Thanks to Ape Machine, classic rock isn’t dead yet. The local rockers are injecting heavy doses of old-school bluesiness and metal-tinged rock into the indie rock and electro-dominated local scene.
Though the band is based out of Portland now, bassist Brian True, guitarist Ian Watts and singer Caleb Heinze actually got their start further south.
“It sort of started like four years ago with Ian and I [sic],” Heinze said. “Their singer left and so I kind of came in to sing for him which was like my first singing thing. It didn’t work out [though]. That kind of eventually dissolved and he decided to move to Portland.”
Heinze remained in Sacramento, Calif., after Watt’s departure, but the two didn’t lose focus.
“It was always like ‘all right, I’m going to meet you in Portland and we’re going to start a rock band—like a real rock band—and have fun with it and stuff,'” Heinze said. “It was sort of just to escape that scene for awhile and go somewhere else that’s a little more open and fun.”
Finding themselves in Portland, Heinze, True and Watts were happy with a change of scenery and a city famous for its open embrace of local music. With Portland as their playground, the three embarked on what would become a long journey to their current line up.
“It’s taken four years to get it together,” True said. “But for the past six months, maybe even close to a year, we’ve had everybody together [and] now it’s Ape Machine.”
In addition to the original threesome, the band added on drummer Monte Fuller and guitarist Jimi Miller. Together, the band has developed their own sound and gradually gained speed with a lot of hard work and patience.
“The first few months after that it was just trying to get everything off the ground,” Heinze said. “And then once it happens then it’s just like you wait for the momentum to build and keep it going.”
Making it a goal to tour every few months, they are about to embark on their third trip down the West Coast. Their show tonight at the Doug Fir Lounge will be their last before they leave.
In addition to playing up and down the coast and out and around Portland, Ape Machine has been hard at work on their first full-length album. The yet-to-be-titled piece will be coming out on CD, with seven of the songs off the CD appearing on a vinyl pressing as well. Having begun work on it last September, the group is currently in the mixing process.
Ape Machine’s aforementioned blues-rock and early heavy-metal sounds may be the most prominent influences heard in their music, but far more has gone into the songwriting process than may be evident to the casual listener.
“It’s all intertwined,” Miller said. “Usually, one of us will come up with some riff and we’ll kind of like e-mail it over the phone or send it in a voicemail and then usually, a lot of the time what happens is we go to Brian’s kitchen at like 1 o’clock in the morning and slowly start forming more parts.”
Bringing all of their talent to the table has also meant that each member’s individual musical tastes play subtle-yet-key roles in the development of their music.
“It’s weird because you don’t find yourself only following sets of music that you think you want to sound like,” said Heinze. “You find yourself putting other things in there.
Your main drive and focus is ‘let’s be a rock band,’ but then you find yourself adding these crazy little elements to it that sort of open that up a little bit for everyone to kind of grab a little bit or a piece of it that they can take to heart for themselves, which is kind of fun.”
Their template may be classic, but despite their vintage sound, Ape Machine is keeping things modern and bringing a new perspective to a genre that’s been thrown to the wayside.