Columbus' emerging soul icon
By Travis Hoewischer |
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Being Nick Tolford looks like a lot of fun.
That's what I thought as I leaned against the wall during rehearsal for his Company, an eight-piece soul stew cooked together from a variety of Columbus bands. I was running tape on this one, and the lack of a notebook and pen made me feel like more A&R than editorial.
I had heard only one song - but I would sign them on the spot.
Behind his organ with the missing keys and dislodged nameplate, Tolford was playing mad soul scientist. He wobbled and wailed, slicing his words into the spaces between the groove of drummer Mike O'Shaugnessy (also of local band El Jesus De Magico) and bursts from his backup singers . . . ye-ah, yeah, yeee-aaah yeah . . .
He tossed his head back and belted a note right into the ceiling, evoking the finest Otis Redding - a little startling coming from a bearded white dude in a Cleveland Browns hat.
He grinned and shook his head; and so did I. This is the great thing about soul music, I thought to myself - a kid born in 1986 plugs in his keyboard in 2009, and 1965 rolls out.
Now, Tolford and I are poised in front of the crates at Lost Weekend Records, discussing - between college football chit-chat - the purchase potential for records in the store's hip-hop section; De La Soul is Dead catches my eye, while he says he'd take home some Wu-Tang if it were in there.
But, he never looks. He's already moved on, plucking records from the Soul/R&B corner as quickly as if someone told him he could just have them.
"I'm gonna have to cut myself off," he says half-heartedly before adding Ray Charles Hits The Road and Booker T. and the MGs' Melting Pot to his stack. "Ahh, f@#$ it - I got paid yesterday."
Tolford is partial to vinyl - at least in some small part due to the theft of his car's CD player - but it's also a bridge, a natural link to the music playing in his house as a kid.
Nick Tolford and company
Photo: Christopher Atwood
"It's just what my pops listened to," he says. "I grew up on the Temptations, Four Tops and all that Motown shit. It's just what feels right."
Yet, it's taken a little time for Tolford to come back around to it. At 23, he has a substantial resume in the Columbus music scene, as the former bassist for indie rockers The Slide Machine and sometimes-drummer for Deerhead, so he's no rookie. But short of a few house shows and occasional solo sets, Tolford has never had the showcase for the instrument he says he's most comfortable with, until forming the Company this year.
"For me, I feel like that's singing," he said. "I mean, I'm not a very good piano player. I can limp by because I have a lot of great musicians around me."
Another soul staple, I say: Sing your ass off, and no one will notice a rough chord change.
"Yeah," he says with a laugh. "Hopefully no one finds out. I mean, I know what I'm doing. I just don't know what it's called."
At this, Tolford mentions one of those musicians, Co. guitarist Julian Dassai (Wartime Ladies), who is over our left shoulder, browsing through an old Time Magazine with LBJ on the cover.
Julian agrees, which elicits a laugh and a faux "Damn it!" from Tolford.
"I can vouch for how natural Nick's songwriting is, because I know how much theory he doesn't know. I'll look at what he writes and say, 'How did you come up with that chord?'"
The familial ball-busting was a constant element of their interaction, as observed over the two days I spent with the band. (In fact, O'Shaugnessy jokingly informed Tolford that he was out of the band during a break in rehearsal.) Together less than a year, Tolford first hastily assembled guitarist Ricky Thompson (Deerhead) and bassist Brian Travis (Church of the Red Museum), for their first show for a friend's birthday back in February. Dassai was added later after he approached Tolford following the band's first show.
"I heard the demos, and I was like, I've gotta be in this band," said Dassai.
After a much-hyped Comfest slot and several other outdoor gigs this summer, Tolford added singers Lara Yazvak (Tough & Lovely), Leslie Jankowski (Church of the Red Museum), and Ashley Young. The result has been a powerful sound that, while fun and fast, has kept things pretty competitive.
It's pretty much "no bones" about what's working and what isn't, says O'Shaugnessy, as the four of us leave the record store.
"Everyone's having a good time, sure, but at the same time I would also like to stay the drummer of this band," he says. "So, when three more people show up, and if they're thinking, Nick, man, this guy's not working out . . . I don't want to show up not knowing the parts."
Of course, part of the fun is that, while the band depends on musicians that know their parts, they are not necessarily required to perform them in a perfect fashion.
"Why would you want to live a life that is clean or tight?" questions O'Shaugnessy, drawing a laugh from Tolford.
"Why would we want to misrepresent ourselves?" he responds, still laughing. "We are neither clean, nor are we tight."
Loose and loud are more operative words for the band. There are really only two main goals for a show, and neither have much to do with musical precision. If people are dancing and drinking, then the Company has done its job.
"As long as you're having fun, that's all that matters," says Tolford. "If the crowd gets loud, it just pushes us to get louder."
"The [Carabar] jukebox has that Motown Best Of double disc, and if I've got money, that's what I'm playing. So, the idea is just to keep people stoked, keep people drinking."
Everyone in the band understands the general marching orders, Dassai says.
"When I first started playing with Nick, he said something that's been the guiding focus with me: he wanted to be a soul singer backed by a punk rock band. That was all I needed to hear."
Nick Tolford and Company Performs @ Carabar on November 7th, 11 p.m.
115 Parsons Ave.
(614) 223-1010
www.myspace.com/nicktolford
Originally Published: November 1, 2009
