It’s Friday night at P.A.’s Lounge in Somerville, and the band on stage are facing a potential drum-kit disaster. The trio are halfway through a shambling yet melodic song when the drummer’s makeshift kit, which includes strange and disparate pieces like a guitar-stand-turned-cymbal-stand, a circular BMX bike pad, and a frizzy-haired troll doll balanced on the bass drum, begins to crumble gracefully like a slo-mo car crash. The crowd is laughing as the kit teeters on the edge of total collapse, but the drummer is unfazed as he continues to hold down the mid-tempo backbeat. Welcome to the slanted and enchanted world of Headband.
This fall will mark the 10th anniversary of the Allston-based trio, who have one seven-inch and three CDs to their credit. For years, only a few devoted fans and fellow musicians tuned into Headband’s lo-fi recordings and low-key gigging. Neil Young and Pavement have always been the band’s obvious stoner-rock reference points. And that’s just fine because they bring their own sense of humor and imagination to that mix. “I think that a successful Headband song has to have a punch line,” says de facto spokesman Brad Hyland. “We don’t rely on it, but . . . there are some songs that are less joky, and they’re good and fun to play, but the ones that actually have a solid kind of hook and punch line are the best.”
And they’re comfortable with their place in the local pecking order. Over the years, Headband have forged alliances with bands like Mittens and Runner and the Thermodynamics, though they’ve never gotten quite as much recognition (or press) as either. “Headband is kind of like the Rodney Dangerfield of local rock,” Hyland jokes. “We don’t get any respect.”
But the band have created their own musical world full of witty dorm-room humor and a dark sense of irony. “Satan wraps his wings around your safe college rock band,” is one of the better lines from “Satan Wraps His Wings” (on 2002’s The New Buzzards). “Ain’t life a bitch when you find that your niche is lying face down, drunk, in a ditch,” is one of the more evocative rhymes in “Niche,” a live-show staple that they’ve yet to record. Headband’s slack, often fuzzy guitars and a willfully ramshackle rhythm section are the direct result of another unusual quirk: Hyland and Matt Byers and Don Lofthouse switch around on bass, guitar, and drums, with each member taking turns at the mike depending on whose song it is.
All three members have also shared some of the same offbeat songwriting inspirations. The first was a clumsy kid named Joel who worked at the KFC across the street from the Model Café in Allston. Headband wrote roughly 20 songs about Joel. When he left his job and the band moved their practice digs to Cambridge, they found a new Muse — and a year’s worth of material — in a bums’ hangout visible from their practice space. “The Joel stuff gave us a subject matter so we could get better just playing our instruments and switching around and stuff,” Hyland says. “We didn’t have to worry about writing real songs. We could just write about him and kind of practice songwriting.”
At the same time, Hyland was honing his songwriting skills as the guitarist in Fashion Colt, whose line-up also included Mittens bassist/guitarist Andy Brooks. That band held down local stages for four years in the late ’90s before calling it quits and using their leftover funds to host a co-ed bachelor party at the Glass Slipper for their former drummer, Evan Haller. It was with Fashion Colt, Hyland says, that he and Brooks developed their songwriting and performance philosophies. “We realized we didn’t have to jump around on stage to convey a song and entertain people. If the song is good enough, you don’t have to hide it by jumping around and doing other things.”
Headband’s stage presence is certainly more slouchy and understated than theatrical. It’s the offbeat charm of their songs that takes center stage — at least when the drumkit isn’t falling over. And that ethos carries over to their CDs, the latest of which is Olde Tyme Rock ’n Roll. Each disc has a handcrafted cover with one-of-a-kind designs rendered in construction paper and color photographs.
Hyland, meanwhile, has found time to form Appletown Gun Shop with former Runner and the Thermodynamics frontman Marc Pinansky on bass and Chris Hemmeter, who played with Pinansky in the late-’90s mod-rock band the Zips, on drums. They already have a notebook full of song ideas that Hyland’s been stockpiling over the years. He says AGS aren’t all that different in sound or approach from Headband, but they do have their own sensibility — it’s a split personality of sorts. “One’s like a real kind of psychedelic thing. And the other is kind of an AM-radio thing. It’s like Syd Barrett meets John Denver.” Hyland aims to be more pro-active with Appletown Gun Shop and avoid Headband’s 10-year gestation. AGS debuted just last July but have already assembled a solid set of mid-’60s-influenced garage rock that they’ve recorded onto free CDs to distribute at shows. They’ve also done a five-city East Coast tour.
