Chattanooga Times-Free Press

BOMBADIL BLENDS THE DOMESTIC, EXOTIC

April 3, 2008

By Casey Phillips

When multi-instrumentalists Bryan Rahija and Daniel Michalak started the band Bombadil, they were thousands of miles from home studying abroad in Bolivia. In many ways, their music is just as adventurous.

From bare piano/vocal duets to near-cacophonous orchestral arrangements utilizing exotic instruments, Rahija and Michalak, along with drummer James Phillips and multi-instrumentalist Stuart Robinson, take audiences into far-flung musical realms.

Tonight, the North Carolina quartet will add global flair to an ArtFront Presentations show with Chris Volpe and Charles Theodore Zerner and Caveat Emperor at Barking Legs Theater.

The seed for the band took root during demo recording sessions at a Bolivian children’s music school, and their music still incorporates elements of that country’s folk music. Rather than restrict their playing to specific styles or instruments, however, Bombadil plays musical MacGyver, adapting themselves to the song, Rahija said.

“We take it song by song and do what suits the mood and the style,” he said. “Our focus is on songwriting, so we like to maximize the different colors and feelings we can get out of each tune.”

As a result, Bolivian instruments such as the lute-like charango or zampoña, an instrument like the pan-pipes, are just as likely to make an appearance as the banjo, brass or an organ.

Exotic though their instrumentation may be, the band doesn’t get caught up in shoehorning in as many sounds as possible, Rahija said.

“Some of our favorite stuff is really stripped-down stuff of a guy playing a guitar,” he said. “We like to see where some ideas take us, but we try to remember that, at the end of the day, the human voice is the most important thing to have in a song.”

Byran Rahija Q&A:

Times Free Press music reporter Casey Phillips spoke with Bryan Rahija, multi-instrumentalist with North Carolina-based experimental folk-rock quartet, Bombadil, about the painful pleasure of making complex arrangements and the group’s inspirations.

CP: Are complex arrangements like “Julian of Norwich” on your new album a pain or a pleasure to put together?

BR: Once you get cranking on an idea and it starts working, it gets really exciting to have all these pieces coming into play and working together. It was a real pain getting the harpsichord in “Julian,” because none of us play harpsichord, it's really different from piano and we had to go find one. That was a pain, but once it comes through and you hear it working on the track, it's really gratifying. Not every song is a victory. We recorded 17 songs for the CD, but we ended up with only 11.

One song had a massive church organ on it, and that didn't end up on it. That was a huge pain to record and mike up. I mean, how do you mike up something the size of a boat? We put it in the song, and it sounded good, but the song didn't work. It was painful to let that go after all that hassle.But once something works, it's really easy to keep going, and pushing and trying new things. We went into that song with the attitude that, “This might not work, but let's try it anyway.”

CP: Were there any other moments like that? Any Theremin issues or anything like that?

BR: I wish we had a Theremin, but we don't have one lying around. We tried some synth stuff before that we couldn't agree on. The pipe organ is probably the best example because that was the biggest hassle to track down one of those things and actually record it.

CP: How long a process was it to find and record the organ?

BR: Daniel actually took organ lessons at our school, so he had access to one at the school. We had some luck there, but for this one track, it took a whole day to get all the equipment there, getting it miked, doing the part and then taking everything down. We had to travel away from the recording studio to make it happen. It was still a pretty fun day.

CP: Where do you draw inspiration for your writing?

BR: It's a mix of things. For the “Cavaliers” song, I did most of the writing. Daniel challenged me to record a high school fight anthem, and that song is kind of all my thoughts on high school. For me, high school wasn't easy. It was pretty chaotic and frenzied. It's a funny time because everyone is trying to figure out who they are, and it's really chaotic.

We took that idea, and one of the things I had in the back of my mind was these crazy street festivals they do in Bolivia. The whole town comes out, and there will be a drum line of people playing whatever they can find lying around. Everyone's wasted and walking around belting out these 100 year old, out-of-tune songs. I tried to incorporate that feeling into my feelings about high school. Another song that was a try at another style was “Rosetta Stone,” which was an electric-guitar driven song. That was the first time we tried anything like that.

CP: Are they all based on real people or do you incorporate fictionalized characters?

BR: Pretty much every song is a true story, actually. “Johnny” was an old roommate of Stuarts who was into cutting himself. That was a real guy. The “Julian of Norwich” is an actual figure in history. We didn't write that, our friends did, but he was nice enough o donate it to our cause. She was a real person who cut off her hair and decided to be a prophet. There's very little fiction going on in the songs. I think, at the end of the day, you have to write what you know. It's a challenge to keep that interesting and explore the more obscure corners of what you know. I think it's important to know what you're talking about and be able to sing what you're talking about authentically.