Rock-solid Foundation

Arthur Dent find success as homebodies

by Chris Kanaracus

How many area bands can say they have fans who throw a party in their honor each and every week? Local jam-rock travelers the Arthur Dent Foundation can. Every Monday night, following a regular set at the Tammany Club, at a house in the Clark University neighborhood, the fun continues, sometimes past the break of dawn. "Our fans are unbelievable," says bassist Anthony Rogers-Wright. "There's even one guy who says he's made Tuesday his official day off, so he can recover."

And this Monday will be no different -- perhaps it will be even more festive as it's the release party for ADF's second disc, We Own Your Mind, a 12-track, hour-plus set of funk, jazz, rock, and even metal grooves the band have honed to near-perfection for the past two years after assorted line-up changes and an initial CD, Slip.

What's most striking about Mind is just how few missteps it contains. In a genre so prone to endless, shoe-gazing, snore-inducing noodlefests and corn-schlockin', happy-crappy melodies, ADF are immune to the jam-band pitfalls. Certainly, extended solos have their day, and the album on the whole is, well, upbeat. But it's little things, like the way the main piano theme in "Journey" smells distinctly like cheese, then in its last bar gently and oh-so satisfyingly twists melancholy with a sly transition to the relative minor. Or big (BIG) things like the monstrous bass-and-drum drag race that tags the first section of the six-minute electric-funk smoke show "Television Repair." Elsewhere, the group dabble in West African flavors on "Koumba" and even bust out some classic thrash-metal riffs on the ambitiously titled "Soul Crusher."

And, natch, there are overt references to Phish, most notably in guitarist Keith Mclinden's spare, sing-spoken vocals and in the barbershop-lite harmonies. But the band are quick to assert they're no clones. "Phish? They're there . . . they certainly made it possible for this kind of music to come back to the national picture in the late '80s and now the '90s. And we may sound like them to an extent, but it's really the nature of the style altogether," says Rogers-Wright. "Sometimes it's hard to avoid."

One way ADF have always tried to stay fresh is through a constant pursuit of music education. In fact, on a recent visit to the band's rehearsal space, a pile of densely annotated musical charts, not a rack of empty beer bottles, was splayed over the coffee table. "Many bands look down on musical ability," he says. "We think you have to know the rules in order to play the game. And beyond that, learning more about music can only broaden your mind and your playing."

But just about anyone, given enough time and capacity for obsession, can woodshed their way to technical excellence. It's the rare individual who can use a monster set of chops to create actual music. With Arthur Dent Foundation, you have five musicians who have mastered their instruments but haven't abandoned that all-important quality of "feel."

And a bunch of diehard fans must agree. A packed house is a foregone conclusion Monday nights at Tammany, and the fact that their success has transcended the burden of such a sleepy time of the week isn't lost on the boys in Arthur Dent. "We have a great relationship with our fans," Rogers-Wright says. "When they come to see us, it's different every time. . . . We're always trying to grow, learn, and get better."

One of rock's time-honored ways to do that is through touring, but Arthur Dent, at least for now, remain relative homebodies. They've gone as far as Vermont, Boston, and Rhode Island, but, to date, their only gig outside New England was an ill-fated trip to New York's Le Barbats, a snooty Manhattan gin parlor. "We wouldn't have gotten in there had we not been playing," says pianist Steve Mossberg. "We knew we were in trouble when we saw the locks on the volume knobs." Barbats' decidedly Gucci-friendly crowd "had their little golf claps down pretty well," says Rogers-Wright, but if the eye-rolling and baleful mutters from the rest of Dent are any indication, it wasn't their finest hour.

They'll take another stab at the Big Apple when they perform at NYC's Wetlands (a venue famous for launching Blues Traveler and even Phish) this Saturday, but right now it's all about Mondays at Tammany, where the volume knobs (and those sweet, sweet jams) know no boundaries.

Arthur Dent Foundation perform at 10 p.m. at Tammany Club every Monday. Tickets are $3. Call 791-6550.