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Chill Fantastic
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Boulder Based Jam Outfit Scores at The Fox
posted by Dustin Huth on 12/06/2007
In the alley behind an old downtown-Boulder house-turned-apartment building, the faint sounds of drums and electric music could be heard rolling slowly through the darkness. It was quite chill.
The music kicked it quietly with the other noises of the night and approached passersby casually, as if to say, “Yo, bros, how’s it goin’? You maybe wanna groove on this beat for a little minute?” The music was the music of Chill Fantastic, the latest band to bare fruit in this fertile jam landscape known as Colorado.
Inside the band’s apartment, the music was louder and there was an inflatable elk head on the wall. There were mixers, speakers, a drum kit, chords, cables, wires, more instruments, posters of Trey, UM, Moe, The Disco Biscuits, Jam in the Dam. This was where the work got done. There was a focus to this room, and the band was focused as they worked out the details of a new song during one of their last practices in preparation for their debut headlining performance at The Fox Theater on Thursday the 6th.
“Okay,” said Keyboardist, Paul Wierdak, “I’ll do like, ‘1-2-3-4,’ and then we’ll change.”
They tried it again. It was good.
If it had to be categorized, Chill Fantastic’s music would be some form of electro-trance-dance-jam-jazz sounding creation with a heavy-handed slap on the ass from the funk section, complements of George Clinton. At their shows, they lay out an intricately textured sonic landscape through which one can weave one’s own brand of dance movements for hours at a time. It is a sound that is at once chill and fantastic.
This is a young band that’s got something and maybe they don’t even know what it is yet, exactly, but whatever it is, it’s gotten them from playing house parties to headlining The Fox in about the same amount of time as it takes the Earth to do a quick lap around the sun.
“We started playing about a year ago at house parties,” said guitarist, Jeff Lordan during a short break from practice, “Mostly at our friend, Molly’s house, and then our first show was actually February 20th at The Republic of Boulder, for a Mardi Gras party.”
When asked to what they attributed this rapid climbing of the ranks, Jimmy Fred Sullivan, drummer for Chill Fantastic, had one word,
“Voodoo,” he deadpanned. Everyone was silent. Then the band broke into a fit of laughter.
In addition to whatever supernatural forces may be at work, it seems that Chill Fantastic has grown rapidly and steadily because they are talented, they work hard, they perform constantly, and they throw one hell of a mean dance party.
“Going to our show is like watching one of those 8 minute jazzercise videos, like 8 minute abs, but it lasts like 2 hours or longer,” philosophized Sullivan, “so think about how many times 8 goes into 2 hours…That’s a lot of times.”
Another thing about Chill Fantastic that keeps each show exciting is that they leave plenty of room for improv within the structure of each of their songs.
“We do a lot of improvisation,” said Sullivan, “which makes a lot of what we do somewhat different every time that we do it. So that keeps it fresh for the crowd, and sometimes we don’t even know what we’re doing, so it kind of progresses us, so it can be really great and actually we get a lot of new song ideas from that.”
And that’s why it’s important to be careful when using the term “Jam band” to categorize a group like Chill Fantastic. There is an incredible amount of diversity within the groups that are considered jam bands, from bluegrass jammers like Yonder to progressive rock jammers like Umphery’s McGee, to more electronic influenced stuff like STS9. The term “jam band,” should be used more to refer to a band’s approach to writing and performing music, than to categorize the end result.
Sure, Chill Fantastic sound more like The New Deal than like Led Zeppelin, just as an example, but that’s not to say that during their next improv jam, they won’t stumble onto a tasty Zeppelin melody and explore it for the better part of 20 minutes.
“There are a lot of influences,” said bassist, Michael Koenig during a short break from practice. “We’re trying to branch out. We’re trying to develop our own sound right now.”
Last Thursday, when Chill Fantastic was playing at Trilogy, and the dance floor was packed solid with all kinds of crazy legged dancers dancing their dances, someone at the back leaned over to her friend and said that they sounded a lot like The Disco Biscuits.
“That’s one of the criticisms is that we sound too much like our influences, which, you know, sometimes we do,” admitted Koenig, “But I think we’re at a point right now where we’re starting to find our own voice, so, we’ll see where it takes us.”
And with that exploratory mentality, the only thing that can limit Chill Fantastic is its own imagination.
“May I add something?” asked Sullivan, taking the voice recorder, and speaking into it as though his words were being broadcast in real time, “On the record, we are Bro-bots sent back from the future to combat global warming by being so chill.”
It doesn’t seem like there will be any shortage of imagination in Chill Fantastic’s future.
“I think a lot of it is just playing more often with each other, and getting to know each other,” said guitarist, Jeff Lordan, bringing the conversation back to the point, “not necessarily talking about it, or having many discussions about it, although that does happen from time to time, it’s just becoming more comfortable playing with the other people, and naturally that individual sound just comes out.”
And in the year that they’ve been together as a band, Chill Fantastic has come a long way along that path.
“I know when we first started off, we had to focus on what [we] were trying to say to each other,” Remembers keyboardist, Paul Wierdak, “and now I’ll look at Jeff and we know...okay, we’re going to change here, or I look at Mike, change the base line, or look at Jimmy, like drop to just the bass. There’s a lot of things that we do now, where we look at each other and we just have a feeling about it more than anything.”
To listen as the musical chemistry continues to develop right before your ears, you can catch Chill Fantastic headlining The Fox, tonight, December, 6th. Doors open at 8:30. 21+. It is also rumored that a certain man named Saxon, from STS9 fame will be helping with the lighting. Don’t forget to put on your dancing shoes. |
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