SIGNAL PATH | LOUD AND CLEAR

The first time we heard about Signal Path was from a friend in Missoula, Montana, where the band hails from. Basically, a heads-up to “Check these guys out!” when they stopped in San Francisco in the midst of their Western U.S. tour. The second time we heard about Signal Path was from an acquaintance who saw their opening set on Friday, and insisted that we stop by their headlining gig on Sunday. Needless to say, the show that night was very impressive. This young quintet, with members originating from different parts of the country – Ryan Burnett (Denver; guitar), Ben Griffin (Memphis; percussion), Damon Metzner (New Orleans; drums), Dion Stepanski (Michigan; bass) and Nathan (New Orleans; guitar) - has been together less than six months, but you’d never have guessed it from their tight performance. Their instrumental, jazz- and funk-inspired electronica will send you reeling with tweaky effects and driving tempos, yet they’ve got a flowing groove that will get your booty shakin’.

Ryan, Damon, Dion, Nathan and Ben

Not to mention, they’ve got one of the best band names I’ve heard in a long while. But let their words speak for themselves…

MP: What’s the music scene like in Missoula?

A sunset in lovely Missoula, Montana.

Damon: Well, I’m from New Orleans and I have been playing quite a bit down there. But I decided that really I wanted to be able to focus on a single project. It seems that in a bigger city it’s a lot easier to get distracted with multiple projects. In order to make it you have to be in like ten different bands if you want to be a musician. Since there are so many venues and so many places to play, you can really overextend yourself.

Nathan: Since I’ve been there I’ve seen a lot of hip-hop artists, and the Red Room has DJs and all kinds of electronic music. You can go see bluegrass every Tuesday, you have us, and the punk rock scene is huge.

MP: Really?

Nathan: Oh yeah. There’s a huge punk rock scene in Missoula.

Ryan: For the five years that I’ve been in Missoula there’s been a lot of changes. Even the venues change hands a lot. All these things are happening musically, but as far as the scene itself goes, it changes so quickly it’s kinda hard to keep up. People literally will show up to a place to check out the scene, and go, “When did this place change over?” And that’s what’s pretty typical; these places come and go.

That would make it hard to set your roots…

Damon: But people are so stoked to see music. For example, I promoted a couple of shows in Missoula; we brought Umphrey's McGee there recently. It was a Monday night, and they had played there maybe once before. But the place was packed. It’s one of those towns where people want to hear live music.

With this current tour, have you been well received so far? Is there any gig that has stood out?

Nathan: Different places were better than others…

What was your favorite show?

Halloween Barn Burner 2002

What about your influences? As far as the specific bands or collective influences, are there any groups or individuals that come to mind?

Dion: I think we all try to open up and listen to everything, and really just kind of take in everything so that we don’t get sucked into one genre. Overall, I would say The New Deal is a good influence. They’re so new and they’re doing so well that they are obviously an influence for all of us as a whole, as a band. Someone to look up to and to really dig what they’re doing.

Nathan: Bill Laswell.

Ryan: Siamese. They came to Missoula recently…

Oh yeah, that drummer [Kevin Sawka] is out of control.

Dion: He’s sick. He’s absolutely insane.

Ben: We crawled around for two days after that. It was a pretty mind-blowing experience. It was good to be… well, completely humbled.

Dion: Obviously Phish is a huge influence. We all grew up listening to them and the Dead. All those bands, they’re great, but we also want to open up and listen to all the newer stuff to go somewhere that hasn’t been explored yet.

How did you all meet?

Ben: Ryan was in Missoula before any of us. I got to Missoula two years ago, and he was one of the first people I met. It was a pretty easy connection. It wasn’t really musically oriented. It’s weird because Ryan and I have become so involved musically, our focus has shifted to that. It wasn’t like that when we first met; it was more of a friendly connection. Everything else kind of happened this year, everyone coming together. None of us set out to be playing in this band together, it was never talked about, really. It just all happened. It’s so right. I personally feel there’s a lot more that’s going on than what we can really see that brings us together. That’s just me, but I think everyone feels that to some degree.

That helps too, when things aren’t perfectly planned, but somehow your energy brought you together, somehow it fits.

Ryan: That is one amazing thing that has happened on the tour so far. In the past I’ve been dependent on a huge crowd to be totally rowdy and ready for us to play. But on this tour we would play to only 10 or 15 people and just be sooo into it, just with ourselves. We can start out with nobody in the room. But somehow, somewhere, we managed to get together on stage, just the five of us, and be totally into what we’re doing.

I can see how it would be frustrating for a band just starting out, because sometimes you are playing for a low turnout…

Nathan: But we’ve been able to draw people out, and get them into our music. I know that, as a listener, I have to feel that happen. With us, there might be only 10 people there, but they’re all evenly spaced in a huge room and just totally grooving out, and that’ rewarding.

Is it too early to think about the next tour?

Ryan: We’re already planning our next one now, probably around February. We’re taking some time off for the holidays to regroup and spend time with our families and whatnot. We’re gonna come back in mid-January, get some new material together, get our minds geared up and take off again. Pretty much hit the same circuit again, heading down the West Coast. And then try to branch out a little bit more down to the South and eventually hit New Orleans and then back to Missoula. We want to steadily make each tour go a little bit further, making contacts with venues until we’re playing nonstop all the time.

Dion: We want to do the same route, but keep spreading out further each time. The ideal situation is we want to keep fresh in people’s minds. Hopefully we can go as far as the East Coast, but the main thing is for us to stay fresh in people’s minds.

Overall it seems this first tour has been a positive experience.

Ryan: For this tour, we knew we’d just have to come out and do it. We’re virtually unheard of, and I think we all kind of braced ourselves.

Dion: We all braced ourselves, and then slowly opened our eyes to the whole experience.

Ben: Playing in front of a small audience… Whether it’s four hundred or 15, the energy depends on what’s going on with the band, case in point…

Damon: Yesterday our bus broke down on Fell [major thoroughfare in San Francisco]. It was this super stressful thing that happened to all of us, for five hours straight. We all had to deal with getting this bus off the street. So finally we got it running and we came to the venue, set up and played. And it ended up being a great show for us. Personally, it was one of my best shows. We all pulled together in an extremely stressful situation, and then we busted out and really put our heart and souls into what we were doing onstage, and it was a release for us. It’s an extreme example of how our shows have been going well, and although we’re not playing for that many people, what we have together as a unit is really such an important factor on how our shows go. We’re all very positive people, we’re all friends, and that really comes through in what we’re doing live.

As far as songwriting goes…

Ben: It usually starts with one person’s idea, and then we spend a few days working together and everyone throws different things into the mix. Usually it’s a mixture of everyone’s ideas coming together building on one person’s original idea.

Damon: It’s true that our songs are base on improvisation, we have open sections. At the same time, all of our tunes have structure. We put a lot of thought into songwriting. You can’t just put pieces and parts together.

Ryan: The chemistry that we have onstage is great, and it’s getting better with each show.

Ryan [shaking his head]: Not enough effects…

Nathan: We need more toys.

[To Dion] I noticed that you tend to crouch down low at certain points during the show. Is that for effect? What’s up with that?

Dion: It’s really comfortable to sit that way, and it allows me to focus in on everything around me. I feel like a little ball of energy down there [laughs].

Damon: I always thought you were turning knobs, man.

[To Damon] You studied with Stanton Moore, right?

Damon: Yeah. The first time I really knew what I wanted to do, that I wanted to play drums, was when I saw Galactic at Southern Comfort, this festival in New Orleans, and it looked like Stanton was having such a great time. It was the most amazing thing at that moment, and I knew I wanted to play the drums. So I started taking lessons with Mark DiFlorio, who plays with Quintology. They’re sick as hell; Brian Seeger on guitar, they’re bad to the bone. So I started taking lessons with Mark and he was friends with Stanton. And I kept asking him, “OK, so show me this groove that Stanton does.” And Mark said, “Well, I can put you in contact with him.” So Mark was my connection to meeting Stanton, and Stanton invited me over to his house a couple of times and showed me a bunch of stuff. He was so chill about it, and he’s a good teacher. The lessons were great. There were a few times when the lesson would last two hours. But that just goes to show you what the New Orleans scene for drummers is like. It’s amazing because it’s a shared cultural thing down there. It’s got its own distinctive flavor of twang, and each generation just passes it down to the next group.

You already have an album out?

Ryan: Yeah, we went into the studio after being together as a band for only three weeks, and recorded the album in one day. That’s always a tough one for me, especially when you’re starting out. It’s ridiculous because we just want to get out there and play, so that we can become a tight unit. But you can’t do that unless you’ve played a ton of shows, and you can’t play a ton of shows unless you have a product to show someone so they’ll book you. But the album turned out pretty well.

Are you actively distributing your live shows?

Nathan: We’ve had a few people record the shows, here and there…

Damon: We’re definitely open to that.

Ben: When we record a show, it’s a great learning tool. You can go back and learn from it. As a group we should focus more on recording our own shows ourselves, but it’s kinda tough because, for the most part, we never want to focus on getting that extra thing ready. As far as getting the recording set up, the equipment, etc. It’s not that big of a hassle, but it’s one more thing to think about. In McKinleyville, this kid set up and recorded the show, and we stayed at his house and got to listen to the recording after the show. That was nice.

Any other good tour stories?

Ben: The other night I was talking to this guy Blake who works out in Tahoe City, a really cool guy. And at the show we had a really, really good time musically.

Ryan: He’s been around a while and done a lot of stuff. He used to work with the Dead. He built soundboards for them.

Ben: We were playing through the monitors that the Grateful Dead used to use. And this little nugget of knowledge he passed on to us… He said, “So what are your shows like in Missoula?” And I said, “They rock. All these people come out, and it’s like the talk of the town. Everyone just gets the hell down. People shake their asses off.” And he said, “Well there you go. You just gotta keep coming through, keep playing around, and that’s gonna happen. People will catch on.” And I see what he means, because that’s a big part of what it’s all about, and so far we’ve been getting a good response, even with small crowds. We’re a family affair, and most people who see us get that feeling. They can tell that we’re a family and they feel that.

Nathan: Somewhere in the article, can you mention how awesome our Missoula friends are? They psyched us up, and they’re a big part of what keeps us going.

Damon: I think that’s the most valuable thing. If you look for a common thread between bands that have been touring and doing really well, their drive stems not only from the music itself, but also from the people who come to see their shows. If you have a solid fanbase and a group of people that’s excited about your playing, that in turn will inspire you to take it that much more seriously. And the fact that we have such amazing support from Missoula… Feeling appreciated really cultivates creative energy, which in turn makes us write better material and keep it on a good level. I think you’ll find with the bigger bands on the circuit, they come from a strong fanbase. You need that grassroots support. It’s so amazing when that many people are coming out to support what you’re doing. It not only makes you feel what you’re doing is worthwhile, but you enjoy it that much more.