When a young band releases a live album early in their career it can often seem premature. I mean, when your catalog is one or two albums deep, doesn't that seem a little hasty? It's like those "Greatest Hits" albums that come out three years after a band releases its first single. Give me a legacy kids and then we can talk.
But every so often, there are those bands that you really need to hear/see live to truly grasp what their "thing" is because studio work doesn't do them justice. One band that falls into that category is Dub Trio, which recently released its "early in the game" live album Cool Out and Coexist—a solid testament to being one of the most impressive live acts around.
Around 2003, guitarist D.P. Holmes, bassist Stuart Brooks, and drummer Joe Tomino came together in a little hamlet called Brooklyn and started playing out. It was Tomino who got Holmes and Brooks into dub music—a form of primarily instrumental Jamaican music that is rooted in reggae. According to Holmes, "We started out jamming and playing whatever we wanted. At the time we were listening to a lot of dub music, so that really was a big part of our sound." Though their drummer definitely influenced the sound it was outside forces that assigned the name Dub Trio. "We played weekly at this bar (without a name) and the crowd started to build and since we were playing a lot of dub music—and we were a trio—they put it on the board outside. We didn't have chance to name ourselves," says a resigned Holmes.
They might not have had any control in the name game, but Dub Trio had control in quickly creating a reputation for being a live juggernaut. After their first studio album was released (Exploring the Dangers Of) they had many a fan point out that while their recordings were good, it was the live show that got the masses moving. According to Holmes, "When we play live we perform with a lot of the effects and manipulations...a lot of people say they love the live show better.” Their second album, New Heavy, was a brilliant and often seamless meld of dub and metal. Yes, metal. "We play all kinds of different music and we all listen to a bunch of different things so it sneaks into whatever we write," explains Holmes. It was with that album that the band decided it wanted to experiment with using a vocalist; at the top of their list was Mike Patton (Faith No More, Tomahawk, Fantomas) who, serendipitously, shared a mutual friend with the trio. That friend was kind enough to pass on Patton’s e-mail address.
Holmes—still somewhat shocked— recalls, "Not a lot of people would even answer an e-mail from someone they don't know. For some reason he had heard of us and he agreed to sing...which is crazy." Patton not only sang on the standout track, "We're Not Alone," but included the song on the self-titled album of his own project, Peeping Tom. He topped that by asking the trio to open for him PLUS be his backing band on tour. "Opening and playing (as) Peeping Tom we'd be tired and then have twenty minutes to rest and do an hour and half more. That was crazy but (we) enjoyed it," says Holmes.
Which takes us back to that live juggernaut thing…
With their work in Peeping Tom—a meld of Patton's eclectic take on pop, rock, bossa nova, hip-hop and the kitchen sink—and their dub and metal leanings, it was time to put something out that gave an aural explanation of what Dub Trio does on stage. "The studio records are its own thing because a lot of the things we do in the studio we don't do the same way live. When we do it live it's more exciting and spontaneous," explains Holmes. And it's the same way for the fans. At a recent Brooklyn show the crowd turned from bobbing their heads and swaying to the "irie" sounds of dub to starting a pit that would make a Mastodon fan proud—all within the same song. Surprisingly enough, it made perfect sense in this live setting.
So the moral of the story is this: No matter which direction the musical winds blow for the members of Dub Trio, they're going to keep on doing it their way—live and with an undercurrent dose of dub. "We always come from the dub aesthetic. Like it will be really heavy and then it might break down into something a little more stripped down," Holmes says. "We decided to just play whatever we want and keep doing that. It's about the music." Hey, as long as they keep wowing them on stage they can do Klemzer Booty Bass and it will be all good.
--Erika Clarke
Photo: Trish O'Hara
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Cool Out and Coexist is available now through ROIR Records.
http://www.dubtrio.com
http://www.myspace.com/dubtrio
