The Rain

As Friday afternoon turns into Friday night, the Shadow Lounge in East Liberty is gearing up for another installment of the Hip-Hop Café Series, its weekly open mic event. Inside, the members of the Rain carefully arrange their instruments on the lounge's small, candlelit stage just like they have done every week for the past two years. Tim Clark places his saxophone and flute on the stands next to his chair. Deak, also known as David Hall, taps the cymbals of his drum set a few times while listening with a careful ear. Jim Barr places two of his huge, electronic keyboards on a stand while Scott Simon plucks at his guitar and DJ Huggy, also known as Jaron Lamot, tunes his bass.
While the audience takes their seats in the Shadow Lounge's lovingly worn couches, the members of the Rain play their first notes of the evening. As the house band for the Hip-Hop Series, they have three main responsibilities: warming up the crowd, accompanying the patrons who choose to bare themselves on the open mic and playing backup for the featured act. It is a big job and one that requires the band to keep an open mind as far as the diversity of their performance goes. The band is rooted in the concept of bringing together different elements to create something new and exciting.

On any given night, one can expect to hear some combination of jazz, funk, rock, hip-hop and soul. "When people ask me about what kind of music we play, I always say that I can't give a short answer because we do incorporate a lot of different kinds of music," says Clark. Certainly, this attempt at fusing genres has been attempted before, but the members of the Rain feel that what they produce has more excitement. "A lot of bands try to do different things and be versatile, but sometimes that results in something very average," says Clark. "I think we do a good job of making everything be very entertaining and enjoyable for the crowd no matter what type of music we're playing."

The Rain originated nearly four years ago with a small experiment. "I was recording some hip-hop tracks with a friend of mine and we wanted to do a live track," says Huggy. At the time, the majority of Huggy's musical experience came from working as a hip-hop DJ for events around Pittsburgh, but some high-quality musicians who went to Schenley High School fit that bill. "I got in touch with Deak to play drums and he got in touch with two of his buddies," says Huggy. "They formed the Rain Quartet and played on the track that I was working on."

The quartet decided to stick together and to continue playing as a band, but after a few months some changes began to take place. "The original bassist decided that he wanted to leave," says Huggy, who occasionally sat in with the band as a DJ. "Just as a joke, one day I picked up the bass, learned a song and played it at a gig. After that, I was just hooked. It was a passion and I realized, 'I could get down with this.'"

As the band's lineup shifted, Deak and Huggy did not have to perform an extensive search for replacements. Through playing as the Rain Quartet, they met saxophonist Clark, a Philadelphia native who moved here to study music at the University of Pittsburgh, and guitarist Simon, who had already made a name for himself playing with local R&B groups like MiSandz and the HutchSimon Project. Barr, a Central Pennsylvania keyboardist, studied music alongside Deak at Duquesne University. The current lineup abbreviated their name to the Rain.

Although the Hip-Hop Café Series is their usual gig and an opportunity for them to flex their improvisational muscles, the Rain also excels at playing within the confines of rehearsed, genre-specific sets. "Here at the Shadow Lounge, we might take a jazz tune, stretch it out and go all the way to a drum solo where I can do whatever I want," says Deak. "At the opposite end, we just did a show at Club Café where there were an exact number of times that we were going to do this or that and it was all very scripted."

Clark adds, "Maybe I'll have one show where I'm programming complex patches for my synthesizer. Then I'll have another show where all I need is a piano and I can play whatever I feel like playing."

Flexibility is a major source of pride for the Rain. "We can carry a show and entertain an audience, but at the same time we do a lot of shows where we are backing local singers like Hutch of the HutchSimon Project or Gene Stovall," says Clark. "Some bands are used to being the main focal point and they might be a little too overbearing, but we're able to step back and let somebody else do what they do."

This ability is evident as the open mic portion of the evening begins. Members of the audience step up to the stage when their names are called and give the band vague directions like, "I need something slow" or "I need something moderate." The band never bats an eye. They simply glance at each other, murmur quick suggestions and begin to play. The result, wh - Pittsburgh Pulp