Friend of Mine

Original Article at:

http://cornellsun.com/section/arts/content/2009/09/23/student-artist-spotlight-one-trick-pony


September 23, 2009
By Peter Jacobs


One Trick Pony is a band of contradictions: A practice room in a frat equipped with an $850 rug, a group of northern boys with elements. of southern flair. But when seniors Matt Schmohl, Joe Stevens, Brendan McDonough and Tim Sommer get together to make music, their efforts. are precise, focused and illuminate a panache for songwriting that has steadily evolved over their years as students. In their practice room in the basement of the Delta Upsilon frat house, The Sun was treated to an intimate look at a One Trick Pony practice. The band kicked it off with the premier performance of the recently retooled track, “Interesting,” now featuring Schmohl’s shimmering guitar work, and highlighted for The Sun the variety of their sounds, playing the softer, more soulful “Dear Anne” and then the thumping rocker “Melville.” Along the way, we discussed the current state of popular music; what Ira Gershwin, Sean Kingston and One Trick Pony all have in common and, of course, the religious revelations of Wilco.

Sun: So, how did you guys meet?

Matt Schmohl: I lived in JAM with Brendan, so we had done a little bit of music together here and there. Then Joe had all these friends that I was friends with and one time we were sitting around in JAM and he was playing me original music. I was like “Wow, no one ever writes pop music.” Or, I should rephrase that: no one has ever approached me and played me something that I like. I’m usually pretty wary to join anyone’s band; if someone asks me to join a band it’s usually an instant “no,” but Joe had really interesting, original music. So, we started jamming, and then he asked me if I knew a drummer, and I said I played blues with this guy once.

Tim Sommers: I lived in JAM also, but I didn’t really know these guys at all, just knew them in passing, and he called me up sophomore year and said “Hey, my friend has been writing this music,” and I was like, as you said, instant “no.” But then Joe called me personally and I thought, alright, I’ll play with these guys.

M.S.: Constantly dodging those Red Hot Chili Pepper cover bands.

Joe Stevens: Brendan was a mutual friend of mine and Matt’s: I knew he played bass, and we needed a bassist.

Sun: Musically, did you guys mesh from the get-go?

J.S.: Sure. I mean, the first stuff we played was really bad.

M.S.: But we were so excited about it.

J.S.: I had never played in a real band before, except for seventh grade with a band called Ippikak where I would just write songs that sounded like Nirvana.

Sun: The word pop appears a lot on your Myspace. Is One Trick Pony a pop band?

J.S.: Yes, we are foremost a pop band. The same way that George and Ira Gershwin were pop music, the same way that Frank Sinatra was pop music.

Brendan McDonough: The same way the Beatles were pop music.

T.S.: The same way Sean Kingston is pop music.

M.S.: I would consider those to be our biggest peers I would say.

J.S.: Any other word just strays you away into a certain corner. If we say rock or folk, people have all these suppositions, and it's not always truthful because we have a lot of different sounds. So, by saying pop, it's like, “Fuck you, we’re not going to explain it.”

M.S.: That’s kind of the irony in our name too, because we draw from a lot of genres, from hip-hop to Woody Guthrie. We call it pop because it’s not classical music, it’s not straight jazz, it’s something people want to listen to.

Sun: Could you elaborate on the name One Trick Pony?

J.S.: My brother came up with the name. There are so many good things you can do with so many different types of music; it’s just so narrow-minded to be one thing.

M.S.: I don’t understand why bands corner themselves into one genre. A lot of times they’ll switch it up with each album, and critics will be like “Oh man, they totally changed their style.” We don’t even think about that when we’re recording.

J.S.: Also, we’re an act. I want our act to be variety. I want different people to have a different favorite song and all at the same time want to go to our show, even though there is definitely going to be lots of numbers that they don’t like.

M.S.: When we get together, there’s not a general consensus like “Oh, this is our hit song.” We don’t even go into practice talking like that, we just work from a large pool of stuff, a lot of stuff that Joe just cranks out ,and we’re constantly changing it up so that there is no favorite song: we’re just trying to play as much quality music as we can.

J.S.: The style of the things that I write change from month to month basically. Right now I’m trying to emulate the Beach Boys and no one would know that if they heard our songs. There is no conscious effort to do anything except play music that we’ve created. We’re not trying to make it a variety act, it just ends up being one.

Sun: Do you each have a favorite song you’ve done?

J.S.: They’re all my babies … My favorite song to play live though is definitely “Respect You.”

B.M.: That’s not my favorite, too hard to sing for me.

M.S.: Depending on the show atmosphere, if people want to rock out we play a song the crowd would be a lot more receptive to, like “That Apple.” Whereas if we have a small crowd, where people are sitting down or something, we could play “Dear Anne.” People have been really receptive to that in the past.

T.S.: A lot of times we’ll create a set list and then in the show be like, “We have these three songs [that] if we feel like the audience is really vibeing on this, we can throw that in there.” Kind of like [the way that] a DJ would play a song for girls if there were a lot of girls on the dance floor. I think it’s good to have some flexibility in your set list when you’re playing, so you can play to the audience’s needs at that point in time.

B.M.: I think “Melville” is my favorite to play live. Even it’s a bad show, it’s still fun to play live.

M.S.: Even if it’s [at] Willard Straight and we’re playing for a line.

Sun: I feel like there’s a story there …

J.S.: We were playing the “Battle of the Late Night Foods,” and we were saying it was our big break, sarcastically. It was very poorly run, as we were playing for the line as they walked in, but it was only in one room that the line passes through.

T.S.: It was kind of like a Disney theme park ride, where the line goes through different rooms and the line is kind of slowly moving. It’s like people standing still for a minute and then it moves for 30 seconds and then it moves for a minute again … So we’re in one room of that progression.

J.S.: Anyone would only [be able to] hear 30 seconds of one song, and to add on to that, we were scheduled to play at the very end, so no one was coming in. We were just playing in this room by ourselves, and it was one of the best practices we ever had. We played really well though, and that was the first time we played “Pickely,” so that’s why I like that show.

T.S.: And I was tripping balls.

J.S.: You played better though.

T.S.: Well, I was really into it.

Sun: What are One Trick Pony’s plans for this year?

B.M.: Look for us at the Nines or the Haunt soon.

J.S.: Going to our Myspace is the main way to get information, and if you see our name on a flyer, definitely check us out. What I’m trying to do with the band politically is [to] hibernate, and work on a lot of new stuff.

M.S.: The best times I’ve had have been playing for people who actually want to listen to your music, instead of at a party where everyone is fucked up and wants to hear AC/DC. I’m hoping we can network with Fanclub this year and get some shows, because [they] have been our best fans. The people who have come up to me and know our music are not people I see at the bars or I see out, they’re not even our closest friends. People who know our music best are people who want to hear new, original music.

Check out One Trick Pony online at:?http://www.myspace.com/onetrickponypop - Cornell Daily Sun

Fall 2009 issue available for download at:

http://www.slopemedia.org/magazine/magazine-issues/issue-6-fall-0/


Band Photograph highlighted on the table of Contents page, small blurb in page 5 article by Sameul Sveen


"One Trick Pony: Joey and the gang keep it catchy with the classic 4 piece band. You'll be dancing and/or falling in love with them while they're up lights doing 'their own thing, no college rock, not indie, not folk rock, just pop' "

- Slope Magazine

Article can be found at:

http://www.ithacatimes.com/main.asp?SectionID=3&ArticleID=9018

Written by Mark Tedeschi,

When a light bulb switches on in Ryan McGuire's head, it stays lit. "I'm an anti-procrastinator," he explains. "I had the idea about six weeks before we started."

Just over two months ago, McGuire, a 27-year-old Thursday-night DJ for WVBR, racked his brain for a way for radio to contend with its burlier cousins, TV and the Internet. "Radio is a powerful medium," he says, but of all three, "it probably has the least amount of interaction."

He came up with a solution in University of Rock, a reality-esque show that pits three Cornell-student bands against each other in six weekly challenges. By earning the most points, the winning band would be awarded six hours of professional recording time at Ithaca's Rep Studio. But first - auditions.

"We had 12 to 15 bands audition from 8am to 7pm on a Saturday in a jam studio on campus. They were pretty unique auditions... they played two or three songs and answered a list of random, wacky questions," McGuire says. "We knew they had to be talented, but also interactive enough for people to listen to weekly. We gave truth or dare questions, asked them to act out scenes from Willy Wonka, things like that."

Three groups made the cut: One Trick Pony, Weggalo Star, and Funk & Disorderly. The guitarist for Funk & Disorderly, Ethan Cohen, says, "As soon as I saw Ryan's shoes and his Spacecar, I expected the oddball questions."

While One Trick Pony has a sound that McGuire describes as "their own kind of country rock," its members call it simply, "Pop." They remained confident through the audition. "It was kind of dorky," remembers Matt Schmohl, guitarist and bassist for One Trick Pony. "We had fun with it. I think they liked our attitude."

Joey Stevens, One Trick Pony's guitarist and primary songwriter, explains how the band's history directed their approach to the contest: "We weren't trying to put on a show the second we got together - we were just trying to focus on playing." Their first gig wasn't until a year after they'd initially formed, and once they joined the contest, he says, they "dedicated pretty much the same amount of time that we always had to the band" and found that delicate balance between music and academics.

For the first challenge, each band was given 15 minutes to compose a song about a sandwich from Collegetown Bagels (check www.wvbr.com to hear what they came up with). In the second week, they had to produce an original music video.

Despite the four-day time constraints, each band used the video assignment to highlight their sense of humor and jocular approach to music. "We basically came up with it all in one night," says Ariyan Basu, guitarist, bassist, keyboardist and vocalist for Weggalo Star. "We finished at two in the morning... there was fake blood all over our attic."

After a "junk jam," a cover of Frank Sinatra's "Luck Be a Lady," a concert in an unconventional location, and a more standard concert on West Campus on April 29, the scores were tallied: Weggalo Star emerged victorious. "I'm very proud of all three bands," says McGuire. "Funk & Disorderly has an amazing sound... it can be hard to capture the full extent of the quality of [singer Magee Lawhorn's] voice on the radio."

Weggalo Star, ever modest, agreed. "We're all sophomores," says guitarist/keyboardist/vocalist David Vieira. "Half of Funk & Disorderly are seniors."

"It was so intimidating because they're all older and more established," Basu adds. "We saw One Trick Pony [perform] in October, and they were actually the reason we started a band. We said, 'These guys are awesome!'" Not only are Weggalo Star relatively new, they hadn't actually played for an audience before their University of Rock audition.

For now, the group will wait to cash in their prize so they can "hit the ground running" next year. And speaking of next year, McGuire says the voter turnout was easily enough to ensure that the contest will materialize again.

"All three bands will continue to be promoted on WVBR," he says. With all of the self-promotion, he says, "The whole six weeks groomed them toward being real rock stars."

Basu got to meet a real rock star at Slope Day last week. "[The Apples in Stereo's] Rob Schneider was like, 'Weggalo Star? How do you spell that? That's one of the coolest band names I've heard in a while, actually.'"

When asked to explain their moniker, Basu says, "Every show, we make up at least two stories about how we got the band name... we're going to leave it a mystery, I guess."

They're learning fast.

All three bands have fan pages on Facebook, and all three will be playing a "guaranteed to be a blast" University of Rock concert at 10pm this Saturday, May 9 at the Nines. - Ithaca Times