The Comas - by Stephanie R Myers
welcome to the big apple

When The Comas took the stage at Mercury Lounge on a recent April night, indie kids ranging from the dancing lyric-mouthing blonde fan on stage to the silently bobbing boy next to me in the crowd couldn't help but be entranced. Even those in attendance who were initially not familiar with the band quickly became fans. This is the power The Comas are currently wielding.

Maybe it's an overstatement to say there's nothing The Comas can't do, but there's certainly quite a bit that they can right now, if the power of a room is any indication. An itemized list, if you will:
The kids can rock.
Hell, they can also roll, if the followers of the Church of the Silently Grooving are correct.

The Comas, in their current lineup, have been around for about two and a half years, according to lead singer Andy Herod.
Herod, whose influences include everything from Ernest Tubb and Willie Dixon to The Nuggets and Chet Baker, is a powerful presence onstage, going from a crooning balladeer to a streetwise kid for the harder songs. And it is a powerful presence. Herod and the rest of the band gel effortlessly live.

It's been a slowly morphing ride to this point of having things click as a band. The lineup right now in addition to Herod includes Jason Caperton, Nicole Gehweiler, Matt Sumro and Cam Weeks. For years, things were more fluid. And the band accomodated some members still living in North Carolina, until very recently.
"After this last tour, we basically all landed here,' Herod said. "When we got back, everybody sort of left North Carolina, and everybody stayed here (in New York). I think we're trying to record, but we're figuring that out, this is where we live now. We just did two U.S. tours, and for both of them, all of them except for my roommate the bass player, we are back. I've been making music with the comas for about 5 or 6 years. This band has been together for about 2 years, and this is definitely the solidified version."

There's a comfort in having liquidity, Herod said, but the current lineup is a solid one.
"My philosophy up until about two years ago was unless there's a completely democratic situation, I don't think there's anything wrong with being loose about who you play with-- we're always very mobile and open-minded. But now it's a little more of a democracy. It's shared equally, which is really great."

For their current album Conductor (their debut, 1999's Wave to Make Friends, was followed by A Def Needle In Tomorrow in 2000), The Comas followed a pieced-together process. Herod wrote most of the songs, but when the band got together with a new song, "there's a definite signature that everybody in the band puts on it." Before a song is recorded, there are steps to be followed.
"A lot of times, I'll record demos on a four-track on the computer, and then when we work with the producer, it starts from scratch again," Herod said. "Because I think that's what recording is you have all of these opportunities and a completely new palette and you can create so many different vibes. And then during a live show, you can always try to recreate and focus on the energy. The songs are always evolving for me."

Producing the record with certain ideas in mind was paramount, Herod said.
"I had very specific ideas and I'm very picky about things, and (producer) Alan Weatherhead was cool about that. He starts every song differently. Every song we did, he would throw away the version that we had, and say 'how about this?' Let's start with a huge drum beat, and 'last transition' came about that way. I was directly involved but I love giving control over to people. But when it comes down to mixing and the vibe of the song, I want control. But he was really amazing."

The unique experience of visiting the songs live is electric, Herod added.
"A good live show is better than any experience," Herod said. "It's a moment you're sharing and creating in one room with your band. If it's magical, it's a unique thing that no one will see it again, and it's really special, and I think that's completely where it's at. If you don't enjoy that, you should give it up."

Along with Conductor, The Comas have also packaged a short film whose narrative ties the album's songs together. Set to the music, the movie is equal parts Pink Floyd's The Wall and have surreal animated sequences that nearly evoke a Tim Burton flick. The film initially came about when the band was left with extra money once the record was finished, Herod said.
"When we were done (with the record), none of the songs seemed to make sense together," he said. "So I decided to write a story. A really simple story about a scientist becoming obsessed with the moon. And I wrote it in like 15 minutes, and then I thought we would animate it in a Mickey Mouse sort of playful way. "So while I was doing that, it occurred to me that I had a friend, Brent Bonacorso, who'd done that really well. He loved the idea and took it from there, took my initial story and went haywire with it and decided he wanted to use real actors, and decided to go nuts with it."

Herod concedes that the idea is somewhat akin to a reverse concept album.
"I liked the way it turned out because basically it's a fake concept record," Herod said. "Looking back on it, the content of the songs and stuff, there was a thread that ran through it, in the end it doesn't matter that it was fake or not. There was a concept to it, but I wasn't aware of it until the end."

As far as future album plans, Herod said, the band is currently testing the proverbial waters.
"Right now all we're doing is putting songs together, seeing how they go over live, seeing what people are responding to," he said. "A lot of the songs I've had written for a few years, a lot of them are about living in Brooklyn. It's a big mess-- definitely the best songs I've ever had, but at the same time, I don't know how it's going to go together, so it's scary at the same time."

The Comas have about 30 new songs that haven't been recorded yet, Herod said. And following up a big effort like Conductor will be a challenge.
"When we go to record, we basically start from scratch anyway. It looks like we'll start recording in the next couple of months, which I'm really excited about, but I'm a little nervous-Conductor's like an epic thing with the movie and the record, it was a huge labor of my life, and I just want to make sure that the next thing is equally monumental. I'm not going to stress out about it, but that is a huge goal of mine. Maybe a rock opera."
Anyone who ends up collaborating with The Comas for the next record needs to bring their own ideas to the table, Herod said.
"I want someone who has a specific style that will take it in their own direction and some one to tell me what's good and what is shit," Herod said, adding that he'd ideally like to work with David Bowie and would love to collaborate with Dave Friedman, who's worked with the Flaming Lips.

Bands in the New York music scene that inspire Herod run the gamut.
"My favorite bands are Hopewell, I love the bands Maplewood and Nada Surf. Some of my favorite things that I like right now are Blood On The Wall. T.K. Webb, he plays with this girl named Shannon, and they're fantastic," Herod said.
Conceding that the New York music market has an incredibly motivated mass of musicians, Herod added that "I've seen a lot of incredible bands, and I've seen a lot of them struggling."
He continued, "There are a lot of bands everywhere, maybe too many. Whether anybody achieves any success is almost arbitrary. We had a few things going for us as far as a label, representation, etc. It's hard to be a band here as far as living expenses and costs. It's great, but it's a giant mess at the same time."

Advice on handling the industry has been forthcoming and plentiful, Herod said, but rarely helpful in a pragmatic sense.
"It's weird, I've got a lot of advice, but none of it has ever been good," Herod said. "I feel like there's nothing you can say to anybody on a how to do this thing. I've seen people have incredible luck and break in in a way that seems beautiful. I don't think there's anything you can say to anyone, you just have to keep doing it, and there are ups and downs and people have told me a million different things, but the truth is, its something you have to figure out in your own, because it's definitely not for everyone."

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