Bison

While I was driving up to Lake Willoughby Lake a few weekends ago for a wedding, I tuned into Vermont Public Radio for the drive. I was digging the bumper music they were using between pieces and it turned out to be from their locally produced music show ‘Live from the Fort’. I’ve since learned that this show, available online, features live contemporary music performances in a variety of genres and styles. I was lucky enough to catch Bison recorded at the Skinny Pancake in Burlington.

I was into their sound and wanted to get to know more about them, so I reached out with a few questions and was able to learn what makes Bison, Bison.

Bison consists of Charlie Hill (guitar/vocals), Fabian Gaspero-Beckstrom (drums), and K.C. Dressing (bass). Charlie and K.C. are both originally from Northern New Jersey and moved up to Burlington to go to UVM in the Fall of 2012, whereas Fabian is much more local, growing up in Southern Vermont. Despite the fact that Charlie and K.C. grew up 15 minutes away from each other, they never knew each other before college. Charlie and K.C. have been “jamming” together since 2013, and Fabian joined in 2014.

Bison is heavily influenced by the space they occupy in New England. It’s clear that their music has been influenced by the area in which they work. According to K.C., “The Burlington music scene is so incredibly diverse, there’s everything from jam bands to modern hip-hop, free jazz, shoe-gaze, you name it there’s a band in town that plays it.”

“Burlington is a really unique microcosm of influences, and just by being there, the music we’re making is something none of us really ever thought we would be making. The scene in Burlington and the fans specifically are just so supportive regardless of what it is that you’re doing, so it allows us a sense of creative freedom that I think is hard to find anywhere else.”

Be sure to keep an eye out for Bison in the future – it seems as though they’re just getting started. “Once I’m back in town we plan on picking right where we left off writing new music and playing as many shows as we can. Besides that, we recorded an album in July, so we’re looking forward to getting that out probably in December or January.” - The Take Magazine

It’s not often one comes across a group of musicians whose music is as tasty as their band name, but Bison is one of those rare bands.
Student band Bison performs during the March 16 battle of the bands. The group was chosen to open for The Head and the Heart at SpringFest. JEN RAMIREZ/The Vermont Cynic
[/media-credit] Student band Bison performs during the March 16 battle of the bands. The group was chosen to open for The Head and the Heart at SpringFest. JEN RAMIREZ/The Vermont Cynic

The self-described nomadic disco punk rockers will be opening this year’s SpringFest April 30 for Madaila and The Head and the Heart.
The band consists of junior K.C. Dressing on bass, senior Charlie Hill on guitar and vocals and junior Fabian Gaspero-Beckstrom on drums.
Bison’s intern, Sage Hahn, often accompanies the trio and occasionally provides synth support.
Bison made their way to the finale of Battle of the Bands March 16 and won a close victory over two other UVM bands, B.U.M.F. and Squimley and the Woolens. The win gave them the opening spot at SpringFest.
The group started playing two years ago. Hill and Dressings, both from New Jersey, met at UVM and were soon joined by Gaspero-Beckstrom.
They played their first show together at Slade Hall, the environmental co-op on Redstone Campus which is now under construction.
Since then, Bison has been gathering fans and playing more live shows.
Each band member finds inspiration in various sources. For Dressings, inspiration comes from post-punk, synthwave and “anything in between,” while Gaspero-Beckstrom simply said he “listens to some weird stuff.” For Hill, inspiration can even come from performing. “Sometimes I just write about what I see on stage,” Hill said in a Oct. 5 Cynic article.
Their expansive influences can be heard in their music. Songs like “Plug” float along beautifully with a mellow intro, while others, like “YFIO (You’ll Figure It Out)” start off sounding like an Alt-J cover and quickly morph into something more funky and energetic.
The name Bison came to Hill during a wildlife conservation class where he said he learned about the American bison.
The animal’s tragic history of near-extinction in the mid-19th century due to overhunting was significant to Hill, he said.
However, the American bison has since had a successful comeback, Hill said.
The band even said they enjoy eating bison. “It’s pretty sweet to eat though,” Dressings said.
Bison will play nine shows in April including concerts at Sterling College, Stampede Fest in Winooski and, of course, SpringFest.
They will also have a residency at Radio Bean for the next month. Fans can catch them every Monday with the likes of Guthrie Galileo, Squimley and the Woolens and Hello Echo.
SpringFest “will be for sure be the biggest stage [we’ve played],” Hill said.
Bison has something special planned for their SpringFest performance, “something to keep it weird and different,” Hill said. - The Vermont Cynic

It feel like a million years ago now, but try if you can to remember back to the halcyon days of the 2015 Democratic primary. At one point, due to a DNC security glitch, a Bernie Sanders campaign staffer downloaded some of the Hillary Clinton campaign’s proprietary data. This scandal seems quaint compared to everything that happened after, but at the time this was a big deal.

For a week or so, that is. Then the news cycle moved on. But some people didn’t get to move on with it.

Singer-songwriter Charlie Hill was not one of those people. But at the time, he was roommates with a Bernie campaign staffer. And while most of America was indulging in schadenfreude, he saw how the episode impacted real people on the inside. With the media and Clinton’s people out for blood, the staffer’s entire team got summarily fired by the Sanders campaign. Many of them were blameless, but heads had to roll.

The incident inspired Hill’s band Bison’s rocking new post-punk song “Everything You Say and Do.” Lines like “All a sudden they’re all laid off, everything becomes undone” and “Everything you say and do has got to be locked down” directly come out of this political drama.

“It was a pretty unfortunate and close-to-home incident because I lived with my friend who was on the campaign and saw it happen,” Hill says. “The song is about fighting bureaucracy in a nitty gritty political system. Holding yourself and others accountable in order to find leverage against powerful authorities.”

“Everything You Say and Do” sways like a Talking Heads deep cut, a bit of Graceland jangle propelling hook after hook. It makes Hill the man behind two of 2017’s best songs, as he also wrote and sung his other band J. Bengoy’s summer jam “So Good (I Could Die).” Listen to the new track below, and follow the band on Spotify. - County Tracks