It’s actually a cajón, a lesser celebrated instrument in the contemporary world of percussion. When struck, this seemingly simple wooden box has all the pitches of a drum set’s snare, tom(s), and bass.

At first glance, it looks and sounds like something from Stomp, but it has a rich and interesting history. Rather than rip from Wikipedia, I’ll credit one of my dear friends D.G. who said the cajón was invented by African slaves who struck rhythms on fish crates during their time at sea. And so the cajón was born.

Close your eyes when you watch this video, don’t focus on this guy’s crotch. Focus on the sounds emitting from this plain box:

Like any instrument, a cajón can be hooked up to an amp, fancied up to the nines with a gloss, feet, and a coating of paint. A high-end one such as this may run a couple hundred dollars or more. For DIYers, the web offers numerous resources for constructing one of your own.

I like it because not only is it an instrument you can bust out at any time like an acoustic guitar, but it’s also a place to sit. So if you’re not interested in being a drummer because it comes with a crapload of equipment and the headache of maintaining a creepy white van, you can opt for this fantastically cool (and compact) cajón.

Happy drumming, or rather, cajón-ing!

It all started when I bought a $30 used turntable off a friend of mine, who had found it at a garage sale. My husband and I then spent a rainy Sunday setting up the turntable in the living room, right where a television might have gone in earlier iterations of my life. It was an exciting day. I alphabetized my CD collection, listened to everything from John Fahey to Helium to Blackalicious. And then, last week, my husband came home on his lunch break, face beaming, his arms filled with a stack of worn vinyl records. He works at the Center for the Blind, and an elderly woman, one of his regular clients, has a son who is a blues musician. The son has taken to handing over favorite records whenever my husband comes by for a session with his mother. Last time, it was a CD by Bahamian singer and guitarist Joseph Spence—a man who invented his own guitar style and sings and hums along with the music like a long lost member of the Muppets Band. Before that, it was a stack of classic rock records, including something by Sandy Bull.

“Why did he just give these to us?” I asked immediately, suspicious that we had ended up with someone’s trash pile—a stack resembling the potentially promising ones piled at the back of thrift stores that almost always end up containing the multiple copies of Barry Manilow and Laurence Welk and not much more.

“He’s just one of those people that likes to give his stuff away. He likes to share things and doesn’t place value on owning them,” my husband said. I felt lame for even questioning the guy’s intentions.

We descended on the records like kids in a candy store, pulling out jazz records by Eric Dolphy, Art Ensemble of Chicago and Billie Holiday. And Bob Marley—lots of Marley—including “Catch a Fire” which is held nestled within a record cover that resembles a silver Bic lighter. You can actually lift off the top off the cover, as though you are lighting a…well, you know what they used those lighters for.

We spent Saturday night listening to Billie Holiday, talking about her life and what we had learned from reading the extensive liner notes. My husband hadn’t heard much Billie Holiday, and it was cool to see his reaction to that honeyed, broken voice—and I kept flashing back to a time in my life when her songs where the only thing that held me together. We talked about how Lady Day had been born to Sadie Fagan—only fourteen when she gave birth—and how her father had been a musician who took off early to play in Fletcher Henderson’s band. We listened to “Ain’t Nobody’s Business If I Do” and smiled when she sang about jumping in the ocean, and cringed when she sang about getting hit by her man. I held the record cover, pouring over the stories, the quotes from Holiday herself, smelling that musty vinyl and really inhabiting the music for a hour or so. I don’t do that with my MP3’s; I don’t know if I ever will. And that is why I know for sure that in twenty-five years, it will still be about the full-on experience of the record, and that this is the one constant I can depend on when it comes to music in my life.

Photo by Flickr user Shane Gavin

During the summer of 1951 in the mountains of Korea, just days before the truce talks in Kaesong began, RCA-Victor released what was to be the very first tune about the Korean Conflict to come from the battlefront. Earlier that spring, the Korean battlefields were dominated by fierce grenade battles and brutal trench warfare between US forces and the North Korean troops and the Communist Chinese. Lt. Stewart Powell, an American Special Services Officer who spent his time traveling back and forth from the Korean front to Tokyo, scribbled down a few lines about being lonesome and far from home and would eventually make a small contribution to war music history.

The tune was called “Rotation Blues” (rca-victor #48-0494) an A-side Hank Williams-style hillbilly number about the loneliness of war. The flip side contained a western-pop number called “Cowpoke.” “Rotation Blues” may have remained simply a personal piece of writing if it hadn’t been for Louis M. “Grandpa” Jones and yodeler Elton Britt, two prominent country-western recording artists who were introduced to the tune while entertaining the troops with the USO (United Service Organization) near the Korean front. For the exhausted soldiers and Marines thousands of miles from home the tune hit a familiar note and became popular very quickly.

“Rotation Blues” mp3

Britt played the song on the AFN (Armed Forces Radio Network) and received so much mail following the performance that he contacted publisher Nat Tannen and strongly suggested he get the song recorded. Tannen, a man who could easily recognize a unique tune immediately contacted Lt. Powell in Korea via transoceanic phone calls and convinced him to make a deal for the recording rights over the phone. Weeks later Elton Britt and The Skytoppers were in the RCA-Victor Studio in New York putting it down on shellac. Later, Bill Monroe put a bluegrass flavor to the tune and recorded it for Decca, followed by Hoagy Carmichael’s jazz version.

The simplicity of the lyrics and kitschy-hillbilly music mask the deeper emotional state of the American soldier’s isolation in a country at war. The Korean “Conflict” (1950-53) was never officially declared a war and many folks back home were still coming down from the end of World War II. American troops who were on occupation duty in Europe and Japan had been streaming back to the states for the last six years and nobody thought that an American call to arms would come again so soon, but in 1950 it did.

This is one of the first American pop songs to shed some light on the lives of the contemporary foot soldier on the battlefield. It is a glimpse into the monotony of a soldier’s day to day experience–far away from the comforts of home, the one place that everybody in Korea wanted to be. The tune starts off with a simple guitar, steel guitar, piano and bass, then a signature Elton Britt yodel wails; “I got the ro-oo-oh-ta-a-tion blues. I’m a lonely soldier sittin’ in Korea. I’m a lonely soldier sittin’ in Korea. But rotation’s comin’ so I shouldn’t have no fear.” The subject of the fear is only implied by the use of the word. There is no mention of destruction and suffering on the front lines, no dying or killing, just a few sad words from a man waiting patiently for his rotation papers.

While in 1951 it may have been good news to the boys in the trenches and mountains that truce discussions had begun it would still be another two years before anything realistic came out of the talks, besides the troops were experiencing an overwhelming pre-occupation with survival. Any serious hope of a truce seemed trivial when you were living on the frozen dirt. In the meantime soldiers and Marines were still living, killing and dying in the icy rain, mud and snow but that did not stop them from daydreaming about leaving; “I’m gonna pack my bags and sail back over the sea. I’m gonna pack my bags and sail back lover the sea. ‘Cause the A-frames in Korea don’t look good on me” There is no sense of patriotism or gung-ho American stereotypes, just a mention that his duffel bag and a trip home may be more his style than an “A-Frame” the slang for the wooden packs that the villagers used to carry massive loads on their backs. It is no wonder that Lt. Powell’s song became so popular with the grunts, this was music written by a soldier for soldiers, and it spoke their language, he was one of them.

“Rotation Blues” is an example one of the first times a pop song put an American soldier’s mental stability into question: “Rotation had better hurry up and set me free, I’m buggin’ out. Rotation had better hurry up and set me free, section 8’s gonna get me. The honey pots in Korea done started smellin’ good to me” A Section 8 is a military term for being discharged from service for reasons of mental-illness or problems, like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) which back in the 50s was called battle fatigue. In the last part of the lyric we are introduced to another daily problem of the GIs and Marines; “honey pots” these were Korean toilets that were kept inside the house until they were full then they would empty them into roadside ditches, by the time they were full they resembled the sight and smell of honey very little. If an attack occurred the first spot a soldier would instinctively seek was the roadside ditches. This soldier is slowly losing his grip and ‘buggin’ out’ is just the first sign.

Listening to this record 63 years after it was recorded, I can’t help but wonder what it would have sounded like to sit next to Lt. Powell and hear him play it in out in the field. I wonder what his voice and playing would have added to the meaning and impact of the lyrics. I wonder what his buddies may have felt inside as he sang and I wonder where their experiences may have led them. I can only hope it was home.

There is a moment after you set the needle down on an old 45, during the first few revolutions, when a muted and dusty crackle defines a world within those grooves. It persuades us to close our eyes and dig the sound. I have spent the last 16 years seeking out and playing for the world unique recorded music that is dark and lovely. I am especially pleased when I can find a piece of music that moves me enough to fit into one of my DJ sets.

Whether it is a love ballad, a barn burner or just an instrumental, the common ingredient that I appreciate is a high level of seriousness in the delivery. For me this means a certain balance of lyrics, voice and instrumentation that may not fit into my standard method of identifying and categorizing music. When it comes to my record shelves I call this category the “weird stack.” Deep within the weird stack resides a fantastic universe: the darkest and most interesting records on my shelves.

Among the records in this magical area are two that epitomize the sound of the weird stack, Chuck Berry’s “Down Bound Train” and Bo Diddley’s “The Great Grandfather”. Both tunes, written in the 1950s, focused on the dark side of American culture. While many of their popular songs were the usual radio-friendly rhythm & blues, there was something undeniably sinister stirring in the words and music.

In 1956 Chuck Berry recorded a song for the Chess label titled “Down Bound Train” (Chess 1615). It was the b-side to “No Money Down” and it featured Willie Dixon on bass, Otis Spann on piano and Eddie Hardy on drums. This was the tale of an alcoholic’s nightmare trip to hell, after a night of drinking too much hooch that ended with blacking out on the floor. When faced with eternal damnation, the nameless drunk realizes he shares the same horrible fate as his fellow passengers, but before he arrives at his fiery destination he discovers he may have a choice in the matter after all, and that he could struggle to redeem himself before it’s too late.

The gravity of the situation is evident in the descriptions of his fellow riders: “The passengers were mostly a motley crew; some were foreigners and others he knew. Rich men in broadcloth, beggars in rags, handsome young ladies and wicked old hags.” We can taste and smell the interior of the train: “The engine with blood was sweaty and damp and brilliantly lit with a brimstone lamp, and imps for fuel were shoveling bones while the furnace rang with a thousand groans.” We sense that American culture’s seedy underbelly of culture will not likely escape this nightmare and so the unceasing motion of the engine drags us furiously along for the ride.

Out of a mist of darkness the tracks hum with a furious rhythm, the click-clack of the sticks and the echo of fingers upon bass strings draws each instrument out of this mysterious dream at an ever increasing intensity “As the train rushed on at a terrible pace sulphuric fumes burned their hands and face, wider and wider the country grew, faster and faster the engine flew. Louder and louder the thunder crashed, brighter and brighter the lightning flashed.” The anxiety of the experience leaves us desperate to be anywhere else, but the devil himself has other plans in mind for us. As a result, we succumb to the situation so as not to prolong our imminent suffering.

Three years later in 1959 Bo Diddley recorded a Dave Bartholomew tune for the Checker label called “The Great Grandfather”. This was the flipside to a popular number called “Crackin’ Up” (Checker 924) featuring Willie Dixon on bass, Lafayette Leake on piano and either Clifton James (or Frank Kirkland) on drums. The tune was a deeply haunted tale burdened with the hard times experienced by a man surviving out in the country in the 1800s. There was a depth and substance to the minimal atmosphere of the music that suggested that this was no love song and was certainly unlikely to be played at the local record hop.

It begins with a solitary guitar string and a single sad drum, heavy with the steps of hard tired men, the drumsticks cracking like bones under skin. Within a faded glance, cracked fingers tap somberly on a piano lonely like men crying alone. The deep steady slap of the bass draws the great-grandfather forward into the earth; soon a broken voice bears the weight of the story “the great grand-pappy when the land was young barred his do’ wit’ a wagon tongue, oh ohh, when the times got tough and the Redskins smart said his prayers wit his shotgun cocked oh ohh..”

In the lyrics we are reminded that people in the early days of this country experienced hardships and fears that are hard for us to imagine today, such as bolting the door of the shack with part of a wagon and protecting oneself with only a 12-gauge shotgun. As the tune creeps along ponderously, the dirt under the nails begins to show as we soon learn that the great grand-pappy cleaned his teeth with his knife, only owned one suit and was blessed with 21 children in his lifetime.

It is clear that the early tradition of the blues paved the way for music with this kind of substance and meaning. A popular artist didn’t have to stick to accepted ideas of American music culture and this philosophy still stands today. After 40 years these two songs hold more weight than most popular tunes being recorded today and they have certainly earned their honorable place among the weird stack.

For the past five years, Pete Bernhard has been touring with his punk-influenced string band The Devil Makes Three, and has learned many of these lessons the hard way. He spoke with Is Greater Than about what he wished he had known before heading out on the road the very first time.

What were some of your misconceptions about what touring would be like?  How does it differ from what you envisioned?

Touring turned out to be way more work than I anticipated and I had to learn to take care of myself in order to finish a tour and not feel like a walking corpse. I think movies like “Almost Famous” and other band movies have led people to believe that between partying in the limo and doing tons of coke you can always somehow find time to get laid by some a beautiful stranger and that’s what playing music is all about “man”. That has not been my experience but then again I may just be in the wrong band. If you’re going to be in a DIY situation you might as well put those kinds of things out of your mind for a while. I never thought touring would be easy but it is hard in ways I never thought it would be.

You can’t expect people to do everything for you. For example, the promotion ball often gets dropped. To be a touring musician with no backing you need to be a lot of things: a booking agent, a business person, promoter and a mediator all while performing and writing songs.

What tricks have you found to ensure band harmony while on the road?

The biggest and most important lesson lest we all end up like Metallica and get a group therapist (I’ll die first) is to communicate with your bandmates. If you can’t talk to them and you secretly hate them, trust me–its no secret in a cargo van. There are no secrets in such close quarters and the more you can be honest with everyone the longer you will last and the more fun you will have.

What are four things you wish somebody had told you before you went out on tour? What did you have to learn the hard way?

The first thing I wish I had known is that you don’t need to play clubs when no one knows who you are yet. Play house shows and have fun. Empty clubs kill band morale and just generally slowly suck the life from your soul. Even a bad house show is still just a party.

I wish someone had told me to listen to criticism and ask for some help along the way. Trying to do everything your self is a form of torture and sadly I didn’t know everything it turns out. Come to think of it I did hear this advice along the way and I didn’t listen, so there you have it.

I also could have used some advice about being honest concerning what you want out of the band or project. People usually have goals or limitations and the sooner you know this the easier it is for everyone. If the drummer wants to be a rock star but the lead singer wants to work at the comic book shop and live in his moms basement then maybe its not going to work out?

Last but not least, it is worth spending money to keep yourself sane. Always cutting corners and sleeping on the ground will catch up with you quick and end your tours before you finish the all the dates.

Truth be told, all of this was learned “the hard way”. We did everything wrong before learning to do it right and the main ingredient to making it work is not giving up.

What are the most useful/important things a band heading out on the road would need?

Money! Prepare to not make any and you will be happy if you do. On your first tour you will be lucky to make gas money and eat dry ramen noodles. Everyone in the DIY community seems to hate the mention of money but it really can be quite useful in a pinch.

Your van breaks down in bumfuck nowhere. How should you have planned  for this possibility and what’s the first thing you do?

This is where you can get out of the car and start screaming, crying and throwing around instruments and kicking inanimate objects to really show the world how hard your life is! I have tried this method and  seen others use it the outcome is always the same. It won’t change anything, everyone in attendance thinks you’re an asshole and you’re still stuck on the side of the road. God is not torturing you–god doesn’t care about you that much. Breaking down is just part of touring and having a reliable vehicle and a road side assistance plan (get AAA) to fall back on is all you can really hope for. Again skimping on your van is like moving into a cardboard box because it’s cheaper than your apartment. You have to live in the thing sometimes, so why not save up a bit more cash?

Any other bits of hard-earned wisdom?

The only other thing I can think to say to aspiring musicians is: don’t be a dick and people will like you more. It sounds so simple and yet some people never figure it out. If you show up when you are supposed to and treat the people putting on the show and doing the sound with respect they will want you back. People in the business are used to being treated like shit and will bark at you because the last bunch who came through may have made them sort through all the M&Ms so they could have only the green ones. If you don’t act that way. it’s better for everyone.

It’s discursive stuff, driven by an aesthetic that is willfully obscure. The San Francisco band’s rallying cry is “Let’s get weird,” a manifesto taken to its logical extension. The members are just as bizarre and slyly irreverent in interview as they are onstage, and it’s as difficult to coax meaning from their responses as it is from their surrealistic work. But if the men (and woman) of Sleepy Sun indulge in obfuscation, it’s of the most tantalizing kind.

  Witness member Matt Holliman’s characterization of the band’s creative process: “Most of the songs are derived from a single idea that is then presented to the group in a formal meeting,” he slyly notes. “There is a system of checks and balances and one member serves as the High Judge once a week. The real secret is that nobody can know who the High Judge is at any given time. It’s a guessing game, baby.”

As sources of inspiration, the band points to “bats, coming directly out of hell.” 

Sleepy Sun – Lord [mp4]

When it comes to discussing the band’s stunning debut, Embrace, the members are far less cagey. The stunning debut was nearly two years in the making, Holliman explains. “The earliest of songs on Embrace were written in mid-2006. ‘New Age’ was a song that we played in practice and live settings for over a year. Other songs were written a few weeks before the eventual recording. In fact most, if not all, songs were radically changed during the recording process: entire guitar tracks were removed, vocal harmonies were added and percussion was wrangled on the spot.”

Holliman cites the support of producer Colin Stewart during recording sessions at Hive Studio in Vancouver. “We had developed a really solid relationship with him, and it felt natural to record these songs with someone who understood and appreciated the concept of musical naiveté. He is as much a psychologist as a recording engineer.” The process was worth all the blood and sweat the band poured into it.

Embrace has been rapturously received in the underground press and become the toast of the indie rock bloggerati. A spring European tour is in the works that will find the band sharing the stage with such forebears as the Jesus Lizard, Spiritualized and Sleep. And as the band continues to spread songs that, in Holliman’s words, “spin their own web and connections through time,” the members of Sleepy Sun have one driving ambition:

“To do Wayne’s World for a living,” Holliman explains. Like everything with Sleepy Sun, it’s a completely confounding and absolutely appropriate response.

Participants have two hours to create a track from the time of the sample’s drop (“drop” referring to the five minutes the hosts spend scrambling to release the audio track on the internet, passing it out on CDs and/or handing it out on flash drives). The rules are simple: no guitars, no voices, no external sound whatsoever. Unlike the Food Network’s campy Japanese cooking show, these chefs aren’t allowed to work with anything but the main ingredient. By cutting and shifting the pitch, tone, tempo, speed, sound, dynamics. the chefs completely reshape the sample into a song. The pieces are surprisingly organic—as organic as digital music can be—and may bear little resemblance to the sample they’re derived from. Between them, the musicians have an entire album’s worth of new music by the end of the night.

There’s a veritable opus of music produced in the five seasons of the Iron Chef of Music, run by electronic/experimental label Kracfive out of Pittsburgh. “It started off as a couple of friends doing it,” current Iron Chef host Rodger Ruzanka says. But he wanted to make it more accessible. The experience expanded and three years ago, the competitions moved with Ruzanka from Pittsburgh to Chicago where they took place for a time at co-host Joe Hahn’s then-living space, the Heaven Gallery, in the Wicker Park neighborhood.

Since Hahn moved out of the gallery, the competitions have had trouble finding space and have become more sporadic. Both Hahn and Ruzanka itch for new competitions. They are constantly bugged by eager would-be competitors. Holding Iron Chefs at venues, as opposed to online, allows for discussion. Competitors can call out alleged cheaters and discuss technique. While they cook, they talk smack. Spectators, though sparse, can watch showdowns live. Although there’s no host narrating the competition in poorly dubbed English, viewers can stroll around and see how the participants put their tracks together.

The most recent battle’s main ingredient was a sample from the presidential debates. A woman in the audience asked the candidates, “How can we trust either of you with our money when both parties got us into this global economic crisis.” Tracks produced that night, from Michigan to Venezuela, played on every part of the sample: redefining the term party (Ruzanka’s track insisted, “Got money? You party,”) redistributing the speaker’s sentiments and sounds, and even setting her nasally emphasis on the crisis against a tonal dreamscape. The tracks not only prove the chefs’ flair for re-imagining a sample but also reflect a mixture of viewpoints on a textured issue.

For seasoned veterans of the electronic music scene, Iron Chef is a chance to hone their skills under intense time and material constraints and see how they stack up against their peers. For everyone else, it’s just a chance to hear new music and say, “Wait, this whole three-minute song is actually just the sound of rocks rolling down a hill?”

Yet there’s always an exception to the rule. A year after the Rock Bottom Remainders’ inauspicious birth, the Silver Jews’ David Berman emerged as that exception. Originally a poet by trade, Berman was coaxed to the stage by the slack-rock impresarios in Pavement, who served as his backup band for the first Silver Jews release, 1994’s Starlite Walker. At the time, the Jews were written off as a curiosity for Pavement fans, an odd side-project featuring band’s eccentric wordsmith buddy. But Berman was hooked, and in 1996 he issued the Pavement-free full-length The Natural Bridge, a stunning sophomore release that found Berman discovering form and choruses and turning out an album populated by songs first and foremost — not merely backing tracks to remaindered verse.

Seven albums later, the Silver Jews have become Berman’s primary concern. The band has proven more venerable than Pavement, putting a lie to those who dismissed Berman early on. In the process, Berman’s songwriting has slowly developed into wholesale mastery of the form. The band’s primary draw has historically been Berman’s skill at tossing out impossibly memorable lyrical punches. Berman is a master at the middle-school teacher’s old saw of “show, don’t tell,” pinpointing his topics with stunning accuracy.

mp3 “Suffering Jukebox” off of Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea

Berman’s melodic gifts, on the other hand, have developed slowly yet steadily. On the band’s most recent releases — 2005’s Tanglewood Numbers and this year’s Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea — the music has become as punch-drunk as the words, unearthing Berman’s Nashville roots in the service of country-rock with real hooks and soulful interludes.

Many critics and fans credit the addition of Berman’s bass-playing, backup-singing wife, Cassie, to the Jews lineup for Berman’s increased focus on making the tunes as memorable as his words. The soaring vocal counterpoint that Cassie offers to Berman’s baritone has greatly expanded the range the Silver Jews inhabit. On the tear-in-your-beer rambler “Suffering Jukebox,” off Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea, Cassie launches into a heartrending chorus that takes the band places they could never reach before with Berman’s limited register.

Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea proves a worthy follow-up to the revelatory fan-favorite Tanglewood Numbers. If anything, it proves to be the Silver Jews’ liveliest work to date. This comes as a surprise — coming off Berman’s failed suicide attempt and subsequent time in rehab, it was a good bet the new record would be a probing, internal affair. Instead, Berman seems reborn post-recovery, reveling in a playfulness and humor that lay mostly dormant on previous albums. On the charmingly ridiculous “Party Barge” and the Dylan-esque story-song “San Francisco, B.C.,” you can almost see the shit-eating grin on Berman’s face as he tosses out lines like “romance is the douche of the bourgeoisie” and “chicken fried pigeon in a Sonny James sauce, Satan’s jeweled lobster has your wife in its claws … nothing stops a party barge.”

Fortunately, Berman has survived and become an elder indie rock statesman, a role he inhabits on the wry “Strange Victory, Strange Defeat.” In the song, Berman asks, “What’s with all these handsome grandsons in these rock-band magazines? What have they done with the fat ones, the bald and the goateed,” drawing a contrast between the current fashion-obsessed indie scene with the dowdy cool of the genre’s underachieving, Pavement-scored salad days. While Berman can remember a time when hipsters looked more Comic Book Guy than Project Runway, Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea finds him relishing his bandleader role with an enthusiasm that belies his 41 years. It may be a predictable narrative, the suicide survivor who is reborn. But true to form, it’s a narrative that Berman revisits with his idiosyncratic verve.

It’s not difficult to find players to fill the basic indie-rock roles — the land is littered with guitarists and bass players, hopeful singers with pinched voices, and understated drummers. The challenge for those who want to follow in the orchestral-pop footprints of Belle and Sebastian, The National or Arcade Fire is finding the adjunct indie-rock orchestra to frame the singers’ bedside confessionals.

Considering that, Ra Ra Riot guitarist and founding member Milo Bonacci was fortunate to come across violinist Rebecca Zeller. After meeting Zeller in an electronic music course at Syracuse University, Bonacci asked her if she would join an upstart orchestral pop outfit he was founding. Zeller — a classically trained player who had never performed with a rock band before — was intrigued.

“I always had an interest in [playing rock], but I had never pursued it,” Zeller says.

In fact, Zeller had very little experience outside of performing already-written compositions.

“At first there were the obvious challenges, which included having to write your own parts, as opposed to having it all there for you,” she says. “I think I’d dabbled [in writing] probably once or twice, but not on this level. It wasn’t too difficult to come up with the parts — to find a part that fit, that was appropriate. That took a bit of time, but the transition wasn’t too bad.”

mp3 “Dying is Fine”

Ra Ra Riot has developed a truly collaborative songwriting approach, rather than functioning as merely an indie-rock orchestra supporting lead singer Wes Miles’ singular obsessions. Songwriting “works every way imaginable,” Zeller explains. “We’ve written songs just by playing together, just from a chord progression to someone coming with a complete idea, or something in the middle.”

The band faced disaster last year with the drowning death of original drummer John Pike. The members regrouped in testament to their deceased friend, and set to work on their recently-released debut full-length album, The Rhumb Line. After tours with the likes of Vampire Weekend and Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin, Ra Ra Riot is ready to take center-stage.

“With our demo and EP, we didn’t have a lot of time to record, so it’s really been our first opportunity to play around in the studio and find sounds that we like,” Zeller says.

The band’s tenacity in the face of tragedy has paid off, and Zeller, for one, is relishing life as a member of a rock ‘n roll band.

“It’s so much louder” than playing chamber music, she says. “You have to condition yourself to listen differently than you would in a quartet or orchestra — but it’s a lot more fun because everything doesn’t have to be perfect.”