Mar 17, 2010 7:23 PM

SXSW: Grooms Brings Noisy Indie Rock From New York to Austin

Travis Johnson stands in front of an old sugar factory across the street from his practice space in Williamsburg.

grooms_music_gym

AUSTIN, Texas — Guitarist, singer and boutique effects pedal maker Travis Johnson is planning on adding a new piece of gear to his arsenal, just for South by Southwest: a pair of cheap shades to keep the sun from washing out his tuner’s display.

“I like playing outside even though it’s impossible to see your tuner and what it’s actually saying,” said Johnson, whose band Grooms played a day party Wednesday as the music portion of the festival kicked off. “I think I’m going to get some sunglasses just to put over that.”

Early morning and afternoon time slots can be awkward for bands playing the busy festival, especially on the first day, when most fans are either hungover, asleep or haven’t arrived yet. Trying to draw a crowd for the day parties can be difficult, with dozens of bands playing at venues around town at any given moment during SXSW.

At Wednesday’s opening-day gig, pictured above, Grooms came out swinging and rocked the Music Gym stage like the house was packed. The crowd was sparse but enthusiastic, and although the newly constructed stage bounced like a trampoline during the set, Johnson says it was the best-sounding SXSW show he’s played. (The three-piece band will play its second of three SXSW 2010 shows at 8 p.m. Monday at Wave Rooftop.)

LISTEN: “Acid King of Hell (Guitar Feelings),” by Grooms

A gear geek and tone tweaker, Johnson admits to hiding behind the compression on the overdrive channel of his Fender amp at shows, but is thinking about taking the leap into clarity.

“I’m kind of afraid of a really clean signal,” he says. “For most of our stuff it would sound kind of weird. So I think I’m going to play on the clean channel and use one of our distortion pedals to give it some grit. That way when I step on the distortion pedal it will sound huge instead of just fuzzier. Our records are recorded with really clean sounds, but live I feel superweird about it for some reason.”

The Brooklyn, New York-based band’s sound is driven by beautiful indie-rock grooves accented by fits of noise and crescendos. Think Pavement’s “AT&T” off Wowee Zowee but with more focus.

Lyrically, Johnson says most of his songs revolve around guilt and forgiveness — a product of a very religious upbringing in Dallas. Musically, the 28-year-old’s influences come from a summer when he was an impressionable teen of 15 or 16. “There was this one summer where I got into The Smiths, Sonic Youth, Pavement and New Order all at the same time,” he says.

Another influential moment came when Johnson’s dad sat him down and made him listen to The Beatles’ White Album. He says it was the first time he’d heard music that could be scary.

“It’s such a weird experience to get scared by music,” Johnson says. “It makes you feel like you’re not really there in a weird way. That’s what’s really tricky about technology, is that it’s really easy to make ‘weird’ sounding stuff. What makes it a copout versus not a copout with how intentional something is, is, ‘Did you take something that doesn’t sound weird at all and just make it sound weird because you put some filter on it with a computer?'”

Moving to New York City

Johnson met Grooms’ bass player and co-founder Emily Ambruso at the University of Oklahoma, where he studied history. They each transplanted to New York separately, where they hooked up with Grooms’ drummer Jim Sykes.

Johnson’s move from Oklahoma to New York seems almost scripted. The van that he and a friend had driven there was broken into the first night they hit the city and his guitars were stolen. A couple of weeks later, as he burned through a modest savings with no job, the van was towed and he had to use the last of his money to get it back. When he returned to his apartment from the tow yard, an e-mail was waiting for him from a temp agency with a job offer.

Years later, the setbacks take on a nostalgic glow as Grooms are three-time veterans of SXSW and are signed to Kanine Records.

Now Johnson is living what fans of Tenacious D call the “cream dream.” He works in what can only be described as a musician’s clubhouse in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, assembling boutique guitar pedals in a workroom next to his band’s practice space. There’s a kitchen, lounge and rope canopy for when you just need to lie suspended for a minute and reflect on how sweet your job is.

Oh yeah, and there’s a popular venue just down the hall where Grooms often play. It goes by the same name as the pedal company, Death By Audio. Johnson says it took him a while to see the beauty of the arrangement, but he admits that it’s not too terrible.

Johnson and Ambruso do most of their songwriting collaboratively since they’ve been intermittent roommates over the years. The band tries to find a sweet spot between noise and melody, according to Johnson.

“I think pretty music could get noisier and still be pretty and I think noisy music could be really sad or really happy or weird,” he says. “It could convey emotions without just being abrasive sounds.”

In not just finding beauty in the noise, but searching for the meaning behind it, Grooms has moved beyond many bands that make pretty sounds but have nothing to say.

When pressed on what he’d like listeners to take away from the trio’s music, Johnson says: “Ultimately I want it to be an emotional experience, not just a visceral experience.”

Johnson's guitar pedals include Death By Audio's own Octave Clang, second from left.

The rope canopy is currently being used for storage, but was initially intended as a relaxing hangout spot. The rope canopy in Grooms' studio is currently being used for storage, but was initially intended as a relaxing hangout spot.