The Preserve

The band’s CD-release party is scheduled for Oct. 23 at The City Club of Houma

Published: Friday, August 28, 2009 at 3:00 p.m.

How does a southwestern U.S. band hailing from the desert have its feet still in the marshes of south Louisiana?

The members of Phoenix-based The Preserve keeps a close eye on the vanishing coast.

“I have always dreamed of having an album of original music especially one that is lyrically and musically rooted in the place where I grew up,” said Kyle Domangue, the band’s guitarist who graduated from South Terrebonne High School in Bourg.

Domangue, who studied architecture at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, said he would often arrange acoustic versions of popular songs and play them at local venues in Houma, including La Casa del Sol, Castalano’s Deli, Bubba’s II and others. After graduating from LSU in 1993, Domangue practiced architecture in Houma with Houston J. Lirette Jr. The South Terrebonne High School product had worked on the Bayou Terrebonne Waterlife Museum, Tropical Harbor Townhouses, Synergy and Hibernia banks, and others.

However, after losing his wife, Diana Waguespack Domangue, in 1999 to cancer, Domangue decided “to find a renewed reason for living” in Phoenix.

While getting used to the desert air, Domangue met Lafayette native Jacques Billeaud. The two had an appreciation for Louisiana music and enjoyed reminiscing about their south-Louisiana childhoods.

They quickly learned they had many of the same experiences, and they both loved to play music.

“This was the beginning of The Preserve,” said Domangue who has lived in Phoenix for eight years.

The Louisiana duo teamed up with Arizona natives Chris Fiscus and Pat Flannery to round out the quartet.

Domangue, who started writing songs at 14, said Fiscus, who played percussion at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Ariz., “loves all kinds of music” and enjoys Louisiana music “due to its rhythmic and interesting beats.”

Domangue said Flannery is “a walking dictionary of musical history” who can play “almost any stringed instrument imaginable.”

The band’s name came from its love of the Arizona mountain preserves and the alligator preserves in the marshes of Louisiana.

“The name seemed to fit in both regions,” Domangue said.

The Preserve’s debut CD, “The Set Up,” features songs inspired by camps along Bayou Decade, fishing trips to Last Island and fun times experienced in Cocodrie.

Domangue describes the music as fun, happy and upbeat with “a wide variety of roots Louisiana and Mississippi Delta blues sounds.”

He said while the band is playing in the deserts and mountains of Arizona, they will always preserve the memories and sounds of the swamps and waters of south Louisiana in their hearts and in their music.

The band’s CD-release party is scheduled for Oct. 23 at The City Club of Houma, 7861 Main St. In November, the band will be uploading its music to CD Baby. iTunes and Napster.

For information, visit www.preservetheband.com or www.kyledomangue.com.


STORY LINK:
http://www.dailycomet.com/article/20090828/ENTERTAINMENT/908259968?Title=Southwest-band-still-has-its-feet-in-south-Louisiana - www.dailycomet.com

The Preserve
CD details

Name: The Setup

Content: 13-song collection that combines roots rock and Mississippi Delta Blues with heavy doses of a Cajun- and Zydeco-influenced sound.

Background: The songs reflect growing up in southern Louisiana, of bayous and 'swamp things' and cane trucks and ordering “setups' in Zydeco clubs.


Making the CD: The Preserve recorded the disc over nearly a year of sessions with Mike Bolenbach at Full Well Recording Studio in Phoenix. The disc was mastered at SAE Mastering by Roger Seibel, who has worked with well-known artists including Death Cab for Cutie, Jimmy Eat World and Liz Phair. Bourbon Street regular Waylon Thibodeaux joins the band on fiddle for three of the CD's tracks.



The parties
Arizona: 8 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 3, 2009, at Club Red in Tempe.
Louisiana: 10 p.m. Oct. 23 at The City Club in Houma. The band will be joined that night by Thibodeaux.


The Preserve also is active on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and Sonicbids.
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The Preserve's first CD is "The Setup." A CD release party is scheduled
Oct. 3 at Club Red in Tempe. The band plays in Louisiana Oct. 22-24.

Drummer sticks with story that
editing experience enhances art

By Jim Gold

When the going gets tough, the tough beat a drum -- or bang a musical keyboard or slap a guitar.


Musical therapeutics is a bonus that comes with playing for a newspaper-rooted Cajun-roots-rock band that has reached the threshold of a breakthrough.


Chris Fiscus is a 20-year reporter and editor who turned PR agent. He still covers a beat, but now it's as the drummer in The Preserve.


Always a bit more than a grown-up garage band, The Preserve just released a professionally produced CD and will celebrate with a CD release party Oct. 3 at a Tempe, Ariz., nightclub. Band members will use their day-job vacations to play a weekend of gigs Oct. 22-24 in Louisiana. Details and music samples are at preservetheband.com.


"The whole CD project has been a much needed and welcome distraction," Fiscus said. "You're worried about business because of the economy. Good friends just lost their jobs because the quarterly earnings sucked. People you worked with for decades are suddenly out of work and have no idea what to do next. Given all of that, being able to walk into the recording studio, put on headphones and beat the drums was an absolute joy."


The band includes:

-- Fiscus, PR director at Moses Anshell public relations agency in Phoenix, on drums, percussion and backup vocals.

-- Pat Flannery, Scottsdale editor at The Arizona Republic, on lead and rhythm guitars, bass, slide guitar and mandolin.

-- Jacques Billeaud, politics and immigration reporter at The AP's Phoenix bureau, on lead and rhythm guitars, bass, keyboards and accordion.

-- Kyle Domangue, principal and project architect at Davis architects in Tempe, on vocals, guitars, harmonica and songwriting.


Band members credit Domangue, the non-news guy, as the lead architect of The Preserve's music.


Band members work on pieces together, embellish what Kyle writes and add their own artistic touches while jamming at rehearsals.


The song-development process is where a newspaper editing background helps at least indirectly, Fiscus said.


"We're used to being in creative, collaborative environments," said Fiscus, whose last newspaper assignment was on The Republic's Page One editing team. "Dealing with a song or even a guitar part or drum track is like turning in a story. You might think it works, or even think it's possibly gold and then you toss it into the pot to be examined and -- it rarely comes out the same."


"That whole process was easier for us because we were used to having our 'art' criticized."



Background music

The Preserve grew out of The Containers, musically inclined journalists who came together to play for the annual Arizona Press Club awards banquet, Fiscus said. The old name parodied a Gannett-directed policy to limit jumps off the front page of The Republic, which it bought in 2000.


"Nowadays, we'd probably have some great names like "Phoenix Furloughs" or "Quarterly Projections."


Their musical pursuits turned more serious as they went from cover band to music originators. They needed a new name.

"That's harder than you might think, especially with the bazillion band names already taken," Fiscus said. The inspiration came from geography but it's meaning goes deeper.


"We were standing outside Jacques' house by the [Phoenix] mountain preserve (where we practice) and Pat said something like, 'look, we play right here by the preserve ... what about The Preserve?' ''


"The deeper answer is that we liked the idea too because it's important for us to have a "real. vintage. authentic'' vibe rather than trying to be a flash-in-the-pan sound."


"It worked in the whole idea of wanting to be like that favorite pair of jeans you slip on Saturday morning rather than the uber chic $200 designer jeans."


The feeling carries through in the music.


Kyle and Jacques have "swamp" upbringings and brought the New Orleans influence to The Preserve's sound.


The group held 36 recording sessions at Full Well Recording Studio in Phoenix.


The CD comes "at a time of so much angst and uncertainty with what is going on in newspapers, the industry, the economy and the world," Fiscus said.


"I really think that's part of why the CD turned out so upbeat and powerful - we channeled a lot of emotions we were dealing with into the music.''


There apparently was plenty of personal angst balancing work and family life, too.


"We practice every Tuesday night which is a challenge enough with day jobs," Fiscus said. "But during the recording sessions and especially at the end when we were finishing it up we had several weekends of Friday-Saturday-Sunday back-to-back-to-back at the studio, plus gigs to try and help pay for the process."


"We also owe all of our wives day spa retreats."


Family, friend and business acknowledgements, along with more information and sound samples, are on the band's Web site, preservetheband.com.

LINK:
http://www.jiltedjournalists.com/Mind___Body.html - jiltedjournalists.com

10/3: Local band The Preserve carves out funky sound

by Larry Rodgers - Oct. 2, 2009 02:59 PM
The Arizona Republic

The Preserve, a new Valley band that combines roots rock and delta blues with a Cajun- and Zydeco-influenced sounds, will launch its debut CD, "The Setup," on Saturday, Oct. 3, with a Tempe concert that also features four other acts.

LINK:
http://www.azcentral.com/thingstodo/music/articles/2009/10/02/20091002preserveparty.html


The Preserve's four members - two longtime Arizonans and two south Louisiana natives - have carved out a funky, original sound with the new album.

Rocking songs like "Rice & Gravy" and "Gotta Be By You" showcase the rootsy vocals of Kyle Domangue and guitar work shared by Jacques Billeaud, Pat Flannery and Domangue.

Drummer Chris Fiscus drops some booming percussion into the boogie-heavy "Hot Sauce" and the driving "Voodoo Bayou."

Also on the bill at Club Red/Red Owl complex, 2155 E. University Drive, are the Plump Tones, who also will be celebrating the release of a CD, "Brown Chicken Brown Cow."

The Preserve will be onstage at 11 p.m., and the Plump Tones will perform at 9 p.m.

Also performing will be George Hughes (8 p.m.), Ben Hall (8:30) and Hello Swindon (10).

Details: 480-496-4733 or preservetheband.com.

- The Arizona Republic