Friday, May 12, 2006 @10:42 AM
5/10/2006 8:59:00 PM
Up-and-coming Upwelling JDS grads compose two-thirds of alternative rock band
by Anath Hartmann
Special to WJW
They've already opened for two Top 40 radio favorites, and the way things are going for the as-yet unsigned alternative rock trio The Upwelling, the band may soon be a headlining act itself.
The Upwelling ‹ frontman Ari Ingber, 26, his drummer, brother Josh, 28, and keyboardist and bassist, Conor Heffernan, 25 ‹ two of whom are graduates of the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School in Rockville ‹ made music history last year when the group became the first unsigned band to be included in the Virgin Megastore chain's "Virgin Recommends" series.
Last August, the Brooklyn, N.Y.-based group was named a Spin magazine "Band of the Day"; in January, it was selected to compete for the same publication's title of "Band of the Year"; and, for the months of September and February, respectively, the Upwelling opened for Third Eye Blind at a venue on Long Island, N.Y., and toured the United Kingdom with the teen dream quartet, The All American Rejects ‹ all after having put out just one self-titled EP containing only five songs.
"Someone very near and dear to me once said, 'It takes 90 percent of your time to get a 90 on a test, and another 90 percent of your time to get the other 10 points,'" said Josh Inger. "I always felt that analogy of a test is like what we're doing. We've been tirelessly promoting ourselves, but we're still very much at the beginning of this process."
"My husband and I are extremely proud of them," said Rockville's Beth Ingber, the mother of two-thirds of The Upwelling. "This business is extremely hard to navigate, and they've already accomplished a few feats without being signed. That, to us, is a tribute to how hard they're working and how smart they're being."
Comparing the group to Radiohead or Pink Floyd, she said, "We never look down on [making music] as something less worthy. We have tremendous respect for it."
"My mom is a gigantic Radiohead fan," Ari Ingber said upon hearing this. "She won't let us live down that comparison. We like a lot of shifting layers [in our music] ‹ that's where our name comes from ‹ and a lot of changing sounds, so that's why I think we get compared to those kinds of bands. And we're definitely fans of Radiohead and Pink Floyd, but I hope we're making something that's original, too."
He added that though the band had received offers from two record labels, the young men had decided not to sign with either one.
Still in its infancy ‹ The Upwelling as its fans know it has only been around for seven months ‹ the band is already in the "preproduction stages" of putting together its first full-length album.
"I write pretty much every day," Ari Ingber continued, "about everyday experiences, real life. There are no mind-altering drugs involved."
One ballad he's written lately is "A Song About My Grandfather," which is, as the name suggests, a song about the Ingbers' granddad.
"It's the story of my grandfather, who was a Holocaust survivor who moved to America," Ingber said. "He started working in sweatshops and eventually became a tailor and started a family from scratch in the Washington area. ... It's not about preaching my Judaism [to others], per se, but all the years of Jewish day school have definitely had an impact."
The Upwelling is so named because "it's a term for when the bottom of the ocean switches with the top of the ocean, and I thought it went along with the layered sound of the music," said Ingber. But it isn't the first band in which he, his brother or Heffernan has played.
Ari Ingber, a 2002 graduate of New York University, spent time in several punk groups while he was in college. Josh Ingber lived in Boston for several years around the same time, and there he "was in a couple bands to gain experience but not in anything remotely original or serious."
The Ingbers grew up around music. Their father, Abraham, in his youth was a rhythm and blues drummer who played for American soul crooner Wilson Pickett several times, and "there was always a drum set around," explained Josh. Ari picked up the guitar in high school, and Josh learned drums in college.
Heffernan, who grew up in Massachusetts and attended university in Charleston, S.C., learned to play the piano as a little kid, but only learned bass pedals last year.
"It's been great," said Heffernan, who moved to New York a year and a half ago and was selected as the Upwelling's keyboardist from a pool of some 50 others who auditioned for the spot. "We're all pretty united in this band, and we're looking forward to getting to play and getting our music out to as many people as we can."
Heffernan may be the one to thank for much of the trio's distinguishing sound.
"We get away with being a three piece and sounding much bigger than we actually are because Conor plays bass pedals with his feet," said Josh. "I haven't seen any other band do that since [Canadian progressive rock group] Rush, and they didn't do it like we do it."
Jordan Golubcow-Teglasi, a former JDS classmate of Josh's who is now a doctor in a Bronx, N.Y., hospital, appreciates that quartet-disguised-as-a-trio quality.
"They had a very surreal, eerie sort of sound," said Golubcow-Teglasi, who recently saw the Upwelling play at Piano's, a Manhattan bar and lounge. "They have sad lyrics like [the band] Coldplay, but also screaming, bitter lyrics like a more grungy band ... the drumming seems very complicated, and the keyboarding mixed with the bass gives their songs a haunting quality. I really liked the show."
While Josh Ingber is proud of the fans his band has accumulated, he doesn't credit himself with much of its success.
"I'm Ari's senior, but I really look up to him," he said. "He's amazingly talented and gifted. I believe the Jewish community has a lot to be proud of in him."
5/10/2006 8:59:00 PM