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Q&A with Nick Combs
Nick Combs, keyboardist for The Late Night Callers, was born and raised in Shawnee and went to college at what is now the University of Central Missouri. The local musician, who lists The Replay Lounge patio and Liberty Hall as his favorite Lawrence venues, talked about his musical inspiration and learning to play a new instrument after playing drums for most of his life.
Q: What inspired you to go from drums to keyboards?
A: At the time, I was just kind of burned out on drums and I'd been playing drums for 20 years. I was inspired to learn a new instrument and approach it from a different angle. It wasn't the greatest thing that I've done
THURSDAY, AUGUST 16, 2012
musically in forever. It gives me a new perspective on music. I'm definitely still a drummer at heart - it's what I feel connected to the most. Keyboards open up a whole new world in a lot of ways.
Q: What bands influence your own music?
A: At the moment, bands that are really super influencing me are bands like Pineapple Thief, Dredge, People in Planes, Hours... Jimmy Echo is fantastic. I've been listening to a lot of Mute Mouth lately, too. A band we played with a few weeks back at the El Paso called the Royalty are really great. They have a great vintage, new wave thing going on. The Tantrums, love them for their Motown influence that they've got going on. I'll listen to a little of everything.
See the band on October 12th at the Replay Lounge.
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The band got its start playing in Lawrence but now performs primarily in the Kansas City area.
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LOCAL MUSIC
The Late Night Callers, Krysztof Nemeth, Julie Berndsen, Ellen O'Hayer, Nick Combs, and Gavin Mac, consider their music "noir-a-go-go" because of its dark, vintage sound. Fans on the band dress in 20s era clothing at shows to match the band's aesthetic.
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RETURN CALLERS
NIKKI WENTLING
nwentling@kansan.com
Kansas City, but all of our friends and family are here. So any time we play, it ends up being a big crowd."
"We rehearse in Lawrence, the band started in Lawrence, so it's always been our home," Combs said. "We've played a more in
Nick Combs dances on stage to the rhythm of the drum beat, pounding his keyboard and looking out into the crowd of people wearing 20s style clothing in a Kansas City. Mo. bar.
Combs is the keyboardist for The Late Night Callers, a "noir-a-go-go" band that originated in Lawrence two years ago. Now, the Late Night Callers perform mostly in Kansas City, but the band is returning to Lawrence Oct. 12 for a masquerade party at the Replay Lounge, 946 Massachusetts St.
Combs describes the band's music as "noir-a-go-go," a vintage, dark, seductive sound in minor keys. Krysztof Nemeth, guitarist and founder of The Late Night Callers, set the tone for the band. He gained inspiration from his love of old, black and white noir films. He moved to Lawrence from Seattle and recruited Julie Berndsen to sing lead vocals for the band in 2010 after finding out that her musical tastes fell in line with his.
Berndsen grew up in Hutchinson and has been singing seriously since sixth grade. She said she's been in bands for most of her life, and would sneak into bars when she was in high school for gigs.
"The band I'm in now, it's definitely more adult, more noir, more dark," Berndsen said. "I pull a lot of my influence from Jazz. I love old vintage movies, clothes and anything surrounding that."
The Late Night Callers played at the Noir City Film Festival in San Francisco last year. They also recently played a gig in St. Louis, and have three shows in Kansas City this September. Combs hopes to continue playing big shows and eventually become a full-time band.
"We've all been in bands our entire lives," Combs said. "We're by no means an old band, but we're in our later 20s and have the experience. We're past the point of wanting to hop in a van and eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for
weeks."
Combs said The Late Night Callers haven't broken into the college scene, but he's happy about the crowd that does show up. Some don the style of clothing that the band has worn to all of their live shows and has been recognized for.
"It's something we started doing because its what the music dictated to us. It's growing into its own thing now," Combs said. "We'll have people that look like they're straight out of the Roaring Twenties come."
To listen to The Late Night Callers or find their upcoming shows, go to latenightcallers.com.
Edited by Kelsey Cipolla
ART
Exhibit blends art, music and social media
ERICA STAAB
editor@kansan.com
Art takes a high-tech turn in a new exhibit at the Spencer Museum of Art.
sounding Circle, a project created by 2012 graduate Jason Charney, is far from the traditional art of the past. This technological, interactive, musical artwork is inspired by and made for the social media era.
When entering the exhibit, the participant walks through a heavy black current into a dimly lit room. The area is barren except for speakers, a screen and a microphone attached to two pedals on the floor.
"You are basically standing in the middle of a dark room sounded by sound," said Celka Straughn, the museum's director of academic programs.
Visitors also become participants, lending their voice to help mold the project into a song of voices. Questions on a variety of different topics appear on the screen.
By pushing down the pedal, the visitor records their answer, and is instantly rewarded with the reverberation of their own response turned into song. The visitor listens, as others responses are added in with their own.
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"I like that it challenges the idea of art being visual," Straughn said. "It puts more of your senses to use. Participating makes you part of a musical performance."
A project like this is not only inspired by our interactions with technology, but also completely
reliant on it, she said.
Charney found his muse in what has become an everyday occurrence for many.
"The inspiration for this piece comes from the experience that our generation shares in growing up with social media," He said. "When we make status updates and tweets, we broadcast little bits of ourselves as text out into the world, where anyone can see them. I think it's a very different experience having to actually say these bits of information out loud."
Charney, who studied music composition and theory, has been working on perfecting the computer program the exhibit runs off of since 2011.
it creates the background sound and has several different effects it applies to the incoming recordings," he said. "Much of the voice processing involved in Sounding Circle is controlled by random elements, so every part of the sound is different with every user."
While working on the project, Charney said it was a challenge for him to program. He spent the summer reprogramming the original from 2011 making it more complex and smoother looking and trying to make it run as seamlessly as possible.
Straughn is excited that participants can submit their own prompts via social networking. Using the hash tag #soundingcir-
cle, users can suggest questions and prompt ideas to be used with the project.
"I hope that the experience created gets people to look inside themselves, or if they don't participate, listen to the voices of the previous users who have entered its space and wonder who they are," he said.
However one chooses to participate and enjoy the art, Charney said there is something they can learn.
The exhibit runs through Sept. 30 in the INcube Studio.
Edited by Kelsey Cipolla
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Jason Charney's Sounding Circle exhibit features a screen with questions that people can answer. The responses are recorded and blended with other voices to create a song. Questions can be submitted through Twitter using #Soundingcircle.