Basement rock that’s rock solid

In the basement of a house on Semple Street, the Douglass Brothers set up. The walls were… In the basement of a house on Semple Street, the Douglass Brothers set up. The walls were rough stone and the ceiling was low, with blue and white Christmas lights laced around the exposed beams. There were beer cans lining the window ledges, and the band had crammed several speakers, a full drum kit, two microphones, one bass, two guitars and a variety of effects pedals into one end of their friends’ basement.

Bob, Chris, Steve and Matt began tuning instruments and testing volume levels. They searched for picks and joked around. Bob warmed up on his bass and Matt rested easy, engrossed by his drum kit. They didn’t seem to be just four guys with instruments. They had crossed an important threshold: It was obvious that the Douglass Brothers are a band.

The warm-up ended. In the first few seconds of “Pedestrian Jaywalking,” the guys managed to recreate the excitement of finally playing a long-anticipated CD, only without the disappointment. Lacking the distance or distraction of a more typical venue, the band was left a bit exposed, but to their credit they filled that basement with unaffected enthusiasm and brought the people who actually lived at the house downstairs to listen.

The band took risks in writing and performing their songs, occasionally compromising the fluidity and seamless integration they proved themselves more than capable of in order to incorporate a metal-style riff into a more relaxed song or to give a harder song a playful intermission.

The band is aware that they’re taking risks. They could simplify things a bit, and the resulting music would be a little smoother, but they choose to work toward a different goal.

“We’re trying to mix our own styles in each element of the band to come up with something that’s original,” explained Chris.

The sentiment may be somewhat common, but the Douglass Brothers are a diverse enough group to make a decent go of it. Chris Kudrick and Bob Hartle met in a high school history class. They talked about learning to play music until one day Bob said he’d bought a bass. Chris went out and bought himself a guitar and they started jamming together. They found an older guitarist very much into metal to jam with, and they played without much direction for a few years.

Over the summer Chris and Bob decided to start a band. They tracked down that metal-loving guitarist, whom they’d not seen in about two years, and got him, Steve Whooler, to join the band.

The Douglass Brothers’ original drummer flaked on them right before a battle of the bands competition. Bob’s frantic search for a drummer had him calling friends of friends of friends looking for anyone who might have been interested. Bob finally reached Matt Cable at Matt’s father’s office.

With the personnel in place, the band took a mature approach to getting started. Instead of throwing up a homemade or template Web site with pages of bios and a seizure’s worth of pictures, they had their Web site (www.thedouglassbrothers.com) built by Bill Domiano’s Web Studio. They told him to keep it brief and professional and emphasize the shows they’d be playing.

Right now the band’s focus is on writing and refining original material. Their writing process involves individual composition and contrived collaboration as well as more spur-of-the-moment, jam-style songwriting.

Bob’s not particularly worried about the reception of their songs: “We hope people like it, but we don’t let it bother us – if they don’t, because we’re having fun playing – music that we like.”

Chris, too, is prepared to cope with a less-than-appreciative reaction, but he’s a little more hopeful. “If we play 10 songs, some people might not like nine of them, but I guarantee they like that 10th song.”

Write, paint, play? E-mail Zak Sharif at rzs8@pitt.edu to get a little exposure.