Michael Girardot, Antenna Inn’s newly appointed trumpet player, put it best: the band is a lot “like Noah’s Ark.”
Two main singers, two drummers, two keyboards, two trumpet players, two guitarists and usually two guys playing xylophones. There are even two brothers. There’s only one bassist, though, which makes Joe Bourgeois the Noah, according to Girardot.
Noah’s Ark probably didn’t look too different from their live shows. The stage is always packed with amps and lamps and a sea of percussion instruments. And where there’s space, the current nine members fit themselves in. They all have different fashion styles as well – some wear vests and ties, others wear a simple T-shirt and jeans. The stage is a zoo, but there’s no cage to separate them.
The analogy stops here. When the band begins to play, it doesn’t sound like the cacophonous meshing of barks and growls and hoots. To pay tribute to their West Bank heritage, “Nah, brah.”
Antenna Inn began a long time ago as a very different band. Music industries studies freshman Eric Rogers, the drummer and co-founder of the band, tells it best: “My brother, Ryan (guitarist), Blandon (Helgason, guitarist) and I started this band with another singer, Matthew Glynn. Joe was added as a fifth member after we released our first record, ‘I Minus.'”
But after a breakup and a certain giant hurricane, Eric called singer and keyboardist Cory Schultz to help put a project together. The original band tried to reunite for a show, but Glynn soon left, and Eric, then playing in local band Glasgow!, suggested co-band mate Sam Craft, music composition junior, as lead vocalist. After recruiting old friend and jazz studies junior Chris Guccione as the other drummer, the band was at seven members. After filling in on some recording sessions and playing a show, music industries studies senior Stephen MacDonald (saxophone) and Girardot became permanent residents of the Inn, which was filled to capacity in a way that wouldn’t please any fire marshal but does wonders for musickind.
Or, at least, this is true for their practice space. The band practices in the old Fountainbleu Hotel on Tulane Avenue, now a storage facility, or, as MacDonald puts it, “in a small black room in a building that smells like beer and pot and sounds like how the metalocalypse would sound in real life.”
However, Girardot enjoys the mayhem brought by the Canterbury Tales-sized cast of characters.
“Trying to figure out stage or rehearsal set-ups is like trying to put together a giant jigsaw puzzle without a picture,” he said. “The smaller the stage, the more fun it is.”
Another problema is getting the band together to practice. While they have set rehearsal days, Eric Rogers explains how “half” of the band is “in school, half have full-time jobs, some have girlfriends and some are just lazy,” he said. “But it all ends up working out.”
The new Antenna Inn sounds nothing like the old one.
“When the Inn was back together in the day, we were listening to mostly rock stuff,” Eric Rogers said.
But instead of the mid-1990s indie-rock, early-Cursive sound of the pre-hurricane lineup, the new AI is influenced by jazz and instrumental rock. Helgason said the “current sound is derived from bands such as Tortoise, Jaga Jazzist and Aloha,” and the vibraphone “was a huge transition” for the band.
But getting a group of musicians to listen to or agree on an idea can be tricky, and with nine, it seems nigh impossible. However, the band seems to avoid this problem.
“I don’t think anyone ever feels like their ideas aren’t heard,” Eric Rogers said.
“I have to be willing to give my idea away to the whole band,” Ryan Rogers said. “The song or idea I bring to the table isn’t going to end up the way it was. And it’s great because nothing gets by us, everyone hears the song from a different angle.”
“We may start with a single guitar riff from Ryan, or a piano chord progression from Cory,” Helgason explained. “With two drummers, we usually let them spend a while working out the time signatures and rhythms. Sam usually shows up to practice with a complete set of lyrics, melodies and backing vocal harmonies.”
The rest is slowly added to create the intricate music of the Inn, although Ryan said it sometimes takes months to get a song right. As for the future of Antenna Inn, Helgason said they are finishing a six-song EP at Word of Mouth Studios in Algiers Point, which Bourgeois said they might release “in the next couple of months.”
The band also hopes to do some light touring over the Christmas holidays. The Inn plays One Eyed Jacks on Nov. 16, and they guarantee anyone who attends the following: a stage filled to the brim with men, music and mood lighting, and the assurance that they have just seen the most creative local band around.
Shawn Dugas can be reached at
