Beauxregard

Beauxregard is a five person music outfit from Fort Worth, Texas founded by J. Quincy Romine and Ryan Rhodes. The two of them had grown up together in the mean streets of the Mid-Cities between Dallas and Fort Worth. In the late 1990s through the early 2000s they had been in a band known as the Trophy Club. It was during that time they developed a certain propensity for writing music together. After the Trophy Club disintegrated, the two of them spent a few years all but completely out of the local music scene (Romine was for a brief time in the Denton band ‘Sarah Sees Divers’ in 2002). In the autumn of 2004, they began to write songs together again on a leisurely basis. Over the course of the next year they continued to hone their song writing chops. In the winter of 2005, Rhodes and Romine decided it was time to get serious…

The first recruit to enlist was longtime friend and former Trophy Club band mate, bassist Jonathan Toles. The second was, at the time, a complete stranger to the band, named Guy Fitz (Fitz would end up being monumentally important to the early stages of the band’s song writing development). Due to certain learning experiences the four of them gleaned from past ventures in music, they decided it was best to really take their time, practice relentlessly, and develop their sound together before going public with this new project. During that 10 month period, Romine and Rhodes identified certain needs that would make for a more well-rounded live presentation. In short, keyboards were a must, and a female backing vocalist would be a major plus. As it turns out, Jon Toles’s then fiancé (now wife) Laura Watkins (Toles), was just the person to fulfill these needs. In the summer of 2006, she and drummer Curtis Tinsley would be the fifth and sixth bullets to round out this electro-clash six-gun. On September 30th, 2006 at a place called the “Bell House” in Dallas, Texas, they played their very first show. Sadly, just three months later, Guy Fitz left the band to pursue a graduate degree.

In March of 2007, guitarist Daniel Robertson (of Help! Saint Anna) was recruited to fill some rather large shoes. That summer the band entered the studio for the first time. It was there that two (of what would end up being six total) songs were recorded for the band’s first release, “When Balloons Were Sleeves”. The 2008 EP released on Lion Dog Records received great praise from local publications Dallas Observer and Fort Worth Star Telegram. Daniel has since moved on to persue his professional goals.

Beauxregard is working to soon release its first full length album called “Gryphoemia”. This endeavor is seen by the band as a sort of cathartic culmination of many years of hard work. Unlike many bands who directly draw their influence from other bands and/or musicians, the inspiration for “Gryphoemia” is primarily drawn from Rhodes and Romine’s love for classic cinema (namely epic westerns), as well as a variety of historical and literary influences. That said, this album is certainly not without its many musical influences, with styles that range anywhere from turn of the last century tin-pan alley to late 1970s electro-clash post-punk. The end result is an epic rock opera concept album with a common “fil rouge” running through every song, from a hopeful beginning to a sad and lonely (and rather loud) end.

This is Beauxregard…