The Entertainer
written by: Joe Nickell (12.16.2004)
THIS IS A PROCESS OF AN EVOLUTION
In creating a still life, the challenge to the artist is to create a sense of vitality and dynamics utilizing clearly inanimate objects. In the band This is a Process of a Still Life, the challenge lately has been to create a sense of consistency and continuity out of clearly moving parts. That's because the Missoula-based band, which has built a devoted local following for its ambitiously exploratory instrumental music, has recently undergone a fairly major change in personnel.
In the past two months, the group has parted ways with its founding drummer, reconnected with an exiled keyboardist, and added a new drummer. The group is still called This is a Process of a Still Life; but lately it's looked more like a Whirlwind of Change.
The changes were made official when the band returned from an October tour.
"Before we left on tour, there were definitely some tensions going on, and they were exacerbated on tour," says Ben Rouner, who plays guitar and samplers in the band.
Mainly those tensions had to do with how the band's songs were developed, says Rouner. The group is organized largely as a collective, with each member contributing to songwriting and arranging duties. Such an approach demands a shared vision of the band's identity, its "sound."
According to Rouner, that vision had grown increasingly crosseyed in recent months, with founding drummer Jimmerson often disagreeing with other band members about the group's musical direction.
After the October tour ended, Jimmerson left the band, and was replaced by drummer Baine Craft, a longtime friend of the band. Craft had already worked with some members of the band before, and had appeared on guitarist/keyboardist Burke Jam's record.
Keyboardist Grier Phillips, a former member of the group, also returned to the band's lineup.
The result, asserts Rouner, is a band that is more clearly on the same page.
"It just feels like everyone's a little more free to create the music they're interested in and the emotions we're trying to generate," says Rouner.
"We're a six-piece now, so all of us can play a little bit less, not try to fill every possible space."
The biggest challenge now, Rouner notes, is applying those changes to the group's older material.
"It's sometimes difficult to listen to this stuff that we've known so well and played so many times, and be able to hear it in new ways," says Rouner.
So the band has been writing a lot of new material, some of which will be debuted this weekend, when the band returns to the stage for the first time with its new lineup.
The performance will also feature Salt Lake City's On Vibrato, a band cut from similar aesthetic cloth; and the debut of (mya.kyz.nak) b, a side-project of This is a Process of a Still Life member Grier Phillips.
Local filmmaker Ryer Banta will contribute visuals to the performance.
The whole things goes off at 7:30 p.m. Sunday at the Roxy Theater. Tickets are $5.
