Capybara

Hello, my name is Jared and this is my first blog entry ever.  While I realize that there must be a certain art to blogging, I also realize that my knowledge of it is such that art will never enter into anything I will be writing this evening.  If you are someone whose tastes are very discerning, I suggest you leave.  This could get pretty boring…

Let’s start with the basics you might be wondering about me.

1. I am sometimes pretty fun, kind of.  But also not, mostly.
2. I have never blogged before this moment, and it’s probably not going that well.  I think you’re probably realizing that.
3. I ride around in a tan Martin Van Buren with three other guys.  We have found not one but two VHS tapes deep in his belly waiting patiently since 1996 to be watched.
4. I sometimes throw apple cores in our back yard for the birds/dogs to eat for a late night snack.  They are always gobbled up by some lucky critter.

By the way, if you’ve been wondering about the wildlife in New Mexico, let me share my knowledge of it with you in hopes that it could come in handy for you when you visit new mexico…

There are no trees.  There are lots of stray dogs.  Sometimes the howling coyotes wake me up at night, and they can smell my realization that if I weren’t inside they’d be chewing on my hammy legs.  That’s essentially everything I’ve learned while I’ve been here, and I’m certain that’s all I’ll ever need to know.  Oh, and there are enormous crows that sound like people imitating what crows sound like.

On another note, we spotted an old leather purse in our yard today.  It’s only kind of creepy because I’m fairly certain it wasn’t there yesterday.  Maybe I’ll refurbish it and sell it,  or keep it and use it.  Point is, I’ve got an awesome leather purse to do whatever I want with.

Oh yeah, I guess I’m doing music and junk too.

’sfun

I do love music every second every day, though.  I hope you do too.

Okay, so we needed a way to get to New Mexico with all of our gear.  The only solution we could really come up with was that staple of band stereotypes: the van.  Mark, resourceful as always, took it upon himself to locate that necessary transport, that fifth Beatle, that lifeblood, that meat and potatoes of band life: the van.  How many sentences in a row can I end with: the van?  Probably more than three, but let’s leave it at three for now.

Mark and Jared broke champagne bottles on it’s sweet beige backside before beginning its maiden voyage from Kansas City to Portland, Oregon.  They pulled up at our doorstep two days later, having braved the winds of Wyoming.  I was, to put it lightly, astounded by this machine.  The first thing I noticed was that it was huge.  The second thing I noticed was that it had an “I Love Baseball” keychain which lights up every two seconds.  It looks like the screen of a TI-83 calculator.  Mark posited that maybe Texas Instruments had a surplus of calculator screens, so they sold them to some Texas billionaire who made a fortune turning them into blinking “I Love Baseball” keychains.  Oh, and it can’t be turned off.

The next day we packed up (no small feat) and headed south through a rainy Oregon afternoon.  Late that night we were passing through the Redwood National Forest in total awe while listening to Grizzly Bear (I insisted that Modest Mouse didn’t fit the mood of the trees.  If you disagree, fine, but keep in mind it was one of their heavier albums).  Once we passed through the forest, we hit fog.  Well, to call it fog would be a bit of an understatement.  It was more like a cement wall, except twice as opaque.  Naturally, the fog hit during my shift at the wheel.  Joel stayed awake with me to help me watch the road for other cars or obstacles while Jared and Mark slept in the back seat.  I was going, at most, 25 mph for an entire hour or two.  The fog was that impenetrable.

About then, Joel noticed a Deer Crossing sign.  Fantastic.  Just wonderful.  I am so happy about this fact.  Now we are watching not only for the road to veer off but for huge animals to bound across said road.  Not ten minutes later, Joel manages to say “deer!” about two microseconds before I see a shape lit up by the headlights in the bottom right corner of the windshield.  BAM.  We have just hit a deer.  We have been in possession of Martin Van Buren for only three days or so and we have already hit a deer.  “Thankfully” it was a baby deer.  We were thankful for that fact solely because a larger deer would’ve done more damage.

I slowed the car and we got out and surveyed for damange.  Unbelievably, we couldn’t find any.  We looked and looked, but could see no sign of deer-impact.  Shaken, I asked Joel to take over driving duties for a while, so that I could sit in the passenger’s seat and suffer my four simultaneous heart attacks in relative comfort.

A few hours later we found a rather large, baby-deer-shaped dent in the side of the van.  The side!  That means that the deer actually hit us.  Our van was t-boned by a deer. It’s the only possible explanation for the dent being so far away from the hood.  We couldn’t believe it.

A few weeks later we found a VHS copy of Cool Runnings under one of Martin Van Buren’s seats.

Ok, so here’s the deal: I was in Japan for a year, and when I came back in August of 2008, I moved to Portland, Oregon.

I lived in a house with some friends from high school, most notable of whom was Joel Wrolstad, who is Capybara’s chief singer.  We were going to do music there, but quickly realized that if we really wanted to dig our heels in and make the best thing possible, we needed more time.  We wanted to be able to devote all day and all night to writing and recording truly incredible and original music.  Enter Mark Harrison.  Mark and I were in a little band called Dadbot while we were students at the University of Missouri.  Mark calls me one day in October and says “wouldn’t it be great if we could just live somewhere out in the middle of nowhere, no jobs, no distractions, and write another album together?”  I told him that yes, that would be an extremely, extremely, extremely good thing.  I told him that maybe we could do that in a few years.  He said he would rather do it starting in January.

That night, I left a note under Joel’s door that said something like “Joel – we are going to live in the middle of nowhere and write music for three months starting in January.”  Thus began the three long months of planning, organizing, cajoling, negotiating, arguing, and convincing that it took to make that dream a reality.  Step one was making sure another friend from high school, Jared Horne, could accompany us in this project.  Step two was figuring out where to go.

Incredibly, within a day of telling my Mom about this plan, she tells me that her real estate agent friend has found us a ridiculously cheap house to rent for three months in Taos, New Mexico (which is, uncoincidentally, where my Mom lives).  Skip ahead to January 7th: Jared and Mark make the two day drive from Kansas City to Portland.  January 10th: The four of us leave Portland and drive for 48 hours straight to New Mexico with two quick stops: one at the Pancake Pantry in Los Angeles for breakfast, and another in Phoenix, Arizona to pick up a Yamaha CP70B piano (one of the only portable pianos with actual strings and hammers).

So now we’ve been in Taos for about five weeks.  Jared and I had our birthdays.  Joel made an incredible stew.  Mark worked at freaking Sundance.  But mostly, we’ve made some tunes that we are really proud of.  We’re going to keep doing that for another two months or so, and then it’s off to tour.  That’s where you come in: we really truly want to play shows for everyone that we know and love (and even people we don’t know; we love you too), and in order to do that, we need to really get the word about Capybara out there.  The more people that know about us, the easier it will be for us to get shows and plan this tour.  So hey, if you like the jamz, feel free to share them with anyone and everyone that you think would appreciate them.  That is seriously the ultimate favor you can do for Capybara.  And Capybara will always pay back favors, either by cooking you a delicious stew, giving you a haircut, or discussing Lost with you ad nauseum.

Seriously, check the myspace often, because there will be a crazy amount of updates, especially concerning the progress of our not-quite-ready official site: capybaramusic.com.

You really get my goose,
Darin Seal