Sound Tribe Sector Nine: Dreamscapes in Progress

In October of 2003 a friend and I attended the Harvest Fest at Suwannee Music Park in Live Oak, Florida to take in some jammy music and to enjoy camping in what is Florida's prime weather time after the humidity breaks and before the winter chill sets in at night. Unfortunately for us it rained ALLLLLLL day long and night!! Bummed out and down on the whole thing, the only redeeming part of the day to this point was that the Miami University Hurricanes had beaten the FSU Seminoles in the monsoon that was heading eastward towards us -- until the late night show under the canopy of 200 foot pines at the Peach Stage. That night, dragged out of my tent by my friend, we witnessed a musical performance that changed me -- I was so moved by this band that at the end I could just stand there slack-jawed at having seen and heard -- no, FELT -- music like I had never before been a part of. The incessant rain seemed to disappear as a I locked onto this group of 5 musicians painting a soundscape of beat and groove like an artist rendering a new painting on a canvas. It seemed so original and organic and like I was a part of it. In the end, they thanked us "for letting them play under these beautiful trees"

Sound Tribe Sector Nine is a group that is absolutely unique from its sound, to its dedication to progressive musical innovation, to its roll as a cultural force with the capacity to effect positive directions within society.

STS9 was formed in the late 1990s when bassist Dave Murphy returned to his home base in Atlanta, Georgia -- disillusioned from touring with various musical enterprises -- and met up with childhood friend and guitarist Hunter Brown and drummer Zach Velmer. After meeting up with keyboardist David Phipps at a show at Georgia Tech and learning the ropes of touring locally in the Redneck Riviera area of northern Florida and lower Alabama and Mississippi, STS9 were introduced to percussionist Jefferee Lerner -- a drum tech for Leftover Salmon -- who joined the band in 2000 to establish its current configuration. Determined that this is what they wanted to do, they hit the road to establish a style and place of their own in the musical sound and landscape of America -- and eventually the world.

In their early touring experiences with Gary Gazaway, Sound Tribe played alot of his Acid Jazz numbers. As big fans of Medeski, Martin and Wood, and as Atlanta kids taking in such homegrown talents such as Herbie Hancock, James Brown, and the Aquarium Rescue Unit (Kofi Burbidge and Jimmy Herring), for example, they saw a place for themselves as beat based instrumentalists -- that it was possible to make music that rendered the traditional role of the vocalist unnecessary. According to Murph, "when we started to really be called a jam band and started being exposed to this jam band scene that existed out there, everything we saw, we loved the music, but we hated the singers. I don’t know whether it was the fact that we didn’t like what they were singing or that some of these bands, it seemed like they started having singers because they thought that they needed to…" (http://blogs.westword.com/backbeat/2007/09/qa_david_murphy_of_sound_tribe.php) Thus, eschewing the need for a vocal presence, STS9 began to tour with a collection of 20 or 25 songs that they would stretch and contract as the moods moved them. Collectively, organically, improvisationally, they began to have musical conversations on stage of which every member was a part -- if one of them felt the need to move off in another direction, the rest covered for him. It was this type of musical innovation that pushed Sound Tribe to explore their sounds into unknown territories night after night -- and established their reputation for intelligent and original music artistry.

And artistic it was. In early shows, especially, Sound Tribe embraced the idea of a collective of artistic talents above and beyond their own. Their stage was often a repository of crystals and floral arrangements as well as lights and sound. Artists such as J.Garcia, Kris Davidson and Alex Gray would create (and sometimes continue to this day) improvisational paintings on the sides of the stage that would try to capture the musical mood occurring onstage. As an audience member watching, it is quite moving to see the symbiotic relationship between the two sets of artists. Yet, it is all just a part of the ongoing, organic vibe of an STS9 show. According to a 2001 interview with Lerner, playing an STS9 show is like: "being part of a greater consciousness, playing a musical role in a larger event. I think it's a collective path that comes from wanting to offer that space through music." (http://www.westword.com/2001-12-20/music/transcend-this/)

When STS9 speaks of being part of a collective, it goes beyond the musical venue within which they are performing. Sound Tribe and their members have long felt a collective responsibility to be a force for change in society at large. They have partnered with, and always encouraged fan participation with, the Conscious Alliance which collects canned food for the homeless in the town that they are playing in. As well, in 2004 they were quite loud in their encouragement of their fans to vote in the upcoming election. In fact, at the 2004 Langerado Festival, Murph sounded almost indignant and angry in his end of the show exhortation to the fans present as he told them "get over there and register to vote!!" as he pointed at the MoveOn.org voter registration booth at the rear of the crowd present. Their 2007 touring goal was to be carbon-neutral by offsetting an estimated 138,000 lbs of carbon emissions by donating renewable energy credits. After Hurricane Katrina they staged a benefit concert that raised over $20,000 for victims of that natural disaster. Social activism is as much a part of the STS9 tapestry as their funky grooves and beats.

All this nouveau hippy stuff made for heady times in the early days of STS9 but they, like most bands making a career out of their love of music, were longing to break through what they had established and build upon it in a way that would allow them to continue to innovate musically and to grow as artists. Out of their search for new directions came their 2005 album "Artifact". "Artifact" and their most recent follow up to it, 2008's "Peaceblaster: 1968-2008" represent a more dialed in Sound Tribe that saw them experimenting with different types of electronic instruments, gizmos and beat machines. According to Murph: "I think we all got to the point where we thought, it's cool that we can go and play a three-and-a-half-hour show where we only played five songs — but we all have a real desire to actually write songs," Drummer Zach Velmer referred to "Artifact" as "our first real album," in reference to the fact that STS9's first 3 or 4 albums were largely collections of the best of their live material that was polished up and presented. While much of 2001's "Offered Schematics Suggesting Peace" was a studio effort, Zelmer's point is made.

In fact, I had noticed this very trend when i continued to see STS9 over the years and I noticed that in and around 2006 and 2007 the band was becoming more and more compact and consistent in its presentation of its songs. Gone were the 20 minute jams and ethereal dreamscapes of earlier on in the decade, and indeed the newer material hit you harder and was more biting and akin to danceable funk and groove, albeit, done in their own inimitable fashion. At their core, they have always been a groove-monster band, but their sound was definitely more polished and hard hitting. Whether you had a taste for the new age hippy transcendentalist sound of the early part of the decade or the new, more locked in sound of today, there is no denying that Sound Tribe Sector Nine continues to move forward as musical innovators and creators of some of the most brilliant soundscapes to be heard in today's music scene.

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For all things STS9 check out http://www.sts9.com or http://www.myspace.com/sts9

for an awesome collection of STS9 shows check out: http://www.archive.org/details/SoundTribeSector9 +++

+++ It should be noted that there are waaaaaaaayyyyy too many variations on their music over the years to recommend one show over the other -- it is a matter of individual taste...some shows are funkier than others, some are more compact than others, some are spacier than others...being an STS9 fan is often an exploratory experience!!