by Jordan Minnick
When you join or start a band, it goes without saying that there are some things you just don't sign up for. The same holds for the friends and muscians of Omaha's Thunder Power. They've gone through three different lineup changes with about four different drummers since the band's beginning in 2006.
So, theoretically, you could make that three beginnings, as guitarist Alex Boardman points out to me while I sit with the band at a bird-shit-covered plastic fold-out table on a patio area outside of Romeo's in Austin, Texas. It's a family Italian restaurant that boasts a bar and a small stage, where they host musicians most every night. It isn't exactly the idealic, bustling Sixth Street bar you may have come to imagine in the self-declared Live Music Capital of the World. Romeo's seems to attract an older (if at all existant) bar crowd at its just-south-of-downtown location. But if it lacks anything as a venue, it certainly makes up for it with hospitality and generous $25 per-person band restaurant tabs. Their staff even apologized for all the bird shit and provided us with a table cloth.
The sometimes poppy/other times folky quintet is in the Texas capital making a Saturday show stop on their three-week tour. By the time they return to play the Nebraska Pop Festival on Aug. 11 at the Barley Street Tavern in Omaha, they'll have circled the entire western U.S. They're hoping to expose their music, namely their forthcoming first LP, Love, Death and the Cycle, (Slumber Party Records). While it wasn't quite ready to box-up and pack in the tour van, they're looking forward to its release by September.
"It's not an ideal situation," admits vocalist/guitarist Will Simons. "But, you know, couldn't cancel the tour."
The record they recorded at ARC Studios with A.J. Mogis in the spring was no longer the band's number-one concern when they found they'd be out of a drummer for the tour that was fast approaching. Once they were able to find one, jam session drummer Ian Mansfield, the band's concern shifted to teaching him all the old and new material for the upcoming six-week-stint.
"It was an ass-backwards kind of thing," Mansfield chuckled as the heat of the day gave way to a bearable evening. The statement really hits home as he goes onto explain that these shows on tour are actually the first shows he's ever really played.
Even though the show has started, the dinner crowd and limited space in the restaurant leaves us stationary at our outdoor spot, where we still get an earful of the live sets as the wait staff ambles in and out the doors between kitchen and patio.
While Thunder Power is preparing for their first LP, it's hardly their first release. They've already seen notable success with their previous two EPs and two split releases, as well as with a feature on Daytrotter and live sets at CMJ and SXSW in 2009. In a sense, it may seem like an LP has been a long time coming. Maybe so, but their EP releases proved to be just as lucrative, says Boardman.
As Saturday night's bar crowd gets loosen up on whiskey and whatever's on tap, it's time for the five musicians to take stage. And it's at this point that the venue's unique, live music provisions really set in. There's already a baby grand piano taking up half the stage, so the keys player, Ian Simons (also of Blue Bird), is left to just shrug and hop on the bench. Mansfield has no choice but to straddle his drum kit, back flat against the wall. And with no soundsystem, a sound check is kind of obsolete, but the "sound guy" listens to their guitars and bass sound off in accordance to the piano. Once the amp levels are determined to not shatter the mirror panels in the back of the restaurant, it's showtime.
The first portion of the set begins on the band's softer, slower-paced tunes, starting with "She'll Come Again," sung by Will Simons. There's a chatter from the intimate audience sitting at the bar and nearby tables that slightly carries over the music. But this ceases as the petite songstress Kacynna Tompsett gets into her vocal groove as the set picks up. Her throaty sing-song effortlessly loops around her lyrics, staccatoing every few words. To say the least, a set that began admirable at first became impressive. Tompsett locks every viewers' gaze at the crisp whims of her exquisite vocal strains and light bellows. By the time the performance winds down on "Night Creatures," it's loud and Tompsett's singing range has gone from refreshing to outright invigorating with the tune's closing shouts.
As she steps down from the stage, a woman hurries to compliment her singing. She takes it with a bit of a bashful smile. It's clear that the small handful of people who stayed for the whole set enjoyed themselves. And as a touring musician, that's what you have to remember. Because on a night like this, where the band only ended up making $24 off of tips, there has to be something else you take away from it all. Sometimes, what a band didn't sign up for is what makes it all worth while.
