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Mouth Wateringly Fresh Music

Posted by DCA Theater on March 23, 2010 in January-June 2010 Season, INCUBATOR Series: The New Colony

by Henry Riggs, musician in That Sordid Little Story band

Something awesome is happening at The New Colony: Good old fashion, country fresh, steamin’ hot bluegrass music.  Our new project That Sordid Little Story is taking the TNC writing process to fantastic new places. 

The process for the scripted performance work has proven very successful thus far, so now we thought we’d try a new element: music from scratch.  It seems a daunting task to assemble a hoard of bluegrass instruments and a bunch of musicians then somehow get folk music to appear out of no where; but, there is strategy afoot.

My background with music is pretty basic however my fellow band mate Chris Gingrich and I have been playing music together since the good ole days of 7th grade.  Over the years we’ve been getting pretty loose with our song writing.  So much so that a majority of the work we do is based off improvised songs.  We’ll just record some sessions of songs we make up on the spot then revisit the recordings to tweak the material.  The process is infinitely fun and rewarding at the same time, so Andrew Hobgood and I thought this might be the perfect way to develop music for The New Colony show of some fashion.  And what better show to test the waters of this new process than our next production?! 

Two weeks ago, we began our first music rehearsals with our core team of writers being myself, Tara Sissom, Thea Lux, and Chris Gingrich.  Thea and Tara have brought such a fantastic range to the music with their ability to pick up and learn any instrument on the spot which has only further developed songs.  A typical rundown of our process is going over a familiar tune perhaps tweaking a bit along the way then going into a new jam of some kind.  We’ll take a moment to discuss the intention of the song and the over all vibe to the melody then go back over it a few time improvising lyrics that give the song a basic skeleton.  Within 3 rehearsals, we had compiled a list of about 8 songs with everyone bringing a different piece to each song. 

The overall goal is to have about 12-15 songs for the show which means we’ll probably keep writing and writing so that when it comes time to fuse the music and story elements together we can have the cream of the crop to choose from.  It’s such an awesome element to add to the TNC process due to it’s pure organic creation.