Preview: Room & Board Tonight at Rumba Cafe

 August 23, 2013 2:50 pm  Briana Henry

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Aurally stimulate yourself with a  dark indie wave performance at Rumba Cafe from Room & Board. R&B singer and guitarist, Jonathan Hape, enlightened me on their latest album, which also happens to play  in my home quite frequently.

Briana Henry: Let’s start with how everything happened.  I read that you formed a band randomly and then you had a practice and then by Wednesday you were opening for So Many Dynamos?

JH: Yeah, it was a really unique opportunity because I had it booked for a solo show. And then at the last minute, I was recording with my friend Nick, who contributes to the albums, and he was saying that, “Hey, I like the songs you’re writing.  They’re more straight forward and less out there”, and I got really mad at first and then I was like, well let’s form a band around that. Then we decided on Sunday to form a band, wrote six songs, practiced them Wednesday and played that night.

BH: That’s insane.

JH: And then it got reviewed in Columbus Alive and I was just like, Chris why would you write about my band that’s only existed for a day? But he said that it was actually more entertaining than any off the other solo stuff I’d done before. So I was like okay that’s cool, I’m okay with that.

BH: There are a couple of songs I want to talk about. “I Wannawannawanna” is my favorite song on the album. Usually I don’t really like songs that are two minutes long, but this one I really enjoyed. But how did you get to that final product?

JH: What’s interesting about that, is that I wanted something that was a little more late 70s punk, but very new wave and dark and strange while still having blues riffs.  Lyrically it started as a kind of a selfish whiny song about the things that I want. And then the second verse is was more mocking that first verse. And then the last one is very serious because I switched from considering myself a Christian to very much considering myself Hindu.  We literally learned it the day we recorded it. It was only vocal take we used.

BH: That’s really cool. There’s another one… usually I memorize these things, but it’s something and something…and we’re gonna talk about it…

JH: Oh, “Bliss and Moan!”

BH: Yeah, that’s it! Let’s talk about that.

JH: Okay, well that’s definitely my favorite track on the record, and we don’t play that live…

BH: Why is that?

JH: It was a song that we couldn’t get right ever. And that song took like 20 takes to record. And that made me frustrated because I thought the band didn’t want to play that song because it’s a very personal song for me. So when they were like, “We don’t want to play this anymore”, I took it very personally. But it really wasn’t. It was like, “we really can’t hang with this song yet, let’s keep practicing.” And then I took a long time doing harmonies because I wanted that to sound exactly right. Lyrically, definitely my favorite on the record. It’s just how I feel philosophically about life and my relationships.

Stand out tracks include ” I Wannawannawanna”, “Bliss and Moan”, as well at “Treeghost and Turnaround.”  Check out Room & Board and The Heavy Handed tonight at Rumba Cafe for only $5. Rumba Cafe is located in Clintonville at 2507 Summit St.

About the Author

Briana is an intern writer at Columbus Underground who writes concert and live music reviews and previews, local band spotlights, album reviews, and other featurettes related to the local music scene.

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