Today is Monday June 11th. Last Monday, June 4th, 2007, saw the debut of my new band Trumpet Marine in a show at the Acadia Cafe in Minneapolis, MN. I’ve had a week now to think about it and now I’m writing something about it because it has hardly left my mind for 20 minutes in the last seven days.

One thought I have is about the band in general. I have been wanting to form a new band for a very long time. Probably going on 7 or 8 years. After the last Lavone album and subsequent shows (back in 2000), I decided I really wanted to try my hand at something different from The Lavone. This was, in part, encouraged by The Lavone’s last few gigs. Previous to 1999/2000 The Lavone was pretty much a studio-only affair. We just didn’t perform live. In part this was because we were a duo for most of our career but in larger part it was just the way we did things didn’t lend itself to life performance. We wrote, we recorded, and then we wrote more. We rarely even considered playing our songs live or “practicing” them. Once recorded, they were frozen in time, to be listened to in that state from there on out. We did, every now and then, play our songs live but it was extremely rare. To the best of my recollection, here is a complete list of all the gigs ever played by The Lavone:

1990 – Jim and Tracy Fowler’s Wedding Reception
1999 – The Depot, opening for Kloey and SP3!
1999 – Frankie Bruestel’s Graduation Party
2000 – The Depot

Not much of a list. It’s not as if Rhett and I never played live as part of other bands, we definitely did. We played two gigs with The Frog, three with Purple Triangles, and one with Ebony Fish, but all of those took place before 1993. My cumulative live band experience at the time of the last Lavone gig in 2000 was 10 shows spread out over 11 years. To be totally honest, I really wanted to learn to do the live music thing after that show. I had been watching Reed and Robbie playing in their bands and having a great time and I wanted to do it too, but The Lavone was just not the right vehicle for it, so I wanted to form a second band to get my itch scratched.

It’s not as if I didn’t try other things. In 2001, I think, I played a solo live set at The Depot to a low turnout and lukewarm response. That was disheartening and made me want to give up playing live for good, at least without a band.

I next took a stab at it with my then wife Amanda. We formed Steve The Band and recorded a couple of songs, the “single” being “Shut Up” which we recorded with Rhett. We made our debut live performance with Kloey filling out our live lineup at October Ridge in 2001 (?) and we gave out 3-inch CD singles. At Amayzing Fruit, a live gig in Chicago akin to October Ridge that took place in May 2002 (?) we once again played with Kloey but this time had a whole set of material ready. Our music was pretty well-received and we had fun but that was the full extent of Steve The Band. It was enough to make me sure that I wanted to play more live gigs but it didn’t exactly take off.

Then The Lavone went on permanent hiatus in 2003 and Amanda and I split up in 2004 I once again found myself with an itch to get on stage and no band with which to scratch it. In December of 2004, I started doing solo sets. The first one was at Manhattan Loft in Minneapolis for 20 or so audience members. Then I played Acadia a few times, opening for Derek Helland and being opened for by Derek. I played a few other places, Anodyne Coffee, The Steaknife, an open mic or two, and finally I got an opening slot at The Varsity Theater in early 2005. Those 04/05 solo sets were the most educational performances I had ever had. By the time I played the last gig at The Varsity I had learned to relax, to enjoy myself, to have confidence and to get the audience involved. More than ever I now wanted a band and I started casting around for members. On TCMusic.net I asked people if they wanted to join a band but nobody did. Well, one guy did, he was a drummer, but I didn’t think he was a good fit for me.

I got back on stage again in a throughly unexpected way… at a church. After leaving the Jehovah’s Witnesses I wasn’t exactly keen on religion, but I missed the social opportunities that a religious community provides. Problem: I don’t believe in God. Solution: Unitarian Universalism. How did I find this out? The Internet of course. I took a quiz on a website called BeliefNet that informed me that my beliefs were compatible with Unitarian Universalism. I found a UU congregation in Minneapolis and convinced my then girlfriend Esther to attend with me. Somehow, I’m not quite sure how, I wound up talking to Bob Aderhold, a really nice guy who headed up the church band The Eclectics. He invited me to play with the band sometime and I did. I don’t even really remember my first Eclectics appearance, but it wasn’t long before I was up there doing something or another whenever the Eclectics played. Not exactly gigs, Eclectics performances are typically part of a larger service with a sermon and readings and stuff. The Eclectics get up, play a song, sit back down. It’s all voluntary and there are plenty of volunteers but there is a core group of Eclectics and by this point I think I’m becoming one of ‘em. I have no idea how many times I’ve played with The Eclectics, but I’ve played several Sunday services, Summer assemblies, the Prairie Star Convention, the service auction, and at least two solstice/equinox things… It’s fun. Practices on Friday nights, always playing theme-based songs for whatever event we play at.

So, once I got involved with The Eclectics I was “in a band” and playing on-stage but it wasn’t what I had been looking for. I wanted to play concerts, perform music for people who are there specifically to listen to it, not provide background music or interludes for an event. One minor problem…. I didn’t really know how to form a band. I asked people, if they would play with me and nobody said no but nobody said yes either. Apparently part of forming a band is to take charge and give other people something to grab on to. I had never done that. I had simply floated the idea as an abstract concept. In January of this year, the abstract concept got a name.

I had decided that I was going to participate in the 2007 RPM Challenge and record an album. I had NOT decided to form a band. I was planning on recording as myself, Ryan Sutter. But you see, there is this minor annoyance with that idea that has bugged me for years. The annoyance is that there is another Ryan Sutter who is famous and using my own name I’m pretty much guaranteed to be confused with him. So, on a whim, sitting at my dining room table one night, I decided that I would record under a band name. My wall calendar had a word or phrase for every day, and I picked the word for the first day of the RPM Challenge to be my “band”. It was, of course, Trumpet Marine. I’d like to say “and the rest was history” except it wasn’t quite like that. I asked some Eclectics if they would care to join me in my endeavor, no real commitment, just a little fun on the side, and they said yes. Suddenly, I had a band. It was almost as if the only thing that had been missing all those years was a name. Once I had a name, there was a band, even if I was the only one in it. Once there was a band, getting others to join it was easy.

Even after the Trumpet Marine RPM album, however, we were far from being a legitimate band. For one thing, I played all the instruments on 7 of the 10 tracks. It wasn’t a total group effort. It couldn’t be, time just didn’t allow it. Secondly I presented the idea of a loose confederation more than a band when I asked for involvement. I didn’t want to make the other guys feel like they were being put on the hook for anything big because I had nothing to offer to reward them beyond the personal satisfaction of making music. So, Trumpet Marine may have just ended with the RPM album… except it didn’t.

See, there were these listening parties for all of these RPM albums all over the world… except the Twin Cities didn’t have one. So, I and another guy named Ben Ortega volunteered to make one happen in the Cities and we did, at the Black Dog Cafe in St. Paul. At the party and in IM conversations trying to organize it we tossed around the idea of playing an actual gig with our two RPM-constructed bands, Trumpet Marine and The Substars. We even tried to convince a third RPM band called After School Special to join us for a big RPM showcase. I contacted Acadia Cafe in Minneapolis about slots, they gave us last Monday and next thing you know we were facing our first Trumpet Marine gig.

I asked the guys who would be in for doing this, fully expecting that one or more would not be able to make it. George, the bass player and a fine gentleman, was committed to helping Al Franken win his campaign and heading up a Grateful Dead cover band to help it happen. He couldn’t guarantee that he could make the show happen so I had to find an alternate bass player. I found it in the person of Rick, who had recorded with me during the RPM month on one night on some tracks that remain unfinished as of this writing.

And there we had it, Bob, Kevin, myself and Rick started practicing on Saturdays, learning all the songs. Having never really done this kind of thing before, I wasn’t sure how best to help them all learn my songs. Bob wanted song sheets and I tried to put them together for him, but seeing as how I don’t write my music down much and often forget the chords the sheets I made were routinely completely wrong. Oops. Yeah, Bob, that should be a F#, not an Fm, sorry… stuff like that. I provided donuts and tried to show everybody just how grateful I was that they were there learning my songs, putting their own stamps on them, making my long-delayed dream of being in a great live band.

Four practices, I believe, maybe five, were all we got. When we finally took the stage on Monday night, though, I felt like we were a well-oiled machine. I wasn’t nervous at all, just ecstatic. I started playing the opening chords of “Stretchita Beckons” and just rolled from there on. The songs seemed to practically play themselves. Kevin was awesome, Bob was awesome, Rick was awesome, the crowd was awesome, The Substars were awesome and Jonathan Dessi-Olive (who took the third spot when After School Special couldn’t do it) was awesome. The night was… awesome.

Now I’m looking ahead a month to the next Trumpet Marine gig. July 12th, DEMO Low-Fi Showcase. Damn I’m excited.

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RyanSutter has content marketing with Arkayne Socialize.

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