The Hand That Shakes Us

It is hard for me not to get just a little sentimental when it comes to Columbus, Ohio quartet Denovo. Their music is a near perfect experiment in cross-fertilizing indie-rock, post-punk and math rock, which is enough to bring a tear to anyone’s eye. Even more startling, their creativity shines off of high-hats, hair sweat, hand-claps and thrashed microphones alike when the band takes the stage. And when their energy erupts into random fits of flailing guitars, whipping power cords, and Kevin Bacon’s patented footloose-style dance moves, in the crowd, goosebumps, smiles, and ass shaking are chronic and contagious. Every angular solo, bass hammer-on, thunderous drum fill, and soaring vocal line is carefully crafted without being overwrought and academic or watered down and false. Denovo are putting underground music exactly where it belongs; out of the hands of chic-seekers and skeptics and into the hands of rock and roll’s true believers.

Since their very first show (which also happened to be the Bettawreckonize.com launch party), Denovo have played dozens of shows, have developed a set of nearly flawless material, and recently released a 7”/CDEP combo on vocalist Sean Gardner’s We Want Action label. But not to be overlooked is their most striking accomplishment: making their fans their friends and developing a camaraderie with the bands with whom they share a stage.

I recently had the pleasure of spending a late evening with three of the four gentlemen from Denovo. While splitting a bag of salted sweet peas four ways, the boys divulged their extensive roots, songcraft, and experiences while taking their signature sound into the studio and onto the road. Without further adieu, allow me to introduce some of my best friends and one of my favorite bands.

Interview conducted in person by Tim Anderl. Pictures taken by Dave Altherr.

Names: Marc Anderson (guitar, backing vocals), Chris Worth (bass, backing vocals), Jason Mowery (drums)
Band: Denovo

BW: How did you guys meet each other and decide that you wanted to play music together?

Marc: I was playing guitar in my bedroom a lot and I met this kid named Mike and he knew these kids from Shadyside, WV that played music too. Jason (Mowery) was one of them. We started a band called 40 Winks and we played a Fourth of July party. Then I went away for a while and Jason had joined another band. So I asked him if they needed a guitarist, and he said “Yeah, we do.” So I started playing guitar with Jason in a band called Output. Output was a hardcore band. We had a SHARP (Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice) dude singing. Our band eventually broke up and there was another band called Amber’s Room who broke up that had Will (Fugman) and this guy Vinnie and another guy named Vern. Together we created a band called Rather Than Shine. Rather Than Shine became Special Aviation Project when Chris (Worth) joined and Vinnie and Vern were kicked out.
Chris: Me joining the band was a pretty funny story actually.
Jason: Vinnie wasn’t kicked out. He quit.
Chris: I was visiting Jason on a break from school (Kenyon College). I was at his house for ten days and the guys kept talking about how they hated….wait, this is becoming a shitty story. What happened? Vinnie flipped out cause Will was asking him why he wasn’t playing the song right.
Marc: Yeah. Will was saying, “Why aren’t you playing the part? Why are you changing it? There was tension already and Vinnie had this punk band that he was doing at the same time. Anyway, he got really mad at Will and he walked out, said he quit, got in his green and white Fyatt (laughter)
Chris: Will’s car.
Marc: ….and drove off. I think that the honest to God story is that Will threw Vinnie’s Oscar Meyer Weiner frisbee on the roof and couldn’t get it down and that made Vinnie quit.

BW: So what happened with Special Aviation Project then? That was three of the four members of Denovo and Will, right?

Jason: For the most part. Sean (Gardner) sort of joined the band too, but we were on the way out when he joined.

BW: Now what did he do in Special Aviation Project?

Chris: He sang on a few of our songs. Sean joined the band like two weeks before we went out on tour with Betaroric for four our five days.
Marc: Will knew the Betaroric guys from partying with them and one of those guys knew someone at Bard College, somebody else knew someone in Washington….anyway, we had three or so dates and we played two of them.
Chris: Then all the bands went to IHOP in D.C. at 5am, got pissed at each other and decided to drive home and then broke up like three weeks later. We only went out for four days and it killed two bands. (laughter)
Marc: It was gonna happen anyway. This just made it happen quicker. As soon as Sean joined, everyone….I can’t speak for Will because he’s not here, but I think Will didn’t want a singer and we all did. We actually wrote Special Aviation Project songs thinking that there would be vocals eventually. We were leaving long verse areas where words would happen. We had eight people try out and do things and none of them had really worked out. Then I met Sean Gardner through Mike Finch, who is doing the label with him now (We Want Action). Sean said that he’d heard us and liked what we were doing and he said he’d come to practice. He sang and it was totally cool.
Chris: None of us knew that he was going to be there, and he knocked on the door and said he was there to practice. He sort of looked like Doug Martsch (Built To Spill)….
Marc: He tried out and everyone liked it, and when we tried to incorporate his vocals it was a little harder than we’d expected. So, we took one of the songs that Sean had written and wrote something around that, and it wasn’t really all that connected with our other songs….I’m not sure what happened after that.
Jason: There was tension there. We weren’t getting along because we’d just been doing it for too long. (Directed at Marc) And you hadn’t talked to will for a couple months….
Marc: Yeah, I guess we were on the outs for various reasons. We were all ticked off, but I guess Will missed a couple of practices, which was odd because he was always the first one there, and he was always ready to go and really psyched about playing. Things just got weird and we quit playing for a little bit.
Jason: More Than Music Fest was our last show as Special Aviation Project. We hadn’t practiced in about three months.
Chris: It was two in the afternoon, no one wanted to be there, Will was made at everyone….
Jason: We played horribly.
Marc: I think I showed up at the fest at 1:00 and left by 3:00. It sucked. It was fun for a while and then it just sucked.
Jason: Will ended up being sort of a focal point for a lot of the tension in the band and it just sort of happened that the three of us and Sean decided that we wanted to continue playing music together and Denovo just sort of happened from there without Will.
Chris: I still play with Will in another band though and we’re all still friends.

BW: Now when Sean came into this situation was he coming from the same points of reference that you guys were coming from?

Marc: No, we were all listening to Fugazi and Jawbox and he grew up on Smashing Pumpkins.
Chris: Now were all at the point that we’re listening to about the same stuff. He just took a different route to get there.

BW: Do you think that the reason it initially worked so well with him was that he didn’t have preconceived notions about what you guys should be doing?

Chris: I think that it worked because he could sing and he didn’t move. That was the problem that we had with everyone else was that they couldn’t sing.
Jason: Sean just had an amazing singing voice and the other kids we were trying out for Special Aviation Project just weren’t that good. Sean was already into interesting, prettier stuff. His vocals just sound the best and we were all really impressed with what he brought to the table. As far as a point of reference, him having a different background, it created a little tension in that it made forming Denovo and finding our sound pretty difficult.
Marc: Anyway, Denovo just clicked….well honest to God what happened was that the At The Drive In EP (Vaya) came out and it was so much more interesting and fun and cool and crisp and fresh. Everyone was just really psyched about it and we were all listening to it for months and months. Then somebody brought some new riffs to Special Aviation Project and Will said, “That doesn’t sound like us.” But it was fun and that was basically when the line was crossed. That EP was our common ground with Sean and was sort of why we decided to continue on together with something that was more fun and energetic than what we’d done up to that point.

BW: So, how long have you been together then as Denovo?

Jason: Late 2001 we started playing. It took us a really long time. We’d practice for a couple of months, come up with some riffs and a couple songs, come back a couple weeks later and trash all of it and start over. We hadn’t really played with Sean a lot in that capacity yet so we all had to get used to working with him, and he had to get used to working with us.
Chris: A certain amount of music sharing had to happen too before we were all on the same page.
Jason: Yeah, like what you were saying before….the rest of us had a pretty punk rock upbringing and Sean didn’t have quite as much of the punk in his history so it took us a while to figure out each other and what we could do.

BW: So were you guys trying to find your own sound or was it more like, “We have these bands in common that were interested in and we want to show our influences on our sleeve.”

Marc: I think we’re still developing a sound. We have eight or nine songs, and I just don’t think a band can find their sound in nine songs. Every practice someone will bring something new or we get another feeling….I think we’re just moving forward.
Jason: I think it’s pretty hard to pinpoint our influences. I guess that probably sounds arrogant, but I don’t mean it in an arrogant way I just think it is hard. Being internal to the band I think it is hard to think of one influence that we blatantly put out there a lot. We share a lot of common ground, but we all have our individual tastes too. I think it ends up coming together as something pretty original sounding.
Chris: But it is also why we can play together for three years and hardly get anything done.

BW: How long does it typically take you to write a song and what is involved in that process?

Marc: The newest song that you heard tonight, the root of that until we could play it out took about a year.
Jason: I think that there are two reasons why we’re such a slow moving band, in that it takes us a really long time to write songs. The first reason is that whether we choose to or not we’re a very democratic band. Nobody ever writes a song and brings it to practice and says, “Hey guys I wrote this song,” and we use it. At least three or four of us will go into the basement and write a song with all four of our input. We try to write the whole song as a band and because there are that many opinions involved it ends up taking a really long time. Another reason it takes us a really long time is….I think there is a process that most other bands do where songs are constantly evolving and changing over time. A band will start playing a song out and then start thinking about ways to improve it and change it so six months later the songs that they’re playing out will be different or will be something else. We make that whole evolution happen in two months time in our basement before we even try to play the song out. We play it over and over again until we’re completely happy with it. I can’t help but think that it’s a good thing. Rather than Denovo having 16 mediocre songs, we have eight or nine really good songs that we’ve spent forever picking apart.

BW: One of the things that is so interesting to me about your band is the humanistic percussion that you bring to your songs, things as basic as handclapping or bean shakers….it takes your songs to this mind-boggling, goosebump inducing, tribal level. I feel like it’s so fucking easy, but also totally genius. How do you manage to incorporate these subtleties and still end up with music that’s so smart?

Chris: Because it is fun to go to Columbus percussion and screw around with all the Latin percussion shit.
Jason: Our basic idea when we started this was that we wanted to have fun more than anything. The band we were in was complicated and intricate and we were writing rock operas where we had to memorize these musical math equations. We’re not doing that anymore. We’re really passionate about these songs and our goal is to make them fun. I think a lot of it comes from that, because it is so natural. Lately we’ve been trying to consciously push ourselves in new directions and trying to make ourselves do things that we wouldn’t normally do.
Marc: I think that the reason the handclaps in our new song happened – and I can’t be for sure – was that everybody should be doing something all the time. If an opportunity arises for someone to clap their hands or someone else to yell in the background or shake the egg shaker….
Chris: Other than just standing there doing nothing.
Marc: Like, Chris isn’t playing a bassline there and he just started clapping one day, and then I clap up to my guitar part, and then he comes back later and is clapping again….if you have a chance to do something that is going to make the song better or catchier just do it, ya know?
Jason: We are definitely more into taking chances, though these aren’t big risky things. Special Aviation Project was so artsy and cool, and people were so conscious about doing different things like, “This part has to be precisely played.” At that time everyone had to be cool and the band had to be cool and now we’re trying to take chances that we never would’ve taken before like jump around and have more fun.
Marc: We couldn’t rock out while we were playing arpeggios and there was nothing there that grooved at all….you couldn’t dance to it. It was like we were all programmed keyboards spitting out notes and it just lacked balls.

BW: Do you think that is a product of the environment at that time. I don’t mean to sell you short and say that somebody else did it first and now it is safe for you guys to do this, but it seems like the shit that was hot in the mid-nineties was bands doing technical played out shit where bands had their backs to the audience. Now, bands like At The Drive In came out and were doing wild shit and back flips off the monitors….

Chris: But there were bands like Managra back then that were still blowing shit up….
Jason: I think that to a certain extent it was environmental, but ATDI wasn’t really doing anything that anybody else wasn’t doing.
Marc: We aren’t modeling our band after ATDI. There was a stupid review of us that mentioned At The Drive In and I don’t think we’re trying to be them or could ever be them….
Jason: Can you sense the anger about this review we got?

BW: Well, even outside of At The Drive In, Icarus Line we’re coming up and destroying places they were playing and Trail of Dead were decimating themselves. It just seems like the environment isn’t as calculated or safe as it was when bands like Bluetip or Boys Life or Christy Front Drive were playing. I know that’s where you came up, with those bands.

Marc: But the way we hear some of our songs now is like, “ Chris, will you play that Hoover-ish bass line right there, while Jason does that Primus thing on the high hat and Marc is going to do the Swervedriver guitar part over it while Sean does the Built to Spill vocals.”
Jason: That is exactly what happens and the end product ends up being pretty original because it ends up being all of these things and none of them at the same time somehow.
Marc: Unless you are going to start some new, crazy different way of playing instruments or some new instrument than everything you play is going to be relative to the things that you listen to. And even if it’s not, you are hearing these things somewhere, not just creating it from thin air. You are making it because it makes you feel good.
(laughter)
Chris: Are you lost yet?

BW: What about the lyrics; (directed at Marc) you write some of them and Sean writes some of them, right?

Marc: I write most of them and bring them here and then everybody tears them up and we make what we can out of them.

BW: How do you get a feeling about what is right to put to the music?

Marc: I have a shitty day at work so at 11:00 I got take 20 minute shit break and take a pen and paper and write lyrics to bring home. Then we fuck with them and make them whatever. Not all the songs are about being pissed at work because who’s not pissed, that’s not interesting. One is about….I don’t know.
Chris: It seems like the underlying theme of a lot of what you write is about not wasting time being unhappy or not giving a shit about what you’re doing but making some kind of positive mark on the world while you can.

BW: As the listener I hear that. “Hacksaw” definitely has a message about how there are things that are more important than money and status. Then there is “Quiet” where Sean says, “Now where is the hand that shakes us?”

Marc: Sean wrote that one.

BW: That even has a message about finding out what’s motivating you.

Marc: I know that Sean said he wrote that when his brother got sent with the Army to fight terrorism or something. It fucked with him I guess and he wrote about it.
Jason: Another song is about being annoyed with the media coverage of the war constantly.
Chris: It is like war porn.
Marc: Right, enough already. I can pick up a newspaper if I choose or turn on CNN. Even if you listen to the radio you are getting updated every five minutes. One song (“Words For Potentially Millions”) is about someone dying in a car wreck and the only thing that they have to show for themselves is a wreath on the side of the highway. Either that or an demolished piece of median strip. Things that are there but that no one cares about because you don’t know the person who’s head went through the windshield or flying across a field because they hit a deer or something.
(laughter)

BW: One thing I definitely want to know about is that one song about body image, “Torn Out,”….

Chris: That is another Sean song. We don’t play that one out much anymore. We’re thinking about revamping or revising it.

BW: OK, here’s where I’m going with this. One of your songs has been submitted to E! Entertainment Network for a show about fashion. Now to have a song that can be interpreted as to being about the media’s effect on body image and how you don’t have to be like models….isn’t that a little contradictory. Is the music more important than the means or vice versa? Is one more important than the other?

Chris: We probably all have a different answer for this one.
Jason: I think that a lot of us think, for the reasons that you brought up, that we would’ve thought it was pretty ironic or funny if they’d used “Torn Out” for the show but it just wasn’t a song that we had recorded or could make available for that. We did all think twice about it and think that it would’ve been funny if that was the song they’d used for a fashion show thing. But, when this opportunity came up, we never really sat down and had a big discussion about it. We all knew where we stood on the issue and it was totally cool with all of us to do it. The biggest point is that while we think things that are based on superficiality or image are bullshit and that’s important to us, none of us are morally opposed to the fashion industry really. There can be shitty parts, but I think about it a lot sometimes since I do graphic design. It can be an art like any other art. It wasn’t a principle or moral thing to us where we had to choose whether our music or our principles were more important. There could be things in the future that will make us think twice about whether we feel right about participating, but this just wasn’t one of them.
This is how the E! thing came about. The guy who works for E! in L.A. who was putting the music together for the show – I think he’s originally from Columbus – started asking for people to submit stuff. He started posting things on message boards and e-mailing people because he wanted Columbus bands involved. I saw the post on Columbus Music.com and none of us responded to him at first. Then a month later it resurfaced on some other message boards and so I wrote to the guy and said, “I don’t know if you’re still looking for bands for this or not, but we’ll send you a submission.” He wrote back and said that he was ready to contact us; that he’d heard us and thought we would be a good match for this. He said a lot of the music they were receiving for the show wasn’t very aggressive and they wanted something a little more aggressive or edgy. We we’re chosen out of 700 submissions and I think most of the bands were from L.A. or Columbus. They only chose like 14 or 15 other bands including 84 Nash and Miranda Sound. It is a pilot thing and we aren’t getting paid or anything like that, but our web page address will be in the credits or listed somewhere and we feel like it is free publicity.

BW: You guys just released a three-song CD/7” tonight to the listening public. Tell me about the record?

Marc: Sean said, “Me, Finch and John Fintel want to start a record label. We’ve been talking about it forever, and I want Denovo to be the first release.” So we said, “Sure.” We weren’t really taking it super seriously cause it seemed like a though, but then it became more and more do-able and serious and they sold a bunch of CDs to get money and funds to put this together. Jon Fintel, who is doing the We Want Action record label with them, also runs Relay Recording and he did our songs for free so that the label would have something to sell. So all of a sudden we were making a record. It was sort of out of the blue to me since we weren’t really on the busy end of it in terms of figuring out how to press the records and such.
Jason: We were sort of just hanging out with the people who built the studio before they even built it. They built it inside a house. We had befriended all of them, and knew Jon when he was doing recording at Schwab Studios, which is sort of a well known studio in Columbus. We knew he was good and when they offered to do it and not charge us cause it was going to be his label….it just worked out.
Marc: As it became more real we started questioning what we’d do to make this accessible to people who don’t have a record player. So we made a plan to create CDs and insert them with the 7” so that everyone could get the best of both worlds. Everything just came together on everyone’s end. They did a lot of the early work and got the money together, and we did a lot of research and burning and printing. Then when everything came together we did a lot of stuffing and….everybody had a big part.
BW: How did you choose the songs to go on there? Were they your favorite songs from the bunch?

Jason: No, at the time when we first recorded them, which was last year, “I’ll Be The Cord Cutter” was a brand new song. We felt like the newest thing we’d done was new and fresh; we figured that the newest thing we’d done was the best since we have been getting better and better the longer that we’re together. “Words For Potentially Millions” was an older one but seemed like a natural choice since people that had come to see us were recognizing it and giving us positive feedback on it. They both also happened to be shorter songs, which was ideal for a 7”. We very chose “Digging In The Dirt” because it was a cover song and we’d had a lot of fun playing it. I don’t think any of us want to put covers out on a full-length so we didn’t really feel like that was what we should do, so we decided that it would go on the 7”. Hopefully someday it will be that, “Did you ever get that first Denovo 7” with the cover of “Digging In The Dirt” on it.”
Marc: Eventually as we have more songs to choose from we’ll be able to say, “It’s there. We did it. Now we are going to move on and not worry about it.”

BW: Is it frustrating that this is coming out so long after you recorded it? What are you plans for your next move?

Jason: We are way, way ready to move on, but we just don’t have the songs in our arsenal yet to record a full-length.
Chris: We all want to do it, but just haven’t had the chance to glue everything together yet.
Marc: We have tapes and tapes and tapes of material and we just need to figure out a place for everything.
Jason: I think that more frustrating than the fact that it has been a while since we’ve recorded it is that it is just a three-song release. We are ready to do this, but we’re just not quite there yet.
Chris: But we are happy with it. It looks good, it sounds good, and we’re psyched it is out.

BW: You guys have been traveling regionally quite a bit since 2001. What are some of your most memorable moments on the road?

Jason: We’ve been trying to play out a lot recently, so the most memorable shows are naturally the ones freshest in our minds. We have a lot of stories from our trip to Bowling Green, Ohio.
Marc: We decided to set up some stuff out of town. We got to the bar, set up early, and went to get something to eat. Sean, Chris and I are walking back to the van when we see a big chunk of the muffler lying on the ground under the van. So Sean and I went to a hardware store while Chris watched the van. So Sean and I “fixed” the exhaust with this quick and easy repair thing, which is like some duct tape some wire. The show was with Stepford Five and Treysuno who were rad. About the third song into our set was when the Latino girl started humping Sean’s leg. He couldn’t play the guitar cause this girl was grinding him and the bouncers came and pulled her off. This tough bar dude who came and pulled her off went by the name Charlie “Tuna.” Anyway, he came and got her and the show went really good. Chris got up on the bar and was pointing his bass a people and Sean was on the railing of the stage. We were out of town, things were going well, and it just felt good so we let go.
Marc: Anyway, after that we all went to Skyline chili, got sick and then went to this party. Then we went and fell asleep. When we get up to leave the next day we were all stoked that we are going to make it home in one piece cause we have the new duct taped muffler. We’re just north of Finlay when a big cloud of smoke billows out of the engine. We pulled over and a truck pulled in behind us. Anyway, Chris thinks the van is on fire so he’s trying to pull music equipment out of the van and into a ditch on the side of the road. So, we got out and a truck driver rolls up and says, “Looks like you’ve got a busted hose.” Anyway, this truck driver, Dan Nickel, totally hooks us up and knows what’s going down with the van. Just about then trooper Shawn rolls up and is fingering his gun the whole time while Dan Nickel is fixing the split hose.
Jason: We were just so thankful that this truck driver decided to stop and help us. We gave him a copy of our CD and we tried to offer him money but he wouldn’t take it. That whole trip was pretty memorable.

BW: What are your immediate future plans?

Marc: We just want to promote this record, do the shows we have booked for the summer, then do a couple weeks in September and October around the surrounding states so that we can make a name for ourselves.
Jason: We are also hoping to hook up with our friends who are way further out of town too sometime. We’ve played with and made friends in the Paperchase, Your Enemies Friends, The Red and The Black and Pretty Girls Make Graves and are hoping to maintain those relationships and get out to see them in their hometowns someday.