In a college community not very well known for its musicality, the members
of Headroom formed not so much through a series of persistent, grueling,
forced efforts, but rather through happenstance, association with other
musicians, and eventually some pretty tight ass jams. James and Dan had met
through a mutual friend in 2008. James' status as the bass player for the
jazz band on campus, BC Bop, spoke for his talent on the bass. They went on
to fool around playing in a couple different band lineups playing rock
covers and a couple originals, most notably with their group 2nd Nature
until the eventual formation of Headroom. It was sometime around then that
Dan and Shane decided to get together and jam. Shane's former band at Boston
College, The Project, had built a respectable fan community on campus,
playing a handful of gigs not only at BC but also in the Boston circuit.
These two guitarists had known of each other but had never played together.
The natural fade-out of 2nd Nature, due to members studying abroad, and the
concomitant dissolution of The Project, also due to the relocation of some
of its members, were perhaps not coincidental with the initiation and
actualization of the idea for these musicians - James, Shane, and Dan - to
get together with their instruments and see what happened. It was at this
time that Garrett and Dan, two individuals who had previously been mere
acquaintances, found themselves sitting next to each other in the back
corner of their Chromatic Harmony class. It was only natural for
conversation to turn in the direction of musical tastes and abilities
without delay, and soon enough a time was set up for all four musicians to
get together and jam, in September 2009.
It didn't take long for these guys to figure out that there was something
pretty cool happening at each jam session. All the players possessed a clear
capability to not only keep up with and listen to the other musicians, but
also to compliment them and contribute to the sound as a whole with their
own efforts. They played 1, 4, 5 tunes. They shredded covers that they all
knew to pieces, without ever having played them together before. They played
stuff on the spot that could make some people cry, some people laugh, and
some people drive to a nearby park and run to the middle of a field barefoot
and shirtless screaming "what is happening to my brain?" into the sky. They
introduced their own ideas and explored them with each other. Hardly any
band practice, neither then nor now, would ever fail to consist of at least
one or two 30+ minute improvised jam sessions. Sometimes even multiples of
that length. Many of these would go on to develop into songs in their
repertoire.
The fact that the member's musical tastes were somewhat intertwined only
added to the natural direction of the flow of their music. Garrett and Dan
were fans of the Grateful Dead in addition to a myriad of jazz music styles.
Downtempo style music would also commonly come up in conversation between
the members. Each member had, of course, had their roots in the blues and
had a special relationship with a host of different types of rock music.
Names such as Scofield, Mayor, Santana, and Coltrane, as Davis, Corea,
Clapton, and Trucks, as Wooten, Blakey, Hendrix, and Anastasio would be
present in their conversations and minds. Such a fusion of rock with jazz as
these references portray - music for the music lover, for one who likes to
rock out but also sometimes likes to take a deep breath, for the individual
who likes to hear the guitar sing and feel the drums make the work of their
heart easier; for them, the music of Headroom has its home.
After some press, a new demo, and a box of chocolates, here they are.
