Although they are not locally born and bred, they couldn’t fit in better in Santa Cruz, a city that encourages artistic expression and nourishes eccentric ideals and unconditional acceptance. The original crew of Byron Space Circus is made up of Chris Lynch, Jason Felten and Micah Ofstedahl hailing from Mankato, Minnesota. After these Minnesotan boys’ brief experience living the Humboldt lifestyle, and then bouncing back to Minneapolis before the trio migrated southwest once again and linked up with their fourth member, Ventura born drummer, Chanda Cummings.
I was fortunate enough to catch them during a Thursday evening practice in their studio off of Harvey West Boulevard. Before this interview I had seen them perform twice, both times feeling utterly excited and enlightened. The party I was fortunate enough to see them at is by far the best Santa Cruz house party I have ever been to, due mainly to their musical contribution and the vibrant energy they spread.
This was my first recorded interview as a Cabrillo journalism student and aspiring music journalist and my feelings of nervousness and excitement joined hand in hand to dance in a circle, totally diffusing one another. The crew welcomed me in warmly, poured me a glass of red wine and we lounged and talked for an over an hour, before I left and let them return to practicing their magical music.
These guys are anxious to go on tour again, and they are taking applications for promoters and producers who can also make a really solid and trustworthy friend. If I had stayed much longer that night I would’ve volunteered to do all of the above, for free.
Q. How long have you all been playing together?
Micah: 2 1/2 years with everybody.
Jason: Mike and I have been playing since we were ten. A little bit, jammin’ around.
Chris: It wasn’t the Byron space circus at age 10, we were just noodlin’ around together. College started the formation of the band in Mankato, Minnesota.
Jason: So we've been a band for six years.
Chris: We've had about 5 different drummers. It really hadn’t blossomed until we got out here, to Santa Cruz.
Q. What brought you all to Santa Cruz?
Jason: We never got really serious until we got out here. With school and jobs and, you know, it was always just playing bars for beers.
Chris: We finally feel like we’re giving it a full shot. It’s a whole lot more fun when your putting your energy into it to see what kind of new music can come, we used to do a lot more improv and jams, and now there’s a lot more songwriting go on.
Q. Where does your name come from?
Jason: When we were in college we lived on Byron Street. Bachelor pad, kind of crazy, you know, kind of a circus. We were freshmen in college, buncha dudes. So we played an open mic night and they wanted us to come back and play a weekend show. We weren’t officially a band, we didn’t have a name. The music at the time was spacey and jammy, the one song we had written at the time was a kind of like a circus song. The house was three ring circus but no nets, and just a great time. The name was just billed for the show. We didn’t even pick it; it was one of a few.
Micah: Space in music, space in music, and part of it was outer space and just our interest in all sorts of things, different meanings in the word space, not to get all deep on it. (Laughter) Small coincidental things coming at us involving space in different ways.
Q. And Byron Street was in what city?
Chris: Mankato, Minnesota.
Jason: 5 bedroom house, 3 stories for 8 hundred bucks, can you imagine that? Amazing. You can’t get a studio for eight hundred bucks here.
Q. How would you describe your music in words for someone who has never heard it before?
Chanda: No one has an answer.
Chris: You tell us.
Chanda: There’s the acoustic thing, then there’s the electric thing.
Chris: In the big picture it’s rock I guess, in the huge picture. To focus in on it a little more it might be definitely elements of funk.
Jason: Electro, synthesizers, but funk for sure, electro-funk with psychedelic elements.
Chris: There’s a lot of very distorted, dirty very dark stuff intertwined too. We can definitely be not as uplifting dance music as it can be sometimes. Dark heavy stuff.
Micah: And dark mellow stuff. Like Floyd. Not dark dark. Doesn’t necessarily mean it is dark, not that the lyrics are dark and sad.
Jason: That’s life though, you have good days and bad days, sometimes you wanna dance and sometimes you wanna cry. It’s fun to go see a show and be dancin’ the whole time, if you stick one or two just downer tunes, then once you come back to another funk tune it’s gonna be that much more funkier or happy. There’s no pain without pleasure.
Chanda: Introspective.
Chris: It’s like the sun and the moon. The ancients said the moon is cool and changing and the sun is always hot and constant.
Jason: On Myspace it says psychedelic lounge funk
Chris: It’d be boring playing in a band that played the same sound all the time.
Chanda: Our sound is still developing as musicians.
Q. What instruments do you all play?
Chanda: Drums.
Chris: keyboards, mandolin and acoustic violin.
Jason: Bass, upright and little synthesizer sampling stuff.
Chanda: Micah plays banjo
(laughs)
Chris: he loves the banjo
Michael: I’ll play a little riff for you
(plays a few keys)
Michael: Uh, just guitar. I’ll repeat. Just guitar.
Chanda: Chris and I sing.
Chris: Someday these guys will sing too.
Q. In a few words, what inspires you to play music everyday?
Chanda: The ‘what’s gonna happen next’ factor. This project is always changing, that’s inspiring to me. Keeps it interesting. Everybody is trying really hard to make something happen and that frontier is just waiting to unfold.
Chris: For me it’s kind of in two ways it the deepest form of exploring your subconscious, as far as introverted side. And on the other side of it is the deepest way of communicating with others. It’s fun. I love it. It’s an addiction.
Jason: It keeps me kinda sane. I don’t know what else I’d do. I’d just sit here and my brain would explode. Its just life, especially in the past five years. It’s a challenge.
Michael: money.
(laughter, hoots)
Chris: Here’s a good story, Michael outside the Mucky Duck in Monterey after a show. They gave us something like 400 dollars. We’re a bit lubricated, having a good time and he takes the money and chews it up in his mouth and it’s raining out and he just spits the money into the gutter. It created a river of money ready to go down the drain.
Jason: We retrieved most of it.
Michael: No, uh. I didn’t think of a serious answer. Well one thing I was thinking of today is just being at work inspires me to continue doing what I love so that I don’t have to do that kind of thing. So in a way that is related to money. That’s not what drives me but the more time I can spend doing this the better. It’s one way you can abstractly communicate with anybody.
Q. Any inspiring words to send to Cabrillo students about following their dreams?
Chris: Drop out of school.
Jason: Drop out of school and join a rock band.
Chris: No, school’s done some good for me. For sure.
Jason: Whatever makes you feel good, that’s what you should do.
Chris: take what you want from all the teachers and the books and the class but know what you want to do with it ultimately.
Chanda: Cabrillo is an awesome music school. It’s pretty incredible. People that are there know that.
Chris: And it’s affordable. I actually sat in on some music classes at Cabrillo until they finally did attendance. (laughs) I sat in, did a mini little test to see where were at, took some notes and learned some stuff. And actually out of it, I wrote a song that in some ways is connected to the chords that we were talking about in the class, so that was cool.
Q. You all seem to like dressing up in costumes, what’s the deal?
Jason: I think it was even before the BSC was even name. Byron Street we’d just have crazy funk parties where funk is pretty broad so whatever you thinks funk like 70s vintage or just looking crazy
Micah: Or gorilla costumes
Chanda: That’s why I responded to the Craigslist ad
Jason: Yeah, I think that was our ad: drummer, serious and wants to pursue this but you know-
Chanda: But here’s what we look like when we play
Jason: Yeah, keeps you from taking it to serious
Chanda: It escalates the show, we throw the box of hats out and it makes our job a lot easier. Cuz people just go there, they put a hat on and they go there.
Q. I know your playing a Halloween show, any particular costumes in mind?
Everyone: Oh yeah. We have a full collective plan.
Q. What musicians inspire you?
Chanda: I’m a big Phish fan.
Jason: Talking Heads, Radiohead, especially live.
Micah: What they said and then Pink Floyd.
Jason: Herbie Hancock’s pretty funky.
Chris: Billie Preston. But it’s all over the board. The Doors are really one of the first that got me into music. Beck. Zappa.
Micah: I wanna give Bob Dylan some love
Jason: He’s from Minnesota so that obviously hits a soft spot.
Q. How does living here in Santa Cruz shape your music and influence your sound?
Chanda: You can do whatever you want here.
Jason: Yeah, no matter what it is here you can do it full on. Whether it’s music or hiking or biking or surfing or kayaking or being a freak on Pacific. You’re pretty much free to do whatever. It’s an inspiring place, just that alone. But it is a bubble, for sure. Kind of a vacuum.
Chris: You can be weird and it’s accepted. And other people dig it. And it would be hard to be weird in a place where people didn’t know how to be weird.
Chanda: The hats might not go over so well in other place. They usually do though.
Chris: It’s a huge influence being in the natural world. It’s nice to be in such a beautiful day on top of the whole community and social aspect. The oceans, the redwoods. You can go up hwy 9 and get lost for a day and get inspired and then come back and maybe write a song.
Jason: We’re getting some roots. This is the longest place we’ve stayed as a band since we started.
Micah: There’s a lot of music here. There’s a lot of other bands on and around our level so there’s things aspire for and bands from this area to look up to.
Q. What was the first album you ever bought?
Chris: Doors, self titled. Jimi Hendrix, Are You Experienced?
Chanda: Oingo Boingo. I have a few years on these guys.
Jason: There was three I got in sixth grade from my older sister. Tool: Enema. Greenday: Dookie and Bone Thugs & Harmony Eternal 1999 or whatever.
Micah: Huey Luis & the News. I think the first random free for a dollar tape bin was Michael’s brother Jerome Jackson.
(Collective laughter)
Q. Who’s the producer?
Chanda: We’re self-produced. We have a demo CD but we have two cd’s in the mix.
Q. Are you looking to get signed by a major label?
Jason: Maybe, kinda. I mean the record industry seems kinda shotty. And people don’t really buy cd’s anymore. It’s all downloads, it’s all burned. I mean yeah, I’m sure we would if we got some good deal.
Chanda: And what’s it about? Is it about getting your name out there more? I guess that’s the value in it.
Chris: You have to put a lot of trust in whomever, and they need to be connected.
Chanda: I think the more valuable other entity to the band as far as administration goes would be a manager.
Q. Your sound is psychedelic; do drugs ever play a part in your musical process?
Chris: You can think of us a drug orientated band, of course we’re not. You can trust us. That’s a Pink Floyd quote.
Jason: We don’t practice or play live on drugs. Maybe a little ganja once in while. Not even that so much anymore. Drugs can be good, mind expanding, but everything in moderation. You can do that and then recollect yourself and then take something from that or not.
Chris: It’s definitely helped us get where we’re at.
Micah: It’s influence on what music you listen to is huge. It opens your mind to other music.
Chris: For us, growing up we’ve done psychedelics together. We were young; we had these very deep timeless experiences together that you will always have with you. It’s not like you think about them a lot but there are part of us.
Chanda: I’ve certainly seen a lot of music on psychedelics. A lot more than I’ve played. I haven’t really done it period, played on drugs. The drums are a very physical thing.
Jason: Yeah, it’s tough when your guitar neck turns into a noodle.
Micah: Bill Hick’s said best, “if you don’t think drugs have done a good thing in this world take all your albums and burn ‘em, cuz all those musicians were real f@%&in’ high.”
Make sure to check out the BSC live on Halloween, Friday, October 31st at the Crepe Place. If you can’t make that show, they’ll be performing at the Crow’s Nest on Thursday, November 20th. You can also hear their music at www.myspace.com/byronspacecircus
