Three Stars: Cannot Be Stopped

Find him online at: myspace.com/cannotbestopped

See him next: On July 4th at the Kansas House. Also at DC Mini Gallery on July 31st.

It sounds like you play multiple instruments.

Mostly drums and guitar. I played for awhile with another band in DC called Four Fins of a Rocket which was sort of like a fake metal band. It was like three guys, two guitars, drums. Do you know the Baltimore band Oxes?

Vaguely.

They’re sort of like overly technical instrumental metal. Not all sorts of Dragonforce style shredding and stuff since I’m not really on that level with my guitar skills anyway. But it was sort of like that kind of music. I played guitar in that band and wrote most of the songs. That was with two other guys Bobby Allen and James Magnum. Bobby was a guy I met through school at AU and James...I think Bobby met him at Saxby’s? I think it’s a coffee joint somewhere in DC. So that’s how he met him. James is like an ultimate spaz on drums. Way way better than I am.

It’s hard enough trying to get a drummer. Especially when you are a drummer because you sort of don’t register, like when you meet people you sort of make an inventory of people you can play with. So when you’re a drummer, you’re not like, stocking your drummers so that you can ask other drummers to play, because, you play drums. So it’s hard enough to find a drummer, but then to find a drummer who’s exponentially better than you? Really really lucky.

So that was cool but short-lived. Bobby’s in New York now interning for the New York Times and James is kind of back and forth. He does male modeling actually, which is so funny because it totally doesn’t match his personality, so he’s been back and forth. So we kind of disbanded this summer. The death knell was struck when Bobby sold his guitar, but we played around in DC a little bit. We played up in New York for one show. But that was fun. So mostly guitar and drums. But drums, definitely the primary instrument.

Listening to Cannot Be Stopped it sounds like you have a very layered sound. You have the drums, the vocals, what sounds like a lot of electronic sounds going on.

For pretty much all the stuff that I’ve done so far, all of the electronic parts were done with this rack mounted board synthesizer. It’s sort of like they took the brains of the keyboard models that they put out and then took away the keyboard part and had to feed it some other kind of control information. So, hitting the snare drum, hitting the bass drum is what makes it generate the notes. So that’s kind of how that whole thing works. But it’s just, I don’t know, I like those synthesizers just because you can get them to sound very easily like 8-bit. Which is sort of the sound set that I like to use. So the setup is just a drum set, a laptop which controls the synthesizer and then some microphones on the drums which send information to the computer to tell it what to do.

Is it difficult to translate something that involves a lot of electronics and computers into an effective live show? I think it’s just you, right?

It is just me. It’s sort of like it’s a two part process. One is, you spend a lot of time programming something. I look at it as coming up with a system to work within. You spend the time developing the system that you use. The most important thing to do, when you’re doing that is to think, well how do I work when I write music and when I play it because I want it to be a sort of, as much technology as is involved with it, I want it to be a very organic thing. Which is why I play an acoustic drum set instead of an electronic drum set. So I set it up and then I just go and I play. And that’s the writing process. When I’m playing, I want to be interacting with the computer as little as possible so it’s like this two part thing.

I’d missed your set at the Aural States Festival, but if I remember hearing correctly, didn’t somebody from NPR contact you after that show?

I think WYPR is the name of the station. That actually never went anywhere. I was really stoked, actually, at that show. This girl came up to me after my set and was like, I’m from the Baltimore NPR station, I really want you to come on and do something for our morning show. And then I gave them all my contact information and never heard back from them again. So. Ya know. Happens. I mean it was cool.

Barring that, the response from people there was incredible. DC sort of gets a bad rap these days for not being a hotbed of musical exploration. I think Baltimore, Philly, Providence, all these places where bands are getting a little more out there these days. Pushing boundaries because they can. People with less money can live there. I’m pretty sure that’s the way that it works. Yeah, Baltimore was great. People there are just so receptive. And there’s a lot of bands, Dan Deacon obviously being the poster child, Animal Collective sort of got their start there, although they’re all over the place now.

Did you grow up here in DC?

No, I only went to school here. I’ve lived in DC for three years. But the whole Cannot Be Stopped project was essentially born and raised in DC. It wasn’t even, as they say, a twinkle in my eye before I got here. The funny thing is, Ryan, the guy in the chair over there, he and I played in a band a little while back called Red Skeletons and that was sort of my first band when I got to DC.

We actually met each other through Chris DeWitt, cause right when I got to AU, I met Chris DeWitt. He was like a Resident Assistant for one of the halls there. There’s sort of like this big complex where there are three residence halls that are all connected to each other. And, ya know, I went on facebook and searched for all the people who had similar taste in music as me and found Chris. And I think it was maybe my second night on campus or something but he just came over and we talked at length about what are sort of the musical options in DC, catching me up to speed, like, who do I talk to about playing shows, who do I talk to about finding bands. So we talked for awhile and I played him some of the stuff that I did in high school and kind of got a feel for what he was doing. So I told him that I play drums and he ran into Ryan who was at a party at some point. And I guess Ryan asked him, “Do you know any drummers?” And he was like, “Oh yeah, I just met this guy the other day.”

So we hooked up through Chris DeWitt and we had this band for awhile. It was kind of like Sonic Youth-like Captain Jazz kind of thing. For awhile it was just me and him and then we went through a couple of bassists and then our bassist moved to BU and Ryan moved out of Tenleytown so that was when it split up and then I was in this sort of lull where it’s like, “Crap, I play drums and I can’t find anybody to play with.”

How does that happen?

I know, right! It’s like, everyone’s always looking for a drummer. I even had a drum set in DC, which, when you’re in college is like the catching point ‘cause most people are like “Yeah, I play drums, I don’t have a drum set, though.” So I was like, okay, you can play guitar, you can go to a coffee house, be a weekend warrior, lay down some songs on your own or whatever. But when you play drums, what do you do? So that’s kind of where the whole Cannot Be Stopped thing came from is sort of, how do you play by yourself when you’re a drummer. I guess if Red Skeletons had stayed together, Cannot Be Stopped probably wouldn’t exist! So, uh, (laughs), thanks for moving, Ryan!

I hear that you’re moving to California soon.

That’s true. End of the summer.

What’s out there? 


What’s out there is a Masters program at Mills College in Oakland, California. The full, long title is Electronic Music and Recording Media. So this is a school where various famous people like Steve Reich have gone. It’s been at the forefront of avant-garde music. Especially avant-garde electronic classical music in the 20th century. A lot of really important have been there. A lot of people that have been very influential on me have been there and are still teaching there, too. So, I’m really looking forward to being there and I’ll be doing a little bit of teaching while I’m there, for undergraduate, so, it’s one of the places I might see myself going, is into teaching music and recording and electronic-y stuff to people. So I’m going there to do a two year program for my MFA in that. And Cannot Be Stopped is actually what launched me into thinking about doing that as my major area of focus. Like I plan on getting my Ph.D at some point. It’ll probably be in some super-micro-niche esoteric thing that the way I’ll be immortalized some day is somebody else’s thesis. I’ll immortalize one person in my thesis and then in sixty years somebody else will. So I’ll be remembered in a sixty page binder in a school library somewhere.

But it’s something that I’m really passionate about so I want to go out there. My brother lives in Berkeley. I was actually born in the Bay Area. I was born in Berkeley, California. So, I’m really looking forward to getting out there, and sort of, I guess, getting in touch with my roots. I moved when I was really young so I can’t claim that I’m like a California...I didn’t grow up there.

Where did you grow up?

I grew up in Connecticut. My dad works for a magazine called Fine Home Building. Taunton Press is this company that owns all these magazines like Fine Cooking, Fine Home Building, if it’s got “Fine” in the name, it’s probably one of their magazines. I mean, it’s a magazine about houses; really cool houses. So, okay, the print journalism industry is suffering, so is the housing industry, so imagine the print journalism for housing industry. It’s been a little dicey for them. So he moved out there, like, early ‘90s to do that. But it’s cool. Public education’s really good in Connecticut. Certainly better than it is in the Bay Area, so I’d say I was certainly lucky for that. But, you know, Connecticut was cool. I sort of grew up in the woods, so I like trees which is why I like DC so much more than New York.

Because there are trees here.

I know, right? And not every building is like, a square.

One thing that I remember hearing about you is that you set up a bunch of shows at AU. Did you have a philosophy for what you were looking for? Were you trying to give exposure to student bands? Were you trying to get avant-garde artists to play?

Through my work at WVAU, which is American University’s student radio station...AU owns two radio stations, WVAU and WAMU and I worked for both. I edit bluegrass programs for WAMU and do engineering when bands come in and play on the air. So I’ve met some interesting people, Bela Fleck came through. Actually, funny story, me and Bela Fleck had the same backpack and we put them down in the studio next to each other and we immediately said, “Mine’s the one that’s more beat up.” So we both said that, then we’re like... “Crap.” But, really cool guy. Slays at the banjo. That goes without saying. So that’s a cool job.

Anyway, WVAU. Got involved there through a friend of mine that I met right when I got to AU. So I’ve been there pretty much the whole time. I was the music director for one year and then the program manager for a year. And one of the things that we were really griping about was the fact that there’s one big group on campus called SUB, the Student Union Board that books all the really big shows. They have a big budget, like over a hundred thousand dollars for bringing bands in. They would bring in Jimmy Eat World or like, T-Pain, who cancelled on us for laryngitis. We were all joking that how does the guy whose career is built on using the vocoder cancel cause his throat hurts? Can anybody even tell? So that was all pretty funny. So they bring the really big bands and periodically they will book student bands to open for them, or bands from the DC community.

But not enough for our tastes, we want more local bands, so me and the general manager of the station at the time, Lindsay Zoladz, were like, we need to start a concert series at AU. AU is so far removed from the rest of DC where shows are happening and stuff that we sort of need to bridge the gap between students there who want to be involved in the DC music scene and the DC music scene who’d like to get involved with students at AU. So we kinda wanted to do this thing. And we had one kind of amazing success story which I’ll get to in a second. So, my whole philosophy with that was when I got to AU, I didn’t like having to open the door to get into the music community. Like I said, Chris DeWitt was sort of the person that I talked to to figure out how to get involved. We wanted to have the DC bands coming to AU so that the students there could meet them if they wanted to play in bands or go see more shows, so that they’d meet people and start networking.

So there’s a really cool facility on campus called the Kay Spiritual Life Center. They’ve done some really cool stuff there. They’ve actually had a lot of shows and Lindsay had booked shows there in the past. She booked a show in the basement with Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin and Harry and the Potters and then another one later on with Mika Miko and Pre and The Subjects and The Apes. That was a good bill. So what we wanted to do was have a free show series because we have a decent sized budget. But most of the time, truth be told, DC bands will always play for free. Which is really cool.

So we wanted to do four shows a semester. This started fall of last year. I think actually I played the first show because one of our bands cancelled or something. It was like Laughing Man, True Womanhood, Cannot Be Stopped and someone else. We usually had four bands play. We had New Rock Church of Fire play one. Imperial China, Caverns. We had Bellflur for one. We had Black and White Jacksons. But a lot of cool bands. We had some touring bands come through. We had Hammer No More the Fingers come through. I met them through Caverns.

I actually just met the drummer from Hammer No More the Fingers’ older brother. This guy named John Stickley, who’s this really good bluegrass guitar player. He actually came through WAMU and Shannon Whitworth who is kind of an emerging bluegrass country artist came through WAMU and I did the engineering for them and then I went to lunch with them at this Japanese restaurant up in Tenleytown and I’m like, “Oh, you’re wearing a Hammer No More the Fingers shirt. That’s kind of wild. We just had them play a show at my school,” and he’s like, “Yeah, the drummer’s my younger brother.” So that was like, small world, one of those moments.

So we did a lot of different shows. A lot of different bands came through. In playing DC I’ve met lots of people so we had a lot of those bands. We had Bellman Barker. Bellman Barker was the other band that played on September 6th. So a lot of bands came through. Pretty diverse bills. We wanted to be really sort of mixed up. But I think the best success story that we ever had with this series that really illustrated our mission with it was Laughing Man’s bass player is an AU student who met them via the show that they played at AU. This guy named Luke Stewart. Really amazing bass player. Also a really amazing saxophone player. I went to his senior recital at AU. Oh my god, he slayed. So he’s an incredibly good musician. He met up with them at that show and now plays with them as a permanent member of the band. They sound good. Honestly, they sound a lot better as a three piece. I played with them right when they moved into DC. They came from Philly. They played a show in the Kansas House. I played with Imperial China and Laughing Man. They were a two piece, they’d just gotten to DC. And then I saw them again recently and they’ve just exploded as a three piece. They’re one of my favorite bands in DC now. And the drummer, Michael just opened that venue, DC Mini Gallery, which is where I’ll be doing my last show.

I’m curious, what do you think you’ll miss the most about this area?

Probably what I’m going to miss the most is just all the friends and contacts I’ve made while I’ve been here. You know, DC is a strange music scene I think. I don’t really think that DC is a place where a project like Cannot Be Stopped can really explode. I just don’t think there’s the fuel for that here.

But I’ve met a lot of people here who have been super super supportive. I see all the same people at all of the shows that I play. Mostly other bands in DC. By far, Imperial China has been the number one band in terms of believing in what I’ve been doing. So I can never really thank those guys enough. Those guys have really done more than I can really ever repay them for i terms of helping me out. Caverns is another band that I’m really really going to sorely miss. They’ve all been super super supportive. B&W Jacksons, all the people in that band, especially Tim George. Tim George and Chris Dewitt...I don’t have a car, I don’t even have a drum set in DC anymore. I sent it back to Connecticut with my parents cause I’m moving. And those guys have let me borrow drum sets and help me get my gear to shows more times than I can really ever repay them for. So those guys have been hugely supportive. And Laughing Man has been huge for me. The folks in True Womanhood...you know...Melissa and Tom came to just about every single Capitol Punishment show that we did. So, I really think I’m going to miss having those people around. I made some really good friends. But they’re going to stay my friends, I hope.

What do you think it’s going to take for DC to grow as a scene that would be accepting of avant-garde music?

It’s getting better. In the 80s and 90s there was a big DIY punk movement that everybody knows about. Really what it takes is just people supporting the music that they like. I think really the only way for a band to grow and get better is for people to come and support them. And I’d like to see more people turn out for shows where people are trying something new rather than come out and dance but I understand that people like to dance. I’m not really sure. Have you ever heard of the group Sonic Circuits?

No I haven’t.

They’re an experimental sort of music...I’m not really sure how to describe them. They’re a group, they put on a lot of shows, they’re all sort of experimental music people. I played a show for them once at an art space in Silver Spring called Pyramid Atlantic. It’s a pretty cool space. It’s a pretty weird, diverse thing. It was like one project that’s like an hour of noise and then me and then this group from West Virginia called Second Land which was sort of like Godspeed! You Black Emperor but less orchestral and more atmospheric. So they do some cool stuff. They have a Sonic Circuits festival. I’m not sure what the official title of it is. Really cool noise festival and not just noise, but experimental music that happens in fall, maybe September, which is going to be really really cool. I’m pretty sure HEALTH is playing this year. So they’re getting some really good people for it. For that it’s not all DC, of course. HEALTH is definitely not from DC. But that should be really cool. They’re doing some really good stuff.

It’s funny, there was actually a piece on NPR a little while about about the experimental music scene in DC. Velvet Lounge books some pretty interesting stuff sometimes. I saw a really good show there with Hans Bennink* who’s this really strange virtuoso drummer who’s doing experimental stuff. And this guy that used to book at the Velvet Lounge named Scott Verastro, he played there with this three drum set band. It was a very drum intensive night. But they do some cool experimental stuff. The bottom line is for DC to have a good experimental music scene, more people need to go to shows. I guess that’s really all there is to it. If people go to shows, people will keep playing them.