VIDEO: Piebald, "A Friend of Mine." Ghost ride it.
If the guys in Piebald had it their way, they’d probably rather be discussing social and/or political issues than Accidental Gentlemen (Side One Dummy). They are, after all, the band with the van that runs on grease — or as singer/guitarist Travis Shettel and drummer Luke Garro point out over a Saturday brunch at the B-Side Lounge, vegetable oil. But more on that later. First there’s untangling the confusing membership and geographical issues surrounding Piebald, a band whose All Music Guide entry opens with “Piebald is an emocore band from Andover, MA.”
That gets a laugh from Shettel and Garro. On the following day Shettel will flying back to his current home in LA, which is also where another founding member of Piebald, guitarist Aaron Stuart, resides. Garro, Piebald’s most recent recruit after a string of drummers, and bassist Andrew Bonner are still here in Boston, and even Shettel says, “I’m still from Boston.” In fact, the whole band moved out West in 2003. The one-time emo-punk band from Andover had just recorded and released their most adventurous album, We Are the Only Friends We Have (Big Wheel Recreation), a disc produced by Paul Q. Kolderie on which intertwining guitars are embellished by tight vocal harmonies and piano refrains. It got them noticed and set the stage for a year of touring, after which it didn’t seem to matter to any of them where they lived when they weren’t on the road.
“Yeah, that’s quick explanation,” Shettel allows. “We all went to Los Angeles because we didn’t have apartments in Boston anymore anyway. We wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to live somewhere nice and live together. So we all got a house together — a very, very beautiful house on a hill in Silver Lake. We did a few tours from out there . . . ” And then they prepared to return to Boston, a move that lasted all of one week. As Garro recalls, “During our last week in LA, Aaron met a girl. And after we were back here for a week he had to go back. And then Travis moved back two years ago. So I guess with two dudes out there it really doesn’t matter where any of us are.”
That wasn’t the first bump in the road for Piebald: they broke up for a year, during which Shettel released a hard-to-find solo disc and everyone re-evaluated his options. That was right around Y2K. Shettel: “Everyone had things in their life that were more important than the band. We were about to go on a European tour and Aaron didn’t want to go. I was in school. And all of us had these other things that were taking over the importance factor in our lives. No one cared enough to keep it going, so it fell apart.”
