[Editor’s Note: On February 16, Michigan-based band Frontier Ruckus released its sixth studio album, titled On The Northline. Below multi-instrumentalist Zach Nichols discusses how The Elephant 6 Recording Company influenced him, the band and their new music. Elephant 6 is a collective of independent bands and musicians centered around Athens, Georgia. Notable bands associated with the collective include the Neutral Milk Hotel, Apples in Stereo, and of Montreal.]
Before touring the country with Frontier Ruckus, my longest road trips were Elephant 6 pilgrimages I took with friends in the summers of 2005 and 2006.
We drove from Lansing to NYC to see The Olivia Tremor Control [see Black Foliage: Animation Music Volume One] play the Bowery Ballroom, where I saw my musical heroes Scotty Spillane playing trumpet and Julian Koster playing singing saw (a first for me). I really wanted to do the kind of thing they were doing—adding interesting aural spice to already fantastic songs. My first thought was, ‘I want to do that.’ My second thought was, ‘Hey, I could probably do that.’
On the second trip, a college friend and I drove down to Athens, Georgia to attend Popfest and interrogate Davey Wrathgabar (performing as The Visitations) about a band he was in called Fable Factory that had an amazing song called, “Eyesight, the Cyclone”. And there, I got to see one of my favorite bands at the time, 63 Crayons [see Good People]. Did they have a theremin at that performance? I can’t recall for sure, but I do remember that had someone on noise, i.e. twisting knobs on what looked like a mixer. If they had replaced the theremin with a noise mixer, it would have made sense because their theremin player made dramatic warbles in lieu of melodies anyway. It worked for them (again, check out Good People), but very quietly I thought to myself, ‘I don’t want to be doing that.’ Because in between those two trips, I had borrowed my dad’s hand saw and started playing in Frontier Ruckus.
When I’d gotten my hands on a saw, I learned to play it in my dorm room by hitting it with a Sharpie. I tried to parse what Koster and other sawyers were doing in the scarce and blurry pictures I could find of them playing it. I was making some far-out noises, but I really wanted to be able to play melodies, harmonies, counter melodies….and at some point in the middle of the night, I got it. I was playing “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” “Hot Cross Buns,” and along to whatever song they were playing on East Lansing’s The Impact 89FM. I was introduced to a new shudder-inducing learning curve when I got a bow (and here I’d like to thank my neighbor in the dorms: thank you, Tony), but I more or less figured it out when I met another Elephant 6 enthusiast. Online.
That year, Facebook had bloomed into existence for students at MSU. At the time, it was an intra-collegiate website where you stalked and were stalked by classmates. I found Matthew [Milia] by searching for key terms “singing saw” and “melodica,” another instrument I’d recently acquired (and as with saw, I certainly was not exactly proficient in). There was just one search result, so I clicked on his name. It said of all things, that he was looking for a singing saw player (amongst other instruments) for his band, Frontier Ruckus. And so I messaged him and later that week I was auditioning with my saw and melodica on Frontier Ruckus co-founder Davey [Winston]’s porch in Ann Arbor. That was in the spring of 2006.
Nineteen years later, we released this record On the Northline. And no, I don’t think anyone would confuse it for an Elephant 6 release. Instead, it’s its own thing. A record where not for the first time, I’ve been lucky enough to realize my 2005 aspirations and add that spice to fantastic songs. All I can hope for is that there’s someone out there I’ve inspired, hitting a borrowed saw with a permanent marker late into the night—at least until they hear their neighbor knocking at the door.
Read our review of Frontier Ruckus’ On The Northline
Zach Nichols
Contributor
Zach is a a multi-instrumentalist in Michigan based band Frontier Ruckus
