hard to make money if no one has heard of you. And on tour, most bands only break even after gas and hotel expenses. The same petty drama involved in many lines of business is also present on the music scene.

Guinn, guitarist for Boo and Boo Too, moved to Lawrence from Kansas City to get away from the “clique-y” music scene there. However, he says it can sometimes be just as “clique-y” here, which bums him out. “I was naive when I got into music, hoping there wouldn’t be as much competition as if you were a doctor or lawyer, but it isn’t that way, and I don’t understand why it can’t be,” Guinn says.

In Lawrence, the competition is high, even though several bars host live music. This is why recording is so important for these bands. With Web sites like MySpace, Facebook and YouTube, it’s easy to get music out there, whether you’re the Red Hot Chili Peppers or a band recording in a garage.

Boo and Boo Too, Volunteers and The Wilmotts have all spent hours upon hours recording in the studio. Boo and Boo Too has recorded four EPs on Iron Paw Records—a label one of their friends started—and the band has been working on a full-length album for the past six months. The band, however, does not plan on signing with any big record label any time soon. “A lot of hitting it big is based on chance or superficiality,” Emke says. “A record label doesn’t care because they’re basically using you.”

Boo and Boo Too wants to be able to continue to record and do things the way they want. Once their album is released, they plan on touring more and getting their music heard. Ideally, Emke says they would love to make money from their work, but money’s not what they’re worried about. They just want to continue doing what they love to do and getting a positive response from their fans. As Emke says, “As long as there are people that are into what we’re doing, that’s enough for us right now.”

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