Earache in my eye

How loud does a band have to be to get cut off during the first song? Mount Pleasant two-piece Beast in the Field found out last year when, before barely getting past the first fuzzy note at the New Way in Ferndale, the soundman put a stop to the entire show.

Drummer Jamie Jahr picks up the story. "The problem is that we go beyond what most PAs put out, just our own stage volume. We understand it too. We actually do sound on the side when we're not with the band. We understand what a solid mix is. But that's not what Beast in the Field is. With Beast in the Field, you can't hear the drums because they won't go louder in the mix because the PA can't handle it. There was a time where we were carrying around our own PA and we'd set it up, but it becomes such hard work. At the New Way, I think we had actually left one of the cabs in the trailer. We only turned on one of the amps, and Jordan [Pries, guitars] usually plays 4. The sound guy goes, 'Ladies and gentlemen, Beast in the Field.' We started playing, and he said, 'Wait, you're not going to turn it down?' through the monitors. So we turned it off and he said, 'Ladies and gentlemen, that was Beast in the Field.' We're gonna make that a live album."

Beast in the Field began in 2007 after Jahr and Pries had previously played together in a band called And the Sky Went Red. That came to an end when the pair could no longer deal with the complexities of getting five people, all with their own lives and relationships, together to record, rehearse and gig. 

"That's what led us to want to be in a two-piece," Jahr says. "We wanted to be in a band together, but we didn't want to deal with all the other guys. Plus, we'd practice and Jordan would come up with a riff. He played bass back then, even though he's a guitar player. Basically, it just ended up that we'd write these riffs, and I loved stoner and the bands Cathedral and Sleep. The other guys just weren't into it. If they wouldn't show up to a practice, we'd play that stuff and we always joked around, 'Man, if this ever ends, we'll start another band.' That's basically what happened. I think that the real reason people do two-pieces is that it's just easier to coordinate everything. It does challenge you so you have to think a little more, and it does have its limitations, but the ease of being able to get together and do stuff is a lot of everything."

You have to wonder why two adult men [Jahr, 42, runs a print store, while Pries, 28, is a guitar tech] are still messing around with such tricks as fuzzy volume. "The volume comes from the love of tube amps," Jahr says. "Tube amps don't have gain. Three sounds clean. That's how Black Sabbath got distortion. They turned it to 10 and got that sound. That's why the volume. It just became us. It's kind of a gimmick, I guess, but we're known for it now."

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