Have they seriously played the 17th Cannabis Cup in November of 2004 in Melkweg, Amsterdam?!” I thought to myself when walking up the stairs at Wall Street. I had just learned this information, and I wondered why in the world I had never seen this band before. Many people have wonderful things to say about The Homegrown Band (THB), so I had to check them out.
THB is a five-piece, funky inspiration to many bands. The drum-n-bass section is made for dancing, and the slightly metal-esque electric guitar woven into the beat puts out an extremely exhilarating vibe. The two brass horns tie much of the sound together, but there is talk of Ryan Clark, on trombone, and Louey Kachinsky, on trumpet, working on projects outside of THB?sometimes, change is inevitable, though we will miss the old-school influences such as James Brown and P-Funk interwoven with new-school influences, such as Fishbone or even Outkast, that the two horn players helped add to the sound.
However, the other three members are amazing anyway, because they all share such an intense family vibe. THB evolved from the two brothers and their life-long friend, Glenn Rohrbach, playing the funk out of the bass.
“Glenn and I grew up together playing music and have been playing since we were 8 years old, and my younger brother, Mike, is our drummer, so we already have a telepathic connection that is the basis for how we play together,” said Lenny Cramer, guitarist.
Hearing the bass makes dancing not just a possibility, but an impossibility to avoid.
Complete with a surprisingly more-than-decent light show, the vibe inside Wall Street was growing into an effervescent plethora of happy people. THB, keeping the jam going for seven years now, radiates “good energy” in the truest sense. Needless to say, I left the show feeling elated.
So where does this good energy come from? One answer may be that they were raised in south-central Tennessee on a commune known as “The Farm” in the well-known hippy-town of Summertown, so giving off good energy was instilled in these guys from day one.
“We love all kinds of music and try to show that with our songs. We don’t like to be pinned down by a genre; it’s too easy to play one kind of music, that’s why we incorporate everything we can into our sound,” explains Lenny.
They are currently working on their second album, T.V.s and Magazines to be released in March, and it’s full of energy and spunk.
For more information visit thbmusic.com or their myspace profile at myspace.com/thbfunk.
You can catch T.H.B. next on Friday, Feb. 16,
at the Mellow Mushroom
