Earthbound is a five piece band
completely locally owned and operated right here in Redding. Earthbound features Marcie Green and Russ Robinson on vocals, Marvin Allen on guitar and vocals, Phil Rowe on bass and vocals and Rich Allen on
drums. We met at the music store for this interview. Unfortunately, Russ Robinson was not able to attend.
HM: Give us a little background on the band.
Marvin: Rich and I have played together for 18 years, since high school. We played with Russ in the last band The Good Guys, so Russ has been with us for quite a few years. Rich and I played together in another band with Phil called Elephant Gun, so we have played together on and off for a long time. In this current group, with Marcie and Russ singing, and us playing, we have been together for about two or three years. Rich is a PIT graduate and construction worker, Phil is a radiology tech, Marcie is a dump truck driver and I'm a guitar teacher, columnist, and co-founder of the Shasta Blues Society.
HM Where do you play?
Rich: In Redding. The Post Office mostly, the first weekend of every month.
Phil: The New York Saloon in Weaverville.
Marcie: We will be playing at Konas this month.
HM: What style of music do you play?
Marcie: Rock, heavy rock.
Rich: It's funky, but it's hard rock It's even nice and soft.
Phil: It's a mixture of originals, some classic rock but definitely with kind of a funk edge on most of our originals.
HM: How many are original songs?
Marvin: About a sets worth, nine-ish.
HM: Are you leaning toward that direction?
Marvin: Yes. Right now we're four songs into our first CD.
HM: Where are you recording at?
Marvin: North Point Recording of course! With Ricardo Festiva.
HM: As Engineer?
Marvin: Yes. (laughter. Ricardo Festiva is an alias of Doug Colosio.)
HM: Is the CD going to be all original music?
Marvin: Yes, all original music.
HM: How many CDs are you going to make?
Marvin: We're trying to decide between 100 and 1,000. For a thousand the price break is really good, but it's an awful lot of money to come up with so it will be based on what we can afford. I would lean towards a hundred, but I know you don't get as good of a price break.
HM: How are you going to distribute the CDs?
Phil: Out of the back of my truck. (laughter) Of course at gigs would be the first angle. We talked a bit to David Thompson about using the Internet to market some of it. And of course a lot of it is going to go to friends, family, word of mouth, sending stuff out as we can to booking agents and such.
Marvin: And some record stores, the ones that will carry something that's not on a label. If they don't have that as a bias, were there with them.
HM: Like a Bog Bean or a Underground?
Marvin: Yea, as opposed to like a Tower (Records) where they got to have a label.
HM: What is the main focus of the band. What are you trying to achieve?
Marvin: I think the main thing is that we all enjoy playing together, and we enjoy each others company, and we've been friends for a long time. We want to get on stage and play music that makes us feel good with people we like and trust. There's something really important about getting out and performing and exercising that muscle. You can't just stay in the garage. You got to perform, and you got to perform music you enjoy. It gives us a chance to play out originals live. I think we would aspire to open some shows for a major act.
Phil: I think we're all able in this band to express our own influence. When you do listen to the originals we have you definitely hear the "Earthbound" sound. If you hear us live, we definitely have our own kind of sound, and that transfers to what we do on our originals.
Marvin: For one, as musicians, we each have got our individual influences. Rich was influenced by Rush to start with and over the last few years has become more of a groove player. There is that kind of progressive element in there. Phil has that Rocco
Prestia, Tower of Power, very funky and me with the Jimi Hendrix - Led Zeppelin. From the instrumental point of view our style's a kinda miss-mash of that. We're a power trio that has a stand-up male and female vocalist, and then Phil and I sing so there's a lot of emphasis on vocals and four part harmony.
Marcie: Inspiration for Russ comes from Jim Morrison and mine has been Janis (Joplin).
Marvin: They do a Jim and Janis and I do a Jimi. (laughter) By the way, we try to focus on some current stuff, and on danceable stuff as well. We try to keep a balance of classic rock that's good and we haven't done to death. New rock that's valid and danceable and then our originals.
HM: What's the best gig you've had lately?
Marvin: One of the most enjoyable gigs for me was our last gig at the Post Office because the energy was great, it was really a hip one.
Phil: It seems to be a word of mouth, steady growth as people hear us. We really feed off the energy, so if the crowd is real responsive, or their getting in to it, we kinda get off musically and it definitely transfers to the music.
Marvin: That was the case last time. From the very beginning they were like screaming and clapping in the middle of the song, and when they're doing that, it's easy to rise up to that level. We were able to get it ourselves. There's that give and take with the audience.
Marcie: That's been building up the past two years.
Marvin: Yea.
HM: What's the strangest gig you've had?
Marcie: I have to say one of the strangest was the gal who didn't hardly keep her clothes on. (laughter) Throughout the evening as we kept going the clothes kept coming off.
Rich: That was a good thing right?
Marvin: Oh yea! I remember that!
Rich: She had her back to us but was showing some table her chest.
Marcie: She hopped up on the stage and proceeded to play with all the boys, rubbing herself against the guys.
Marvin: She literally has every single man in the whole room. (laughter)
Phil: We have also had a bad experience where we had traveled all the way up to Oregon to play a festival by a lake with lots of other bands and we ended up getting shafted for the money.
HM: Do you think it's best to play for the audience or yourselves?
Rich: Either answer will do (laughter)
Phil: It depends on the audience. If they're not into what your doing and granted our music is not for everybody- if they're not into what your doing, it's just a struggle. You're playing and trying to keep your self interested when you know the audience may be disinterested in what you're doing. That's just a mater of finding the places where they accept you and people actually appreciate what your doing, then it's just a win-win situation for both sides.
Marvin: I think that it's really your responsibility to play to the crowd, but sometimes its hard to live up to that, and you do best if you can just throw everything off and just try to get into the music and each other. They will either follow from there or not.
Rich: Sometimes you're able to get to that place where you are just locked into the music and the band.
Marvin: You would never not try, but sometimes really it's hard to live up to that. Where as you have that intake and out-take with the audience, then it's no problem. You can rise right up like a wave.
HM: Any final comments?
Marvin: I would like to thank the Post Office for hiring us regularly, and treating us fairly.
Phil: We definitely appreciate those who do know us and supported us all this time. We have some really dedicated hard-core fans who seem to show up all the time, and bring their friends, and we want to let them know we really appreciate that.
Marcie: It seems like our fan base is steadily growing as we perform. Thank you so much for supporting us.