Too quick: Max, in a rare appearance in the driver’s seat, accidentally rams the Odyssey into a parked car while backing out. If Kobe Bryant and Bono are one side of the room-locked and loaded at all times and ready to kill-Quarterbacks are way, way on the other, huddled and laughing nervously among themselves.Īfterward, loading into the van in flustered silence, we peel out quick. But whatever deep reservoir one draws from to do this kind of thing, they don’t have. They have some doting fans, and some serious press attention ( NPR: “there's a dizzy little thrill in ”). After one song ends, Max keeps going, alone, wailing on the snare with one stick and with all the frustration of every night spent away from home. In response, Max, the onstage malcontent, bashes his drums harder. He seems annoyed at himself, annoyed at the setup. He’s not working his guitar with his usual facility he’s a few beats further behind Tom and Max than usual. And what they saw was one of the best young bands in America slaying.īut in Knoxville, on this godforsaken stage, Dean perhaps doesn’t want to play the part of knobby-kneed nerd heartthrob. What they heard was Dean sing, Cause I don't have/ A life plan/ I just have/ This little band/ Simple songs/ With simple chords. There were superfans there: a girl named Ari in eyeball socks and a forehead piercing who drove from the other side of the state a kid named Bo in an Alex G shirt who brought Budweiser and Sun Chips for Dean and who hugged him for a long time after the show and told him “your records have meant so much to me.” Standing right up close for the Quarterbacks set, they nearly bop their heads off. The whole thing hangs together in an odd way. ![]() On stage-well, figuratively: there are no stages in most of the places they play Dean actually despises playing on real stages-he’s all raw nerve endings. ![]() The night before in Nashville, playing a modified arts space in the pawn shops and scrap yards part of town, Quarterbacks did what they do: they nearly fell apart. They seem to agree on their view of their hometown, New Paltz: a lovely place with interesting, open-minded people, but also as a place that very much does not make you feel like the world is your oyster. Tom’s dad owns an auto garage and his mom, until retiring recently, worked in a school office Max’s dad works for the post office and his mom works in HR for a retail company. Tom and Max come from similar backgrounds. Smith, of whom he has a framed photo hanging in his bathroom. Dean tells me about his mom, a kindergarten teacher, and his dad, a salesman at a conveyor belt factory, and his younger sister, a junior at SUNY-Binghamton who doesn’t really like Quarterbacks, and J.R. I sit with Dean on the bumper, the open trunk door sheltering us from a soft rain. The kids hanging out aren’t too different from last night’s crowd: very sweet, kind of hippie, kind of punk. It’s past a Bi-Lo grocery store, next to an artificial-food-flavoring factory, and at the bottom of a lush mountain slope covered in ivy and giant ash and oak trees. The house tonight is called Ten Sproul’s Landing. ![]() “It’s so hard to keep playing music,” he says. The collective take for tonight will be $43, pulled in by the polite passing around of a plastic jug. But there’s no particular financial reason to keep playing music. Dean wants to keep doing the same stuff: substitute teaching and going to the swimming hole past the woods past the baseball field near his house, driving around and going to and playing shows. Max is beyond burned out Tom has his own music he wants to play, and a musician girlfriend, Leslie, he plans on moving in with, maybe somewhere in Brooklyn or Jersey City.ĭean is 25 years old, same as Tom-their full names are Dean Engle and Tom Christie. ![]() These days, Dean gets nostalgic about the band he fronts and writes all the songs for: it’s not clear what happens next. From here, Quarterbacks goes to North Carolina to D.C. There are only a few stops left in the tour. He can’t wait to get home and sleep, but that’s OK because there has been good stuff, like the insanely strong legal weed in Washington and Colorado, and all the kids coming up to say they had a good time at the shows. Tom is smoking a cigarette and Max is explaining that he suffers from “not bad but somewhat-serious general anxiety disorder,” and that the logistics of touring are basically his worst nightmare. You may need Quicktime, Real Audio or ADOBE FLASH depending on the format of these recordings.Out back, Quarterbacks’ rhythm section is killing time. Recordings NOT Working? It may be that you need the necessary programs to run these audio files. Listen, Practice & Airplay with these Recordings!
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