A culture built on music

At the Travis Sehorn and the Pebble Light CD release party at the Badlander last Saturday night, my friend Mark Dostal looked at me quizzically while I interviewed him, stopped me mid-sentence and asked, “Are you qualified to write this kind of story?”

He explained that he wasn’t sure if I knew enough about music.

I do.

But the question was off-putting nonetheless.

In a town where many equate shows with hipsters who scribble poetry in the corner, learning about local bands without feeling out of place can be somewhat challenging.

A crowd of about 100 musicians and their friends meandered near the stage, swapping stories and drinking.

“I first met Travis two years ago,” said Kier Atherton, a friend and fellow band member of Sehorn’s. “He was spreading a vicious rumor that I was in a Christian band.”

That turned out not to be the case, and with an apology Sehorn forged a lasting friendship.

Sehorn’s wiry blond hair, big eyes and his laidback, soft, poetic way of speaking, go a long way in explaining why people are drawn to him.

Pebble Light band member Russel Daniels called Sehorn “kind of the epicenter, for sure,” of the Missoula music scene.

Daniels met Sehorn while Sehorn was playing on the street, a place Sehorn meets many musicians. Daniels said Sehorn likes to experiment with different band members, which explains why his lineup is constantly adding new influences. Sehorn calls it “a collective of people. A collision of like interests.”

There is no doubt that Sehorn is a big part of the singer/songwriter scene, but it is impossible to call anyone the center of Missoula music as a whole.

There is just too much music.

Missoula offers a wide variety: folk artists like David Boone and Jacob Kuntz, who play primarily in cafes like Liquid Planet and Break Espresso; reggae/funk bands Reverend Slanky and LP and the Federales, who frequent the Otherside and the Badlander; hip hop; punk; big band; rock; bluegrass; and open mike nights at various bars and the UC.

“The music is eclectic, that is the only way I can think of to describe it,” said UM student Mollee Hren.

And original, added KBGA DJ Mandela van Eeden, who said a strong point of local bands is that they tend to shy away from performing covers, favoring “to write their own stuff.”

And the musicians aren’t only college students. Middle-aged Bob Marshall owns Biga Pizza and serves as its head chef during the day. By night he rocks the town as the drummer for the Volumen. But he can’t stay out as late as he did when the members of Volumen first took the stage in 1996; he has a young daughter now.

Lead singer/guitarist Ben Fosland of one-month-old band Potatoes O’Brien boasts that their Irish-tinged hard rock is a by-product of the Irish blood that runs through the veins of two of the band’s four members.

But he doesn’t take himself or his band too seriously.

“I don’t know if Potatoes O’Brien will still be our name in a month,” he laughed. “We’re kind of dicking around for now, just having fun.”

Potatoes O’Brien was the unannounced opener for the CD release party. The members of scheduled opener Froedric’s Teeth (all music majors) got tied up at a recital and arrived late.

All of the bands at the event were connected to Sehorn somehow. Potatoes O’Brien drummer, Chance Cole, is a friend of Sehorn’s. Bethany Joyce, of ‘Froedric’s Teeth,’ plays cello in both bands. Kier Atherton (piano) and Katie Olp (vocals) are both members of Zen Saloon as well as Pebble Light … just to name a few.

Although the crowd was mostly musicians or friends of musicians, some people at the release were wary of sharing their opinion of the show, afraid that they didn’t have enough musical expertise. 

According to van Eeden, that shouldn’t matter.

“Music taste is all opinion,” van Eeden said, “you can’t say that someone is ‘wrong’ for liking a certain kind of music. One band can be better than another in your opinion, but opinion isn’t fact.”

Sitting at the show, wondering why the Badlander TVs were playing a video of sea creatures, I found the music at the semi-exclusive event something no one, regardless of musical expertise, should be shy about enjoying.