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I moved to San Francisco almost two years ago in search of more. More of everything; but for now, more music. Amongst the plethora of talent that swam straight up to me, a few younger bands really caught my attention. One of these bands was the OM Trio. Over these past couple of years I have seen these three young men continue to develop as they maintain one of the most intense touring schedules of any band in the country. Together, Ilya Stemkovsky on drums, Brian Felix on keys and Pete Novembre on bass play a hard-edged, jazzed-up version of improvisational rock. To me they are a heavy metal jazz band.
With the release of their new album, Global Positioning Record, they are starting to pop up on various radars as they criss-cross the country in their van. As Brian and Ilya were preparing to depart for their current tour they swung by JamBase HeadQuarters to drop off a demo of the record. I welcomed them with open arms and smiles. We put in the new disc and listened to the rough mix as we talked.
Kayceman: First off I want to talk about the name, OM Trio, just because I found it fitting that as we are talking you guys are on your way to see McCoy Tyner who obviously played with Coltrane. And the name "OM" seems to be a tip of the hat to the OM recording?
By Earhart |
Ilya: Totally.
Kayceman: And The Clarified Butter [OM Trio debut album, 1999] to Coltrane as well, so is it safe to say that he is a HUGE influence on you guys, at the top of the list?
Ilya: I wouldn't say he is a HUGE influence but everyone, or 90 percent of his recordings, are owned by the members of the band. So he's just as huge as Tori Amos or Slayer or any of the things that we listen to. As with any creative person or entity, things take a top shelf for a certain period of time and then go away for a little while. So I think everybody goes through a Coltrane phase, like I went through a Rush phase, and then you get back to Rush or Coltrane. So at that point in our lives maybe we were listening to a lot of Coltrane. He's definitely amazing in every way, but I don’t think if we had three guys to name... I don't know if his would come to mind first. So I don't know if he's the hugest influence, but he's definitely one of them.
Brian: The name itself was kind of a tongue-in-cheek reference to how absolutely insane that piece of music is. And it was sort of like, we thought of that tune and started laughing and were like, "let's call our band after that."
Ilya: We all definitely love John Coltrane.
Kayceman: And that's apparent in your music too, just the style. And with your influences, the amount of sound that comes out of your various styles from metal, to dub and drum & bass. While you guys are talking about influences, who else would you throw out there?
Brian: Fugazi, Bob Marley...
By S. Weiand |
Ilya: We have such huge collections it's hard... It's just so huge, there are so many.
Brian: Yeah, it's like I walked into his house yesterday and he was listening to Bach and I walked in today and a U2 video was on, and I could have just as easily walked in and there could be like any kind of music on, like Metallica, we bought the entire Metallica back order catalog on this tour.
Ilya: In specific terms I know the band and myself have recently been into a lot of crafted stuff. Stuff where you put on headphones. You know, there's the famous stuff like Dark Side of the Moon or stuff that trips you out. But I've been listening to like Billy Joel and really discovering studio craft. Not so much studio creations, but the other extreme from the improv that we had been listening to for a long time like the real bare bones jazz guys. Recently I've been listening to a lot of the produced stuff like that and I think this record really illustrates the fact that Bri has been into really placing certain things and creating something for a studio album.
I would hope, and would think that has to do with the development of a band, and especially the development of the studio process, to be aware of that.
By Earhart |
Brian: Absolutely, and we've been listening to a lot of bands like Autechre. And for a while since we've been thinking about making this record, especially for the past two months, I know I've been sitting in my house listening to how they craft stuff, where they have a certain sound coming form, whether it comes out of the left or the right that kind of stuff has been a huge influence, and has been a huge influence on the research, for lack of a better word, that we did for the direction of this album.
And Aphex Twin too...
Brian: Squarepusher, yeah we've been really digging into that stuff pretty hard.
[A guitar section featuring Jason Conception, who appears on three tracks, comes over the speakers.]
By S. Weiand |
Ilya: You know, listen to that guitar: it's coming out of seven o'clock over here and it's like that's the way we came in [to making the record] and I don't know if people will be able to realize the thought behind the record because it still sounds like the three of us in a room rocking out. But there's definitely a lot more of like, "Bri what do you think of this tambourine hit? What do you think of its placement?" And Bri's like, "Should I go from the right to the left with this keyboard figure or should I go from the right to the left with it?" And shit like that.
That's stuff I wanted to ask you guys about in regard to this album. It seems like Live was obviously live and Meat Curtain seemed like it was just played live in the studio.
Ilya: Totally live.
And so this one seems much more like a "studio album."
By V. Tseng |
Brian: Much more of a studio album. I mean like Il just said it's still the three of us playing the bed tracks live but we definitely approached it differently. None of us wanted to go in and record another live album, we wanted to go in and make a studio album. But there's no way because we're so tight live that we're going to go in and lay down the bass track and lay down the drum track, we're still gonna play the bed tracks live because that's the way we do things. But we went in and we just applied all this other stuff, all these new percussion things that Ilya's doing and all these new keyboard sounds that I'm doing and kind of used them as layers.
And did you guys use a lot of overdubs?
Brian and Ilya: Yeah.
Ilya: I mean we can say yeah because it's so much more than our Live album...
Brian: But if you listen to the album it's not necessarily going to sound like there are that many overdubs on it.
By Earhart |
Ilya: Like there's a shaker going on right now that if I didn't tell you about I don't know if you'd hear. So we didn't want an irreplaceable sound live, like a percussionist so to speak, that had such an integral part that live something would be missing. So there are shakers, and tambourines and eggs and all kinds of gongs and triangles and shit like that, where if the stuff isn't there live it's not going to take away from it.
Brian: Like right here I'm playing two keyboard parts. I’m playing the rhythm part on my Rhodes and then I'm playing the organ part, which obviously I can't do live because I don't have three hands.
But you might as well do it; I mean that's the idea of the studio.
By Earhart |
Ilya: And the other idea behind it was, well I'm proud of the record and of us because we set out to do something and I think we accomplished it. Because on the Live record there's some stuff from April, March 2001 and there's actually something from December 2000, which at this point is two-and-a-half years ago. I'm a better drummer than I was on the Live record and Bri is a hundred times better.
Just as a band, sorry to interrupt you, not to say that the earlier stuff is bad by any stretch, but you guys have come...
Brian: We've changed a lot.
Ilya: And if it didn’t change and it wasn't better there would be a definite problem, or maybe our starting point was so high, which with us it wasn't.
If you're not getting better then you're dead.
Brian and Ilya: Totally.
Ilya: But what I'm proud of is that we didn't go into the studio and think, "I'm gonna try to document my new licks," which we could have done and it would have been much more impressive to all the drummers. And all the other musicians would be like, "Oh the drummer is so much better than the last album," or "Bri is so much better." It wasn't like that at all. In fact there is not a single drum solo on the whole album.
Brian: No bass solos either. And there's obviously a few keyboard solos but not even close to the amount of soloing as there are parts.
By S. Weiand |
Ilya: And when Brian is soloing it's not really like me and Pete are underneath it, accompanying it; it's really just one sound. Because we realized a long time ago that there are certain musicians that we love and that are really huge on their instrument, like Satriani lets say, or someone like Dave Weckl who's a drummer. There's gonna be a thousand drummers in the audience who go to see him. But if someone walks away from us saying, "Oh the keyboard player is great but the other two guys are..." We're dead because a thousand keyboard players aren't gonna come see us. So we realized that we want the whole sound from the stage to be something that's completely affecting instead of one guy standing out. And I'm gonna stand out a little bit, the music calls for that, and Bri the same thing, he should because he's such a huge voice. But we went into the studio trying to get one sound.
Brian: Yeah, it's about the band sound that we've been cultivating touring all this time. As we all develop as players we've been cultivating the sound of the band.
And I think that comes across in your live performances. As I was saying, just in the differences I've heard in the two years I've been living in San Francisco. I've seen a giant step forward in your collective sound.
By S. Weiand |
Ilya: Here's a production thing to talk about. This is a tune called "Bulbous," this is the jam, on the record it's gonna be called "(Hedd)." But right here we're just grooving, Bri's doing his thing on the keyboard and Pete's playing his bass line, but there's a shaker going on top of it, and right before the downbeat there's a gong and then a big gong if you listen for it right here.
[And sure enough you hear it all, the keys, the shaker, the bass line, both gongs and then two triangles.]
Ilya: And then two triangle parts and every eight times it's like that. And that's shit that I don't know if people are going to miss live if I don't play it.
But it's a nice addition when you can do it.
Brian: Yeah, we wanted to "make an album."
Now did you guys have someone produce it?
Brian and Ilya: No.
By E. Braun |
Ilya: Me and Bri... you know we're from Jersey, so it was hardcore. We talked, we had some pre-production discussions.
Brian: A lot of pre-production discussions.
Ilya: But I mean, this is the way it's been sounding recently. So it was like we we're going to document what needed to be documented. I don't know, maybe somebody like Lee Townsend or somebody on these big Blue Note records would have different ideas but I don't have ten grand to give Lee Townsend. But I think it turned out pretty cool.
What is the writing process like for you guys?
By S. Weiand |
Brian: Well, there are a couple of different ways that things happen. One way is that I'll write something at home down on paper and bring it to the guys and it will get either totally reworked or partially reworked and then it will become a tune. Another way is that we'll actually play something live at a gig, we'll improvise something and it will be like, "Oh wow, that's cool. Let's try that again tomorrow," and that's the advantage of playing like seven shows a week for eight weeks in a row, is that you keep doing that and next thing you know you're at the end of the tour and you have a couple new tunes. And I'd say this record is really well balanced in terms of that. There are a couple tunes I wrote down and brought to the guys. And there's a couple other tunes that we just developed at the gig and then parts developed, and then next thing you know a couple weeks later you have a tune that was just born out of an improvisation of a gig.
By Earhart |
Ilya: And that's what's good about having a lot of tapers at shows now because there are definitely things you don't remember and then you get a tape and sometimes it might be three months, four, five months later and you listen back and there's so many cool things on it that I'm like...
Brian: That you've forgotten about because you wake up the next morning and you go onto another gig and if you don't have the tape it's gone.
Ilya: And it's not a "show" that we're playing, we're not repeating...
Brian: Yeah, different things happen every night.
How about when you're performing, how much of what goes on is slated? Do you guys use a set list?
Ilya: Not usually.
Brian: Not usually but it varies. Sometimes we'll have a conceived notion of how we want a couple of tunes, but sometimes we get to the second tune and we'll just do something totally different. And sometimes we'll just get up there and we won't even know what we're going to start with we'll just improvise something and go into something. But otherwise we'll have a pretty good idea of what the first couple of tunes are gonna be and then just go from there.
Ilya: But from a technical level, a setlist is sometimes the opposite of limiting. If we go in completely without a setlist then someone has to spark a new tune. I mean we're not gonna do a 45 minute "Dark Star." We play something and when it has run its course, it should be obvious to the members of the band or else you have a problem with perception. But we know when something's run its course. So I might signal a change, or I might just start another song. Or Brian might hint at another harmony. But sometimes it's hard because I may not know where he's going and I have to react, but if it's written in front of me that we're going into a different song, I'm expecting Brian to instigate that change, and sometimes that sounds much better than complete freedom. And we've been experimenting with setlists over the past year, and sometimes it's completely freeing in that respect. Because I know he's going into "Bulbous" and I'm waiting for what he's gonna give me, and I don't have to force it. The other way sometimes I'm just like, "Bri, we're gonna go into this" and it's real jagged, which is cool in it's own way; kinda like a John Zorn type of "boom" - you're into another part.
Brian: You have to focus less energy on where you're going and you can re-channel that energy into doing it well.
Ilya: If we're opening for somebody we'll sometimes write a setlist. Like the "Power of Metal" half-hour setlist.
Brian: Because you have 45 minutes and you want to get your point across.
You guys have one of the most intense touring schedules of any band, without question. Do you guys intend to keep this pace up for a while?
Brian: Yeah, definitely.
And you don't find it wears on you guys? I mean you guys must be pretty close to all be able to live in a van together.
By Earhart |
Ilya: Yeah, we all love each other and respect each other musically. And there's never any problems on the stage, or as far as being friends. The only thing that wears on you is when people would rather go see a movie instead of your band that is in town for the first time in six or seven months. But that's what happens when you're a small band. But we're a gorilla unit, so we can get through that. But the bigger bands, they don’t tour as much because they don't need to go to Tucson every four months. They hit their spring, their summer that's it. And with us it's like we just gotta keep going back, but we've even started to slow down, repeating certain towns because you gotta be rare enough where...
Where it's exciting for people to go out.
Brian: Yeah. you got to balance it.
I want to drop back to a little bit of your personal music backgrounds. [To Brian:] I know you were classically trained, and I was wondering if you always had the notion that you wanted to play music?
By S. Weiand |
Brian: Yeah, I always new. It was just a matter of how, where and with who. I don't really remember a time when I didn't think I was going to. I thought maybe I was going to be a teacher for a week, but that's about it.
Ilya: I have scars on my head from walking around banging on something when I was three. My parents told me I would just crash into a tree because I was banging on something. And I have pictures of me when I'm nine or ten, way before I ever bought a drum set, where I have straws in my hand where I'm banging on stuff, and I used to get sent to detention for banging on tables and stuff, so I've always been a drummer.
Was it a musical household? [To Brian:] I know your father was a pianist.
Brian: Yeah.
By Earhart |
Ilya: Mine, not at all. But we're Russian, and I was born in Russia, and my whole family is European. And it's a little different. You know like the whole cliché where you have a black southern family in the fifties and the grandma singing gospel on the porch, that's like a musical environment, and in my family it wasn't so much that people played but there is definitely an appreciation for classical music and my mom loves opera. So I'm cultured in that European sense where it is just handed down to you. So it's always been a musical household in that respect. Music was always very important, as were other arts like ballet and stuff.
When did you move to America?
Ilya: When I was five in 1981. I don't really remember too much; American as apple pie!
How about the OM Trio, you guys are both from Jersey and your original bassist was, and Pete as well. So were you guys all around each other, did you know each other?
Brian: Yeah we all new each other, there was kind of a scene in New Brunswick around Rutgers and we all new each other from playing around in different bands.
By S. Weiand |
Ilya: Pete's a little older than us. He's 30.
Brian: He's gonna be this year.
Ilya: Yeah, I'm gonna be 27 and Bri's gonna be 26, so I guess Bri knew Pete a little better. I went to a different college then they did, but even Bri was a little younger so they didn't know each other that well.
Brian: I met him was I was 18 and he was 22 when I first got to college and he was still there. He had just graduated but was still playing in bands around there.
Ilya: But I played in high school bands with the original bass player.
So what happened with that, why did Daniel [original bassist for OM Trio] leave the band?
By Earhart |
Ilya: He is a Born Again Christian and he was always leaning towards that. I don't know, Born Again Christianity is an all-encompassing thing and once it happens all leisure activities or all endeavors into anything other than serving God fall by the wayside. So that's what happened. He's a great guy and musician and we keep in touch with him. But he couldn't tour and dedicate himself to it. He actually moved back to the East Coast and started his own church, which is not what we do, you know. We drive around in a van.
Brian: It worked out well for everybody. Finding Pete was like the perfect thing.
Was that the natural fit?
Brian: It was the natural fit, definitely.
Ilya: Pete is a little better fit with the band musically and personality wise.
I really would speculate that it's just something else to do, but I noticed on New Year's Eve you had Adam Levy and recently you've been playing with Jason Conception. Is there a movement to take on a guitar player?
Jason Concepcion
By Earhart |
Brian: No, it's just fun. Jason [Concepcion] is actually on three of the tracks here [Global Positioning Record]. No, it's just fun to bring in another sound here and there, and both of those guys are great guitarists. It's definitely fun to collaborate, but we're not moving to add anyone permanently.
Ilya: You can't change the name Trio on everything.
Still in moving out west, did you guys go as a unit to Talent, Oregon?
Ilya: I moved out with the original bass player like a week after I graduated college. We were the same age; he graduated a different college but the same week. And we waited a year for Bri, who was a year younger.
But this was the plan, for OM Trio to relocate to the West Coast?
Brian: Yeah, we didn't even have the name yet, but the band formed and then we got the name and we started gigging pretty heavily.
Ilya: Gigging locally, I mean we didn't tour at all. We were playing like six nights a week in a twenty-mile radius.
And then you got a little bit of a base and then moved here [San Francisco]?
By E. Braun |
Brian: Yeah, we recorded three albums, played probably somewhere around 200 and 250 gigs that year around the same town, doing all different kinds of things, we'd play jazz, we'd play heavy stuff, we were really just working ourselves out as a band. Working our chops out, just getting everything together.
Ilya: Learning how to play, really. A lot of bands start touring right away because they can afford a van, or they can afford gear, or they hire their buddy to do merch or whatever, and it’s like these bands don't usually last because they don't really understand that there needs to be a musical foundation first, or maybe some of them do. But with us if we had started touring right away it would have been crazy.
Brian: We practice really hard.
Yeah, well you guys are heavy on the technical ability. And a lot of music that might have a better chance of getting out there and touring is much simpler music. You don't have to have these in-depth musical conversations every night on stage when you play three-minute songs with a hook. I mean, you can pull that off a lot easier than what you guys are trying to do.
Do you guys have a name for the album yet?
Ilya: It's called Global Positioning Record. And I can explain that if you like.
Please.
Ilya: There's an electronic compass...
GPS.
Ilya: Yeah GPS, Global Positioning System, and you can find where you are in the world, geographically and so metaphorically, with this album and this music you can find your way, or where you are. And also the dual meaning is that hopefully this record will position us globally in the music scene; get us in there really strong.
And people are gonna get this record and there's some heavy metal tunes on it. And there's some really funked out trip-trance stuff. I don't want people to be able to pinpoint anything. I want there to be unifying factors. I want people to be like, "OM Trio, they're really heavy. They have a lot of heavy grooves. They have a lot of tripped out trancey spaced out electronica stuff that's not live techno, it's just like something else." There are a lot of funk bands, and you figure the one that rises will just be taken over by the next one because people can play funk. And if you can do it relatively well there's a market for it. But hopefully there are not three other bands in every town that can do what we do. And that's what we're trying to do.
Do you have any type of promotional idea with this?
Ilya: JamBase.com!
But is it being distributed in any type of different format than it was before?
By Earhart |
Brian: Just more of what we were doing before. A lot of getting it out on the web, and getting it out at shows. You know we don't have the type of money to put it behind a huge marketing campaign. But being an independent artist there's a lot of good points about it, and one is you can really push it and make 100 percent of the money for the CDs that you sell. And we've been really effective at selling CDs out of our van. And then we've also been doing really well online. So we're just going to do it more; we've already ordered three times as many CDs as we started with for the last couple of CDs.
Ilya: Also, the marketing machine behind a major label, and some of our friends like The Slip and the Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey, they're on bigger labels now, and other bands, like Soulive, are on Blue Note. But with us it's like... what's really important is for us to have the product at the shows because the chances of you buying the CD are greatest at our show. Because our music is not on the radio so you're not going to walk into Tower Records in Milwaukee and search it out. Until we get to that point, like if we had played Bonnaroo people are going to go out looking for our stuff even when we are not there. But at this point, unless a company like Blue Note is going to throw the kind of money at us like they throw at Soulive, which isn't going to happen, we're not gonna get Dave Matthews to sing on our record. So unless that happens it's fine what we're doing right now.
Since Jacob Fred came up, there was something I was kinda thinking about in regard to music in general, and I kinda see jazz music as being, Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey, you guys... I mean personally I would say OM Trio is jazz, just because of the improvisational aspect. And to me jazz is taking from everything and sort of moving in a new direction, and really kinda putting it on the edge, and not being afraid if it crumbles for a moment. Would you guys consider yourself a jazz unit?
By Earhart |
Brian: For certain reasons yes, and for other reasons no. Not talking to you, but to the average Joe if you say "jazz" they're thinking of someone swinging with a trumpet.
Ilya: Yeah, like Ella Fitzgerald.
Brian: Which is misleading, but I'd say you can call us jazz because of what you said, because of the improvisation. But it's like a lot of our rhythms are rock, funk and metal, and a lot of our stuff is reggae and we don't really swing. So it's like in the traditional sense of jazz we're not a traditional jazz band. But because of the stress on improvisation I'd say you could put us there.
In regard to your personal abilities I think both of you, and I think Pete is great too, but I find both you to be in the upper notch of our local scene, and that's why I wanted to speak to both of you at the same time.
By S. Weiand |
Ilya: And Pete plays the perfect role. He plays the solid anchor role. Like when you listen to Brad Mehldau it's like Larry Grenadier, if he did any more than that it would be a mess because the lead instrument and the drums are having a conversation with an anchor. And that's the sound of our band.
You put it perfectly: he does what he's supposed to do in this band.
Brian: And he's really great at it, because he has a great pocket. And he is really tasteful with the notes he chooses.
Ilya: But he's not being reserved because... he's being reserved because he is reserved. That's his natural tendency. Sometimes live I'll play this little game with him, like "Who can take the first fill?" And I always lose. He's a truck, he's truckin'. With me and Bri sparring the way we do.
Brian: It would be a mess if the bass player was playing a lot of notes also.
There was something I wanted to ask you guys in regard to your live show. It seems that when you guys perform you are very open to the audience and being influenced by them.
Ilya: Well there's a lot of information and you need to really reach out to people and let them know you're human.
Brian: It's good to give people something to latch onto. We're at the point where we are new to touring and people are seeing us for the first time. And two sets of this stuff is demanding on a lot of people. They came, they didn't really know what to expect, and all of a sudden they are getting bombarded by this stuff. Sometimes it's good to play a cover, or talk, interact.
Yeah, it brings them into it a bit more.
By Earhart |
Ilya: And it makes you human. Because there are definitely people who are in awe of what we do at our gigs. Like this one dude comes up to us the other day and he's like, "I can't believe you guys are carrying your own gear." Like they think we are this... I don't know [Brian starts cracking up]. I mean I'm sure Phil Lesh is not picking up his bass amp anymore. But I'm not in the Other Ones, I'm not playing the Oakland Arena, I just came out of a 500-person club, and this guy's weirded out by it. And sometimes when you talk to these people it becomes a little bit more human. People come up to me and start rapping about drums and asking me this or that, and I know they are doing what I do to my heroes. So I like to dispel some of that stuff by being like, "I'm just like you are," because I go and get my ass kicked the next day by somebody. I'm going to see Jack DeJohnette tonight so it's like, I'm definitely carrying my own drums, brother.
Brian: He was disappointed, this guy. He said he was disappointed that being as big as we are we are still carrying out own stuff. [laughter ensues] It's just like, "Listen brother, we're going to be carrying our stuff for a long time."
Ilya: Someone's got the wrong idea.
Well, you have this guy talking to you about carrying your own gear and stuff. Do you have a vision of where you see it going?
Brian and Ilya: [in unison] Yeah.
By Earhart |
Brian: Really in terms of touring. We want to get to the point where we are playing clubs where we can really set into a show, and it can be a musical presentation every night. And this is a big thing for us, be in a place where the stage is high enough. Be in really good rooms all across the country, every night, so we can present the music the way we want to present it. That's the main goal of touring, and that's what this is all about.
Ilya: And you know a band like MMW, Billy Martin is not worried about having a good monitor mix; I am. I am totally concerned with that, because if I can't hear well we are not going to improvise well.
Right, if you're in some half-ass dive where the sound guy has his head up his ass...
Ilya: And we don't play those kind of places as much as we used to. But they [MMW] get on stage and all they're concerned about is playing. So they're worried about being creative. And the minute we get to that level where all we have to do is think about the creative aspect, our band's gonna be nuts. It's gonna be something else because I have the utmost trust in the music. All we can take care of at this level is the music and I hope when this album comes out that people will hear there is some shit on it.
The OM Trio is currently on an extensive tour, taking them coast-to-coast and from the mountains to JazzFest. If you haven't seen these young men throw down and rip it up, now is your chance.
Click here for OM Trio tour dates.
The Kayceman
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