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with Pontiak | Stand Up Sapsford Places Second in DC Funnyman Comp. Following up on last week’s profile, comedian Matt Sapsford placed second in the D.C. Improv’s competition for amateur and professional comics held Tuesday, March 28. Lawrence Owens took first in the competition and advances to a final contest that will also be held at the Improv later this year. |
Not in that scary, sci-fi creepy sort of way, but the startlingly similar appearances of the members of Pontiak do make it difficult to keep their names straight. Up close on Tuesday it’s easier, but Monday night when the brothers Van, Jennings and Lain Carney took the stage I had to ask more than once which one was which.
They all sport beanies. They all sport beards. And they all rock.
Since forming in 2004, Pontiak has been touring the Eastern seaboard and utilizing a music-rich upbringing to open ears with their fuzzy, full-sounding tunes.
Not surprisingly for this brother act, the foundation was laid in their youth when their multi-instrumental father (he played guitar, bass, accordion, banjo, harmonica, piano, the spoons, and the “gut bucket”) and their crooning mother (“She was always the loudest singer in church,” Jennings says.) gathered with extended family to play some music in their Rappahannock County home.
“I just remember sitting around when I was five years old and thinking, ‘How in the Christ are you able to do that with a guitar?’” Van says.
That youthful wonder led them into their own musical explorations and ultimately set Pontiak’s wheels in motion after Van urged Jennings to move back east from Colorado to play with him and Lain.
These boys are tight too. Not just in the familial sense, nor the urban slang way (though, that fits too), but in the rhythmic sense. As they lay down song after song at IOTA on Monday night, you can hear Van (guitar/vocals) and Jennings (bass/keyboard/backing vocals) and Lain (drums/backing vocals) overlap each other perfectly. The result is a huge sound — huge, not only for a three-piece, but for any size band. When Pontiak tears into their second selection of the night, the volume makes the six-member band that just left the stage sound librarian-like by comparison.
“If you can get a lot of sound out of a three-piece, you’re doing something right,” Van says.
Perhaps the syncopation has to do with the family ties. Like some sort of rhythmic genetic encryption that enables the three of them to effortlessly communicate on some kind of telepathic level with one another. Yes, crazy, I know, but they just seem so similar. Just look at these guys and you’ll be hard pressed to tell them apart, even the similarities aren’t a conscious choice. For example, regarding the beanies: “I’m losing my hair, so it just feels good to have something up there,” Lain says. And the beards: “My face is really kind of sensitive,” Jennings adds.
But as you would expect, the bond is deeper that mere appearance. On stage they finish each other’s sentences. Even in Tuesday’s interview over coffee and tea they all show the same nervous, foot-tapping twitch.
Maybe the telepathic thing is a bit of a stretch. However, the familial ties do help on one level of communication.
“It makes it easier to yell at each other,” Lain says with a laugh.
They weren’t always a band of just brothers. In previous incarnations, they were a four-piece with a different drummer and Lain used to play guitar. Things didn’t exactly work out on that front though.
“He was a nice guy, but we just had a lot of scheduling conflicts,” Van says. One such scheduling conflict came when said drummer actually “called in drunk.”
“That was at 4 p.m. on a weekday. He was too drunk to come to practice,” Van says. “And this guy has a government job.”
Thus it became a family act. While all three brothers enjoy the dynamic, the one drawback they are wary of is group think. Indeed several online reviews of their first EP criticized their songs for sounding too similar. It’s a problem Pontiak has acknowledged and confronted though. On their upcoming full-length debut, set to release this summer, Van makes note of the variances between songs, in particular a trio of acoustic tracks they have yet to perform live.
For fans eager to get a taste before Pontiak releases the 12-track album (they’re releasing it on their own label, with help from Organ Grinder Records), you can visit the band’s website to snap up one of the few remaining copies of White Buffalo.
While the band’s six-track, second EP is nearing extinction, there’s no end in sight for the Carney trio. They head down to Charlottesville for a show on April 1, before returning to the D.C. area for an April 24 show at DC9.