April 14,2006 — The Clarion
ARTS & LIFE
Page?
Cletus Baltimore and the runaway sound
How one band s music became Brevard
name is built on their fresh live
performances.
Now a regular act at restau
rants and bars like Jordan Street
Caf6, not to mention nearly ev
ery significant social gathering
off campus, the trio has come a
long way from their time jamming
in tattered dorms and body-hug
ging bedrooms.
“Every time they would
come over to my house it was
like I had to pick up the bed and
stand it in the corner to make
enough room for us to be able to
play,” says Parreco, whose pri
mary influence, he says, comes
from his teacher of two years
Jeff Sipe, the drummer for the
former Grateful Dead bassist Phil
Lesh. “It just kinda developed
out of that and sooner or later
they’d come over to jam and
people would come with them
and then more people and it
would get kinda crowded.”
The band’s first official gig
came in the spring of 2004 at a
late-night Relay for Life benefit
concert on campus. “1 remember
it just being freezing cold,”
Griswold recalls. “We had a lot
of people that actually came out
and that was really cool.”
From there, the band could
be found almost every weekend
at the one spot where “lively
music,” as their flyers suggest,
should be played; the college
party. This scene, according to
Hope, gives the band the oppor
tunity to experiment by taking
their music as far as “the energy
of the night” will allow. And that,
according to Parreco, is what
separates Cletus Baltimore from
the rest.
“It will go from a straight up
country tune and we’ll just shift
gears in the middle of it and it
will sound like a disco tune,
Parreco says. “It always ends up
at a gig that we would play a
tune and then all of a sudden
another tune would just pop up
out of that...and out the window
goes the set list.”
photo by Ben Clark
Cletus Baltimore at Jordan Street
By recording every practice off on is the original stuff
session, the band has released With no immediate plans
three CD’s in the past two years, for the future, Hope, Griswold,
with one more disc expected out and Parreco have agreed that
before the end of the semester, they will be around at least un-
The songs are mostly written by til December. I think this com-
Hope although each member ing semester, and possibly af-
has collaborated on at least one ter that, we’re going to start
branching out into Asheville
“Ninety percent of the time and Greenville just to try to get
the music is written first and some gigs and expand our circle
then the lyrics,” Hope says. “So of where we play,” Parreco
the structure of the music has says. “Right now we are just
an effect on the lyrics, whether trying to focus on school. This
they are dark and gloomy, or is just our creative outlet in the
bright and shiny...I write from meantime.”
experience, although not all Whether this circle ex
songs are from my experience, pands or not, most students are
but I don’t approach a song and sure about one thing: as long
want to make it a song about as these three guys keep play-
love It’s really a matter of what ing, as long as the crowd keeps
is going on at that time.” dancing, and as long as the
While Cletus Baltimore has band keeps hitting that one
a lone list of covers, including great moment on stage, Cletus
crowd favorites like Talking Baltimore will commue to be
Heads “Psycho Killer” and The the lively, jam roots sound of
Band’s “The Weight,” their origi- Brevard,
nal tunes, which accumulate to
well over 25, are what really make
a show great, according to
Griswold.
“When you can get some
thing that you’ve come up with,
something made from scratch,
Griswold says, “and you build
that up into something and you
look out and what you’ve writ
ten or what we’ve done as a band
you see people dancing to, it’s
pretty crazy...that’s what I get
By: Adam Beeson
Managing Editor
Any band can tell you
about that one great moment on
stage: a pluck of the guitar, roll
of the drums, a smooth bass run,
and click! No one knows how,
but everything just works. It’s
instants like these that make live
music. And this is how, in just
two years, the easy-rolling jam-
rock tunes of Cletus Baltimore
have become the sound of
Brevard.
“We’ll just hit it off in a
show at this one moment and
say, ‘Man I’ve never done that
before’,” says frontman Randy
Hope, whose spicy guitar work
evokes a blend of Jimi Hendrix
and Trey Anastasio. “It’s not
just us,” bassist Dave Griswold
adds, “everybody knows about
that one moment. You’ll hit
something and everybody will
just look at you and say, ‘That
was right’.”
Since meeting as freshmen
in 2002, Hope and Griswold have
turned this once nameless
acoustic duo into a college town
favorite. Throw in the free jazz
influences of drummer Shane
Parreco, who joined the two af
ter jamming at a party in early
2004, and you’ve got Cletus Bal
timore, a vibrant band whose
photo by Ben Clark
Upcominff Shows:
4/22 BC Sprlngfest
4/27 Jordan Street
Cafe
5/2 Porter Center
Amphitheater