Strange Brew: Gentlemen jammers Mango Strange prepare for lift off
During certain times at select places, if you pay close enough attention, you can sense a scene being born.
Thick as humidity, high as a Georgia pine and real as red clay, the buzz building around the ascendant local rock band was palpable in the sultry summer air during their Saturday night set to close out the Frogtown Jam last month. Faces familiar from gathering every Wednesday night to catch Mango Strange at their Loft residency found one another—braced for impact, ready to boogie—as the boys took the stage in silent poses cast against a swirling kaleidoscope of lights and surreal smoke machine. A trippy tone set the mood with an original instrumental intro into “Shakedown Street,” with the disco-era Grateful Dead lyrics “Don’t tell me this town ain’t got no heart” registering in this scene’s ears as acknowledgment of an open shared secret that the Columbus counterculture now has something to hold on to: a sound to groove to, a vibe to commune over, a reminder of what we’ve been missing.
The rollicking, all-covers set shuffled along—peaking during a stellar sit-in with blues guitar master Neal Lucas, a three-song stretch climaxing as the seven musicians on stage wove their way into improvised transcendental bliss during the Allman Brothers’ “Whipping Post”—before ending with a joyous, out-of-left-field take on the Fleetwood Mac anthem “Rhianna.” Slack-jawed strangers shook each other’s hands and made promises to meet again soon some Wednesday night at the Loft with hopes to once again catch lightning in a bottle.
Such organic, Georgia-grown musical prowess and shared energy has been produced before, most notably by the Allman Brothers Band (1960s Macon) and Widespread Panic (1980s Athens). Both bands have an obvious influence on the emerging talents in Mango Strange and present a few parallels as well. The mix of white and black musicians, no matter nature’s ordained benefit of cross-pollination, is sadly just as noteworthy today as when the Allmans formed in the first days of Georgia’s evolution out of the Jim Crow era. The communal living arrangement of good buddies learning and creating together—half the band shares a spot in the Jordan-Johnson neighborhood dubbed the Strange House—harkens back to the fabled A-Frame House on Weymands Court in Athens that nurtured Panic’s sound and scene along with the Big House on Vineville Avenue in Macon that spawned the Allmans and is now preserved as a museum dedicated to the band.
“To play the kind of music we play, you have to know what’s going on between everybody,” says Mango Strange frontman Will Ward, surrounded by his five bandmates in The Loft’s Green Room on a Wednesday afternoon before the band’s weekly gig at the city’s leading live-music club.
“It’s all chemistry,” the lead vocalist/rhythm guitarist continues. “It definitely takes a mesh and requires acceptance—not a push and pull.”
Ward explains Mango Strange began to take form two years when he and bassist Brooks Northrup started performing as a duo at Wild Wings Cafe. Lead guitarist Jason Davis came into the fold following countless conversations with Ward about their shared musical passions and inspirations. Guitarist and back-up vocalist Trey Eakle joined after an informal jam session revealed the technical precision he could provide.
“The Dead, the Allmans—that scene attracts people to playing that music,” says Davis, at age 23 born two generations after those seminal hippie bands’ heyday. “I love that music so much and love to play it. We’ve all written and recorded together and don’t want to be looked at as just a cover band. But right now we’re paying the bills getting to play all the time and I couldn’t ask for anything better than that.”
With several personnel changes over the past year, Mango Strange’s line-up was solidified in late winter with the addition of keyboardist Brandon Briscoe.
“They found me in a dumpster out back,” jokes Briscoe, whose influences are a departure from those in the Dead’s constellation but whose clear talent and background in the soulful, bluesy gospel so rooted in Georgia music make him an excellent choice for rounding out the sextet’s sound.
“We’re all brothers,” the piano man says of the dynamic he’s discovered. “We just want to get together and jam.”
Ward gives a lot of credit for the band’s development to drummer Steve Thompson, who at 39 has recorded multiple albums of original jazz fusion and toured the world with the Neal Lucas Trio (“our hometown heroes,” Davis says).
“These guys have phenomenal talent,” says Thompson . “They just needed to own it. I told them, ‘It doesn’t matter if there’s two people or 2,000 people in the audience, we’re playing the same place. Once they embraced that, everything just took off.”
Coming up with chord progressions and melodies for original material is never a problem, says Ward, adding that their creative flow typically comes while chilling at the Strange House. “Coming up with words can be a struggle,” he admits. Yet, the band’s only fully realized and recorded original, “Bridges,” carries all the emotion, imagery and subjective perception of a well-crafted song.
“We’ll have our own music soon,” Davis says. “It’s just going to take us all getting together and spending more time together and learn how to please all our different musical interests. R&B, blues, jazz, soul, rock. Right now we may not know how to really write songs but we’re learning. And I think we’re doing a pretty good job.”
Get weird with Mango Strange at the Loft every Wednesday night. Free admission, 9:30 p.m.-midnight.
by Frank Etheridge