There have been two golden periods in music history for big bands: the Jazz age, when big brass bands played swing and jazz, and the ’70s, when stoned longhairs got all their friends together to be as loud as possible.
Dark Meat is happy to carry on that big band tradition by taking the middle route between the sounds of those eras.
Dark Meat is a 13 to 25-person collective band from Athens, Ga., home of the collaborative music scene that resulted in bands such as The B-52’s and R.E.M. They bring a distinctive brand of ’70s-style Southern rock augmented by a full horn section, woodwinds, a sitar, a glockenspiel and a sense of jazz-inspired experimentation on their newly reissued 2006 debut album “Universal Indians.” They will also be bringing that same brand of music to The Echo lounge on May 10.
How did a band the size of a Senate committee get together in the first place? True to the interconnected and whimsical reputation of Athens, Dark Meat originally assembled in a bizarre fashion.
Originally, lead singer and guitarist Jim McHugh and bassist Ben Clack moved to Athens from North Carolina and assembled a Neil Young cover band with some coworkers as a quick way that was more fun than working at an Athens restaurant to make money. The original plan eventually expanded on a the spur of the moment and gave birth to Dark Meat.
“One night we all went out to see Olivia Tremor Control (Athens legends) play out in the woods and everyone was on a bunch of psychedelic drugs, and we had this revelation that we wanted to form a band that fleshed out that psychedelic Neil Young sound out into this monstrous thing,” Clack said.
And flesh it out they did. Their original five-piece cover band swelled into a 17-strong ““ on average ““ collective playing and collaboratively writing their own songs, filled out by other Athenians involved in the music scene.
Not only did McHugh and Clack flesh out their ranks but their sound as well.
On “Universal Indians,” fuzzy Southern-fried power chords collide against brass blasts and the yowling drawl of McHugh. Some of the longer songs also feature jazzy acid-rock freak-outs, like the middle of “Three Eyes Open,” which would surely make Timothy Leary and Frank Zappa look on from beyond with pride.
Elsewhere on “Angel Of Meth,” an album highlight, sunny horn melodies and clean guitar parts collide with a girl group beat ripped straight from “Be My Baby,” which helps buoy some of the swampy blues rock on the rest of the album.
This genre mashing can be seen as a byproduct of the general weirdness of Athens, as well as its geographical location.
“(The) Southern rock (influence) just comes from living in the South,” Clack said, “It just kind of worked out that way. I mean, that’s what we listen to (Southern rock, psychedelic pop, free jazz), so that’s what we want to play.”
Clack also tellingly cites Black Flag guitarist Greg Ginn as a huge influence on his playing, as does the rest of the band. This may help explain their music’s free jazz elements, as Ginn was known to incorporate the style into his guitar playing in his later work.
Clack explains all of this as he rolls through Montana. Why Montana?
Dark Meat’s tour is simply massive, covering 66 dates total, rolling through small towns in places such as Montana and the Deep South. Kanye West, for comparison, is doing 32 shows.
Smaller towns “have more soul than places like L.A. It’s like real people. I mean, I’m from the middle of nowhere. Those are the people that I relate to. I don’t want to make music for some dude who’s just sitting there staring at his shoes thinking it’s cool to be at a show,” Clack said.
As Clack continues, it becomes clear that he’s somewhat of a musician purist, a devotee of the principle of Occam’s razor, preferring simpler explanations to more overly analytical, music journalist-friendly sound bites.
Perhaps that’s what the indie music scene needs: a spazzed-out bus full of multi-instrumental Southerners to uncross the arms of the urban scene-it-alls and treat kids in Missoula, Mont., and Visalia to music they appreciate.
“I want to make music for anybody, for people that are in small towns; they tend to like it. It’s not about getting rich. It’s about playing; I want people to listen to our music,” Clack said.