The Klapp

The relationship between a bar band its crowd can be a delicate and twisted thing. On a good night, the crowd, after a wary first-set courtship, eventually presses the band, a steaming mass swaying and bouncing to the beat. On a bad night, the dance floor becomes a no-man’s land — the crowd and the band locked in a hate-hate relationship.

At the Pickled Onion on Rantoul Street, The Klapp requires no courtship.

The crowd, including many Endicott College students, moves right onto the dance floor even as the band stets up its “wall of sound” — 180 speakers in 22 separate cabinets. Fans stand in semi-circles of a few friends, talking over beers or colored drinks requiring a big plastic cup and a straw. The conversation doesn’t matter. They are marking time and marking their place. They jump with every tuning run, mic check and feedback fuzz pop.

“They’re just chill. They’ve got a good beat,” offers Hannah Watson, 21, an Endicott student who’s seen the band numerous times and in various incarnations since its embryonic stages at Endicott open-mic gigs three years ago.

Clearly, The Klapp has a big home-field advantage and it’s not something the band squanders.

From the opening riffs, the crowd starts moving. Some launch into an outright jumpy, twirling dance. Others move in a more stationary bob and weave.

With Lauren Kapp’s blonde tresses flying, her lead vocal alternately soaring over the band’s mix, then rumbling to its deepest registers and then delivering staccato rap and Gabe Rossi’s electric violin slicing ahead, the sonic equivalent of paper through a finger tip, the six-member Klapp relies primarily on a reggae-infused beat to keep its fans swaying and moving.

But for those willing to listen, the band offers much more than a cool, rubbery beat punctuated by vocal and instrumental flashes.

“We’ve had fans come up to us and say that our music has really helped them through a tough emotional time,” said Matt Munson, lead guitarist and vocalist over coffee at the Atomic Cafe.

“And then we’ve got fans who say, ‘I listen to your band and all I want to do is drink,’” says rhythm guitarist Clay Austin.

Munson laughs in agreement.
Any element of The Klapp — Kapp’s vocals, Rossi’s violin or mandolin, Munson’s often ethereal and occasionally trippy lead guitar and his complementary lead vocals, the rock-steady rhythm section anchored by drummer Casey Rillahan — could be the focal point of any successful local bar band.

The Klapp aspires to more, and to be more they know they need to have more.

“Anyone of us could go off and do independent projects,” said Kapp via a phone interview. “We all know that.”

The band as currently constituted appears ready to make a serious run at making it as a professional unit.

“We need to establish ourselves in New England,” Munson says over coffee at the Atomic Café with band mates Kyle Retallack, bass, and Austin. To that end, the band recently played the Parkside Lounge in New York and stopped touring locally for most of the fall and early winter to concentrate on writing new music.

“We’ve gone from rehearsing in muddy basements, getting drunk together and just jamming to our first professional rehearsal space in Boston that we all work for and pay for,” Munson said.

The band strives for a fun, collaborative rehearsal atmosphere. Many of their songs — the band plays almost entirely original music — come together during rehearsal. One member will have a guitar hook or a baseline. Then someone else offers something to play over or under the line. Often Kapp will go running to a notebook filled with lines and poems to select a sly lyric that will fit. Perhaps something like this from the band’s song, “Adulterous Threat”:

Gotta find something better
Possibly the same gender
So I go to the vender
Find a nice one, young and tender

Just can’t help the way a virgin makes you feel

I’m just a victim of all these adulterous threats.

“She’s got a notebook full of lyrics,” Munson says. “I’ve got napkins full.”

“When we do make songs, there are few times we really butt heads,” Kapp says.

The music reflects a rich and unexpected mix of individual members’ tastes and influences. The result makes the band hard to peg. Figure them for a reggae-funk infused rap band and Rossi pulls out his mandolin and starts trading licks with Munson, each taking lead in turn. Suddenly The Klapp turns rock-roots bluegrass with Gerry Garcia’s ghost running around behind Kapp’s supple vocals. Peg them as a roots-based rock and Kapp and Munson start trading rapid-fire rap lyrics verging on the dissonant and then the Klapp turns again, with Munson and Kapp calming down in complementary harmony with the rhythm section coming to the fore and then Rossi taking off with his violin.

“I try to give the band an emotional edge with my violin,” Rossi says.

The band, while a long way from jazz in sound, carries some of its structure. Each play - Beverly Citizen