Epic Tantrum is an ambitious musical project, drawn out of the fertile musical minds of veteran Syracuse, New York-based guitarists/composers Paul Ligner and Peter LaVine, who pulled together some of their best material, brought in pals and fellow musicians Greg Ross (bass) and drummer Z (yes, he wants to be known simply as Z) to form the quartet and eventually birthed their double-album debut, Abandoned in the Stranger’s Room.
One side features original studio compositions, while the second CD captures the band’s live show with a number of songs that are not on the first CD.
“We actually kept tinkering with the record forever and ever. Finally, I said, ‘look, we could tinker with this for another decade.’ And I remember there was this famous artist [Leonardo da Vinci] who said that art is never finished, it’s abandoned. I said we have to just abandon this record and be done with it, and that’s where the name for the studio portion of the album came from. And the band has it’s own studio, in Paul’s house, called The Stranger’s Room, so that’s why we called the second disc that,” said Ross, from his home in Syracuse, where he is self-isolating during the Covid-19 pandemic, which also caused the band to cancel their CD release show and any forthcoming performances.
“As a band we were really excited to be done with the record and start writing new material and working on new stuff. But it took about five years to get to this point. Because it’s our own studio it’s not like we would all go in and record together all the time. A song would get started and we would bash away at it and it would eventually get finished, but in spurts and stops. We started playing shows in 2018, but it’s not like any of make a living from the band. It’s a lot more than just a hobby, it’s our passion, so we still wanted to put our best foot forward with the record. And that was our conundrum: yes, we want to put our best foot forward, but we also want to get it done, and trying to find that happy medium is tough at times.
“It got to a point where everybody felt like, ‘okay, this is something we are comfortable releasing.’ But I am sure, knowing certain members of this band as well as I do, that within a week of me sending it of to the plant to be manufactured, they were like, ‘oh, I wish we could change this or that.’ But you hear that all the time from bands.”
Ross joined the band in 2016, after much of what would become the Abandon side of the album had been written, with drummer Z coming in shortly thereafter. Epic Tantrum was more of a studio project until Ross insisted that they were good enough and the music compelling enough to start playing live, which they did started in 2018 as mentioned above.
“I’ve known Peter and Paul, the two guitarists in the band, for years. We all took guitar lessons from the same person here in Syracuse. Peter and Paul were the golden child students, they were the good students and I was not. That’s why I play bass. And that’s how we all met was through this guitar teacher. Years later, Peter and Paul would play poker on Thursdays with a bunch of guys and Peter kept inviting me out even though I didn’t know how to play poker. But finally, I went, hung out and had a good time,” Ross said.
“We did that for a couple of years, and they kept saying, ‘why don’t you come and jam with us.’ Now, I don’t like jam bands, so that term ‘jam’ just kept turning me off. And, quite frankly, Peter and Paul are master guitarists by every definition of the word. If they lived in New York City, or Toronto or Nashville, they’d be full-time gigging and touring musicians. And I came from a punk background, so I was a little intimidated about going into a room and playing with musicians who were much better than me. But the only way I am going to get better is to play with people who are better than me, and it makes for an interesting creative mix because I come at things from such a totally different way when it comes to arranging to the songs. I am always saying, ‘why can’t we simplify this and make it in 4/4 time,’ and they want to make it a weird signature and make it as hard as possible. I think we’ve now found that happy medium and that’s what makes the songs more accessible and interesting than they would be if it were one of the two extremes.”
LaVine and Ligner had been jamming out compositions since 2007, so there was plenty of material waiting in the wings for when Epic Tantrum was finally ready to make an album. Ross said that the process of creating new music has already evolved to be more inclusive.
“It was very much that Walter Becker/Donald Fagan Steely Dan dynamic where the two of them would write something and bring in Z the drummer to play something. Z would do four or five takes and leave. And then they would take those drum parts and tweak the songs to fit it, because Z is a very unique drummer. He is the most inspired, in-the-moment drummer in know. If he wants to go for something, he just does it, whereas I want to plan everything out in advance. When I joined, we sort of took all that they had and melded everything together with what I brought to the mix,” he explained.
“And now the process has changed where one of us will come in with an idea and then it gets passed around from person to person, we all make changes and add things to it and eventually a song comes out of that. Somehow, at the end of the day, the process always ends up with it sounding like something we would do, but not somebody else.”
Like most modern bands with varied influences, trying to bestow a singular genre or readily identifiable classification on Epic Tantrum is not only difficult for critics and listeners, but is a but of a pain in the butt for the musicians themselves. Progressive rock is the label most often affixed to the band, but even that falls short, as does trying to find bands they sound like.
“To me, prog as a term can be anything. A prog album can have a perfect pop song and then a few tracks later have this long, ornate, almost symphonic type song. We do sort of fall under the prog umbrella. We are also very quirky, so I don’t think we fall under any traditional prog banner. I don’t think there is anybody where you can say, ‘oh they’re like this.’ I think you hear all of our influences in our music. I think you hear Rush, you hear Steely Dan, the Porcupine Tree is in there, and some of the metal stuff that we like,” explained Ross.
“It’s a little all over the place, but to me that’s what prog is. I can say that if we had to have a definition, I would put us under ‘quirky prog.’ That’s what our publicist always says about us. Someone once said we’re the bastard child of Rush and Steely Dan, and I think that’s the best description of us that I can come up with. And not that I think you hear it overtly, but there are definitely some jazzy influences in there that I think an astute music listener is going to hear, but it is not going to affect the average person. So that’s kind of where the Steely Dan comes into it.”
Even though the paradigm for how music is consumed by most people has changed dramatically over the past decade from physical to downloads and now to streaming, the members of Epic Tantrum still felt it was important to release a full album, and release it with physical copies as well.
“The most powerful way to discover new music right now, both new music and even old music, is Spotify playlists. And Spotify playlists are driven largely by putting out singles, because that’s how you get on the daily charts and that sort of stuff. So, from a perspective of what we should have done, we should have just put out a bunch of singles beforehand and then put out the album. I understand why bands are following that model, because everybody who puts out music wants it to be heard and if that’s the best way to get your music heard, then it makes sense,” Ross said.
‘For us this whole thing just felt like such a cohesive package and we wanted to release it as a full package. And, because I am involved in the merch side of the business for my living, I know that CDs still sell at live shows. They don’t sell as much in other places, but they sell live. So, we wanted that. And for everybody in the band, I don’t think it felt real until we had a physical product in our hands, which I am sure is a generational attitude. Holding it in our hands made it feel like it was legitimate. Putting it online only just doesn’t have that same feeling. And because of the genre we’re in, I was aware that maybe the people who really love this type of music, those folks as well as metal fans, are still people that collect and want physical copies. So that was part of our decision.
“And the reason it’s a double album is when we started playing shows and I would listen back to the live recordings; I was amazed how different we sounded live than on record. It’s like two different beasts, or two different personalities. I wanted to express both those sides, so I pushed everybody in the band to The Stranger’s Room, which is the live side, and Abandon, which is the studio side. I also thought it was really kind of bold, obnoxious and audacious, whatever word you want to use there, for a band that no one has heard of, to put out a double album to start. It was sort of a statement. And then when we saw the artwork that Ioannis of Dangerous Sage had done for us it was a no brainer. The artwork sitting on my computer was cool but having it when we got it on the CD, it just brought everything to life.”
For more information on Epic Tantrum and Abandoned in the Stranger’s Room, visit www.epictantrum.com.
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, ON, who has been writing about music and musicians for 30 years. Besides his journalistic endeavours, he now works as a communications and marketing specialist. Contact him at jimbarberwritingservices@gmail.com.
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