Local musical veterans still on the Athens scene

by Toby Fallsgraff
Staff Writer

Shoeless but wearing blue socks, Tony Xenos of Rubberband Racecar Go stands at the microphone with his Martin acoustic guitar, facing bassist Jef Shilt, who is holding his homemade stand-up, washtub bass. Drummer Jason Stover sits in a fortress that includes orange glittered drums and a handcrafted wall of percussion composed of a trash can lid, a pot lid, a tambourine, a lead pipe and a boilerplate.

Rubberband Racecar Go's rehearsal room is converted from what was Xenos' living room but now is laden with electric cords, instrument cases, speakers and assorted equipment. Pacing the group through all their songs - most of which are his own compositions- Xenos is clearly the leader of the group.

Despite his small stature, Xenos' large presence becomes even more evident once he begins his vocal attack on the microphone, which becomes a channel for his often angry, sometimes optimistic and always well-crafted lyrics.

Xenos' vocal style, which often is on the verge of merging rock and rap, creates a Buddy Holly-meets-Michael Stipe-meets-each-of-the-Beastie Boys-in-a-bar-fight sort of deliverance. The rock-rap style featured on a few of the songs from their album ••Try Autopilot•• contrasts, yet complements the acoustic, alterna-rock core of the album, giving the disc a very versatile feel. Somehow everything fits.

Xenos' "real job" is teaching algebra at Vinton County High School. Describing a school day as "nine hours of frustration" in his song "Top Dog," teaching algebra is not Xenos' passion. Playing music is. His job is a source of aggravation that Xenos vents about in his songwriting. He seems to have a great deal of anger for someone who comes off as a nice, quirky guy. His lyrics follow suit.

"You said it'd be better to wait. Look where I am now. That didn't help me at all," he sings. "It'd be better if we didn't regret this whole thing. Look at where we are now. It'd didn't help us at all. I'm a clown on a spring. Whatever everything."

After acquiring a relatively large following with his previous band, the Cactus Pears, Xenos has maintained his presence in the Athens music scene, by playing solo shows, forming a short-lived band, Breaker's Edge, in 1996, and having a stint with a reconfigured Cactus Pears in 1999. He has not left the local music scene for long since 1993, when he founded the Cactus Pears.

Rubberband Racecar Go cites R.E.M., Tori Amos, Beastie Boys, Radiohead and Depeche Mode as key influences on its music. The group's CD features an eclectic array of sounds like the pots and pans, Xenos' "flugelface"- a mouth-made instrument that can be described as a human-muted trumpet-and the occasional floating electronic sounds that are mixed into the band's live performances. With all the attention focused toward Xenos, it is too easy to forget Shilt and Stover, who add their respective vital parts to this sound.

Leading the band through a cover of Tori Amos' "Spark" in practice, Xenos instructs, "Wait for that little waver in my voice."

"You always have a waver in your voice," Shilt returns from the other side of the room.

Shilt and Xenos are certainly not strangers. Having played together off and on since tenth grade, both ended up in Athens to attend Ohio University and then stuck around after graduation.

"(During college), it was very easy to meet people, but I didn't really care about (school)," Xenos says. "I always thought I would drop out and do this."

Calmly plucking out bass lines that are nothing short of complex, Shilt adds an omnipotent quality to his reserved demeanor as the pulse of the band. On stage, he rarely makes a noise aside from the whistle he blows during "Green Rubber Boots." Off stage, while still relatively subdued, whenever he speaks he always has something clever to say.

Stover, who moved to Athens in October, is the new guy in the band, replacing former pots-and-pans player and vocalist Candida Bach in the percussive seat and adding an edge to the band that previously had not been tapped. Stover drummed for about a year with a band called Go Evil Shiki in Columbus, but decided to leave the music scene before coming to Athens.

"Melodrama drove me away. So I sold my drum kit and swore it off," Stover says. But he would pick music up again when he joined Rubberband Racecar Go only months later. Though Stover is the latest addition to the band, they hope he will not be the last. With Bach's departure, a space remains for vocal harmonies, and the band currently is seeking a lead guitarist-vocalist to round out the group into a quartet.

Rubberband Racecar Go will be playing tonight at O'Hooley's. Tony Xenos is also playing a solo set on June 2 at Casa Cantina, opening for Homunculus.