On The Maybe Happening’s MySpace page there are a series of poems about New York City, penned by the band’s lyricist and violinist Nathan Langston.
“For every city I go to on tour, I try to write a poem about it,” Langston explains, “There’s 16 or 17 that I’ve done so far but I want to do one for every city in America, kind of a map.”
Langston’s accounts of his travels are, in many ways, like the music he and his band create. They form an impression of their subject, which marries equal parts technicality and emotional resonance to communicate its message. This mix of technical skill and subconscious energy has become The Maybe Happening’s calling card. And, as their music continues to gain ground, Langston and his band are sure to have more than adequate inspiration for their artistic endeavors.
The kinetic energy now inherent in The Maybe Happening’s music began building years ago with the childhood friendship between Langston and guitarist Jonathan Andersen. As Langston puts it, “Some form of this band has existed since 1983.”
However, it was not until the two entered high school that they met drummer Parker Dutro. His musical tastes fit well with Andersen’s and the two started playing together while Langston dove full bore into developing his skills as a classical violinist and poet.
“I would hang out and, like, write while they had practice,” says Langston of the time prior to The Maybe Happening’s formation.
The group moved closer to its current form about five years ago when Langston and Andersen began a side project which featured the latter’s spastic guitar work and the former’s intense observational storytelling.
“When we first started we were a weird novelty band for about a year,” says Langston. “Parker [Dutro, drummer] wasn’t playing with us at that point, it was just me and Jonathan and it was just guitar, violin and me reading poetry over the top. That was the original idea and that was just more specifically trying to write stories and Jonathan would just be trying to find out what they would sound like.”
Eventually Langston would make the transition from poet to singer and the duo would cement their lineup with Dutro on drums. Though this change made them decidedly “more band-ish” they managed to retain Langston and Andersen’s early preoccupation with narrative and it is this aesthetic that continues to fuel their creative process.
Feb. 2 will mark the latest full-length release from The Maybe Happening, Beyond the Bells, a narrative epic whose genesis was unique to Langston and company’s writing process.
“One way of saying it is that we wrote it all in sequence,” Langston said. “So, instead of writing a bunch of songs and then arranging them in a particular way, we wrote them all in order.”
The resultant album is an excellent collection of shambling, almost theatrical pop that builds on The Maybe Happening’s burgeoning mythology. Using narrative as a jumping off point, the band has constructed an album that feeds happily off its emotional context to create grandiose arrangements, which illustrate the rise and fall of its characters.
“It took most of last year, mostly cause we did it on the cheap,” says Langston, “We ended up [recording] it all over the place, so it took us a long time. We recorded a lot of it at Type Foundry and then in basements and it took us about a year. It ended up costing us about 300 to 400 hundred dollars.”
Though The Maybe Happening has gotten away with a smaller price tag, their work has actually grown in scope as a wide smattering of guest instrumentalists appear on the album to help illuminate the orchestral undertones of the band’s music.
One such collaborator is local songsmith Nick Jaina, who is slated to make a “secret” appearance with The Maybe Happening this coming Thursday when the band plays the Doug Fir along with Invisible Rockets and Strangers Die Every Day. On Feb. 2 they are playing a CD release show at Rotture, which promises to bring out the band in its fully realized form, replete with a wide assortment of guest instrumentation.
The Maybe Happening have been playing together in one form or another for more than five years now and, rather than slowly divesting them of their collective will, the years have only tightened the group as a creative unit. It has allowed their music to take on “a life of its own,” and we are all lucky enough to get caught in its wake.