Devil on my shoulder: With new live album, The Get Right Band to play Boojum
The Get Right Band (from left) is Jesse Gentry (bass) and J.C. Mears (drums) and Silas Durocher (singer/guitarist).
The hardest balance for a rock band is to straddle the line between honest emotions in your lyrics and also simply being able to get people to groove along to what beats and tones swirl around the wordplay.
It’s the idea of presenting your sincere, personal mission, while at the same time being able to radiate those deeply-held sentiments amid a room full of friends and strangers alike, all there for a gathering of joyous, vibrating souls — a melodic trojan horse, if you will.
Hailing from the same city of its latest release, “Live in Asheville,” The Get Right Band seamlessly finds that balance between creating meaningful art and being able to heat up a stage. Constructed in the classic power rock trio formation, the group has proven itself over the better part of the last decade to be one of the hardest working acts in the region.
The music of The Get Right Band is constantly being peeled back — as if it were one season culminating into the next — to where all that’s left to be exposed is the one thing that’s the catalyst for the sonic prowess and improvisational beauty of the trio — their hearts.
Smoky Mountain News: How much has the original intent of the group remained or stayed the same since the inception of the band?
Silas Durocher (singer/guitarist): A lot has definitely changed for us since we formed the band in 2011. I think when we first started, we were really focused on the party — getting everyone dancing, having fun, letting loose. That’s still part of who we are, but I also think we’ve matured since then. The world has gotten a little heavier and more serious — or maybe we’ve just become more aware of the heavy, serious stuff — and that has affected our songwriting and performances. We’re a psychedelic indie-rock power trio. There are still elements of funk and reggae in our music for sure, but I think we’ve honed in on more of a psychedelic rock sound, at least for now — who knows where the muse will lead us next?
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SMN: With the release of the live album, why was that the platform you wanted to showcase the band in this time around?
SD: Obviously, the major difference between a live album and studio album is the presence of an audience. When we play in front of an audience, especially one that is high energy and showing us a lot of love, we just get blasted with their positive energy — it’s palpable. We feed off that energy and give it back through our performance and it just becomes a positive feedback loop. That live album is just three guys, no extra layers, nothing to hide behind — just our songs, one take of us playing everything, and improvisation that only happened in that one moment.
SMN: What are you discovering these days about the guitar?
SD: Like a lot of people, the first bunch of years on guitar were about chops. I learned scales. I practiced my ass off. I learned how to play fast and loud and rock out. Then at some point — for a lot of us — there’s a shift and you start almost peeling back those chops. I started finding more ways to play outside of scales, to play more melodically, to simplify, to say something and express something with each note — to not worry as much about speed and blasting people in the face with sound. Guitarists like Ernest Ranglin and Oliver Wood became big influences on me. And then tone became a major obsession. So, I think a lot more about what I want to express, what emotions and ideas are appropriate for the song, and then about what tones evoke that most effectively, and in the most interesting way.
SMN: In an uncertain era of the music industry, what is it that keeps The Get Right Band together and inspired to push ahead?
SD: Music is our career, but we’d be obsessing about it even if it was just a hobby. There’s so much in the business of it that can side track you. The business changes constantly — a lot of people don’t give you the time of day or are incredibly flaky, there isn’t much money in it except for the people at the very top, touring can be difficult and exhausting. We have to think about those things because it’s our job, but we don’t focus too hard on them. We focus on how much fun it is to play a new song in front of our fans and get a great response. We focus on how much we like and respect each other as people and as musicians. We focus on our fans telling us that a certain song moved them or got them through a hard time or made them laugh or cry. That stuff goes a long way to keeping our spirits floating above all that crap in the music business.
Want to go?
Asheville-based roots/jam group The Get Right Band will perform at 9 p.m. Saturday, March 2, in The Gem downstairs taproom at Boojum Brewing in Waynesville.
For more information, visit www.boojumbrewing.com or www.thegetrightband.com.
