There was lightning on the horizon in Funkytown on Saturday, and the temptation was strong to hide out in front of the TV and wait till the storm passed. Art’s Goggle was happening, and there were bands all over Magnolia Ave., but Saturday marked the end of Spoonfed Tribes Kickstarter effort to raise more than $10,000 to fund their new album. To show their appreciation for their fans raising, the Tribe was throwing a free party at Lola’s on 6th.
A lot of bands are going the crowd-sourcing route to fund projects now that the big industry record deal concept is all but dead. Under the crowd source paradigm, the band puts up a page with how much money they need to raise, and what they plan to do with it. Rewards are offered for donations at different levels, normally something like a free copy of a CD, or an autographed photo. But Spoonfed is not a normal kind of band.
For $200 you get a Skyped puppet show, for $350 a sock puppet of the band member of your choice, for $2,000 you get to cut lead singer Egg Nebula’s hair on stage, and for five grand you get the band’s tour bus. Nobody took them up on the hair cut or the tour bus, but the band easily surpassed the $10,000 it was going for. The new album will be coming soon.
Bands and DJ played throughout the day, but I got there just before Spoonfed was about to go on. Out on Lola’s huge back patio there was a party in full swing, with a DJ, couples dancing, and little girl spinning a hula-hoop while a good sized crowd cheered her on. Then we heard the thunder, this time from the stage, and everyone poured inside.
Spoonfed Tribe consists of Egg Nebula (drums, flute, vocals), Jerome 57(drums, bass, vocals), Sho Nuff (guitar, vocals, drums), Kabooom (drums, vocals), and Goofahtts (drums, vocals). Tom Urquhart joined them on stage playing trombone.
Nebula once described their music to me as rhythmic therapy, and they’ve been practicing this therapeutic percussion since 1999. They’ve opened for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Blues Traveler, and even Galactic, but Saturday they were opening for a thunderstorm. As they started playing, the rain came down.
A Spoonfed concert is an experience, both sonically and visually. Egg had two microphones on stage, one that was run through a dramatic effects chain, and the other relatively clean. He would move between them while playing or vocalizing. Members of the tribe alternated between percussion and other instruments, and things changed from melodic to cataclysmic in a heartbeat. A projector painted the band and the back of the stage with moving, psychedelic images, while multicolored footlights illuminated everything in sync with the music. Toward the end of the show, Lucas White (who just returned from backing James Hinkle in Europe) joined the party on stage, on drums of course, because we only had five drummers up there and apparently needed more. The crowd was on its feet dancing until dangerously close to closing time. The rain broke as the house lights came on.
