Photo courtesy of Jennifer Murphy/Whittling Fog Photography
JAMMING — The local band “Mellow Endeavor” has released its first CD of original music and will host a release party Saturday at the American Legion in Houlton. Members are, from left, Jim Zabierek, Jason Howe and Brad Hutchinson.
By Joseph Cyr
Staff Writer
HOULTON — If you have been to a street festival or fair in Aroostook County in recent years, chances are you have heard the sweet sounds of local jam band “Mellow Endeavor” coming from a stage, lawn or even a sidewalk.
Comprised of band members Jason Howe (cajon, vocals), Brad Hutchinson (guitar, vocals) and Jim Zabierek (lead guitar), the trio has recorded its first CD — “All Paths Lead Home” — and will celebrate the event with a release party on Friday, May 3, at 8 p.m. at the American Legion in Houlton.
Sponsored by WHOU and Northern Musical supply, admission for the release party is $8 and CDs will be available at a one-time $5 discounted price. Door prizes provided by their sponsors include an acoustic guitar and tickets to a Bangor Waterfront concert of their choice.
Mellow Endeavor formed in August 2010 as a side project for another band that Houlton residents Hutchinson and Howe were in together. The group saw several different lineups in the first few months incorporating acoustic guitar, percussion, keyboards, drums and bass, according to Howe.
With a sound that is part Phish, part Grateful Dead and a touch of Great Big Sea, Mellow Endeavor has the groove rock sound down to perfection on its first album. The eight original songs on their release are catchy and infectious, and will likely bring a smile to anyone who listens.
“We did a lot of jamming and creating in the early days, but playing out on a regular basis didn’t really start until the spring of 2011,” he said. “It was then that we met up with our current lead guitarist Jim Zabierek of Sherman.”
Shortly after Zabierek joined the group, the decision was made to shrink the band to a trio. Occasionally, Howe and Hutchinson perform as a duo, or are joined by other local musicians when the opportunity arises. Over the summer of 2011, the group gradually began to pick up more bookings and over the course of the year played venues around the state including Houlton, Bangor and Bar Harbor.
Toward the end of 2011, things really began to ramp up for the trio as they started to build a following in the Bangor area as well as northern Maine.
“Our year ended with a great weekend performing at Sunday River in Bethel and a New Year’s Eve show in downtown Bangor with a show at Paddy Murphy’s for the ball drop,” Howe said. “It was definitely the biggest crowd of people we’ve played to. There were an estimated 5,000 people in West Market Square that night and there was a line outside of Paddys of people wanting to get in all night.”
Joining the band for the recording of their first release is bass player James Morang. Mellow Endeavor prides itself on being a band that is best heard live, rather than in a studio, so in an effort to capture that raw sound the group took an unorthodox approach to recording.
“This our first actual studio recording,” Howe said. “We’ve done some homemade recordings on burned discs, but this our first attempt at an actual mass produced recording. We chose to do things a little different for this CD. We really consider ourselves to be more of a live band than a ‘studio’ band so rather than record all the instruments separately and layer one track over the other, we recorded everything live like we would if we were playing out at a venue.
“We felt this was the best way to keep the sound authentic to if you were sitting at a venue watching us, only without all the crowd noise,” he continued. “We were able to capture a studio quality recording, but didn’t give up the raw sound of our music either. We just kind of let the tapes roll and jammed for four hours in the studio and we figured we will get what we get.”
Their debut release was recorded in Bangor at the New England School of Communications by engineer Josh Small.
“This CD was entirely funded by our fans,” Howe explained. “We ran an online fundraising platform last fall where we asked our friends and family to help make this project possible. We were blessed to have raised enough to be able to cover our time in the studio, engineering, duplication, and production. It is a testament to the people who have supported along the way. It was also important to us to keep this project with supporting locals in mind.”
Keeping things local was a big motivating factor for the band.
“We are a local band and ask for support from local (Maine) people at all these venues so we thought it was important to return the favor,” Howe said. “We had difficulty finding the sleeves locally, however the stamp used for the cover art, ink, inserts, printing if the insert, and even the CD manufacturing was done all by Maine-based businesses. We also wanted to keep this project ‘green’ and we didn’t want a lot of unnecessary packaging. The sleeves and inserts are printed of 100 percent post consumer recycled card stock and each CD is hand stamped and hand packaged. It’s raw, much like its musical contents and no two are exactly the same (much like our avant garde musical style songs, forever evolving).”
The group performed nearly 100 shows in 2012. Some of their highlights from performing were appearances at Bangor’s Cool Sounds outdoor concert series in Pickering Square; Harry Brown’s Farm in Starks; Crown of Maine Balloon Festival in Presque Isle; Arootsakoostik Music Festival in New Sweden; and several Maine agricultural fairs and our performance on “The Nite Show” with Danny Cashman which aired throughout central and southern Maine on WABI and WPXT.
In total, the jam/rock band has played somewhere between 150-200 shows with performances in South Portland, Portland (Old Port), Topsham, Poland, Augusta, Newry, Hallowell, Waterville, Skowhegan, Starks, Rockland, Bar Harbor, Brewer, Bangor, Old Town, Orono, Kenduskeag, Millinocket, Shin Pond, Island Falls, Houlton, Mars Hill, Presque Isle, Caribou, Limestone, New Sweden, Stockholm and Van Buren.
Howe was involved in music in school and has been singing for as long as he can remember. He would never call himself a drummer and instead started playing the cajon — a box shaped percussion instrument — when the group formed.
Zabierek is the youngest in the group and graduated from Katahdin High School. He’s been playing guitar for about 10 years and is the only member of the band that can read music. He is currently a student at the University of Maine at Orono and student teaching in Old Town. Most of his studies have been focused around classical guitar, but he loves to play jazz as well.
The band’s influences cover the gamut of musical genres. Hutchinson is a fan of similiarly-stlyed jambands like Phish, The Grateful Dead, Moe, Dangermuffin and Jack Johnson.
“Thank you to those who donated to make this project possible and to our families who have sacrificed a ton so that we are able to carry the schedule we do,” Howe said. “Without a strong support system, I especially wouldn’t be able to do what I do. It’s difficult with kids at home to up and leave every weekend, but our loved ones make it possible and we couldn’t do it without them.”
Other upcoming shows include:
Sunday, May 5 — Whole Potato Cafe. Presque Isle. Noon
Sunday, May 5 — Eureka Hall, Stockholm, 5:30 p.m. with Randy King and Emily Ramsey opening.
Friday, May 17 — Nocturnem Draft Haus, Bangor, 8 p.m.
“All Paths Lead Home,” will officially be available for retail on May 21 and be available at Bull Moose Music throughout Maine, Yorks Bookstore, Northern Musical Supply, Merchants on the Corner (Presque Isle) and KMH music in Presque Isle. It will also be available online on iTunes, Amazon, CDbaby.com and hundreds of other music sites.
For more information on the band, visit www.mellowendeavor.com.
