Alums Balance Work with Rock

Meet Joe Stroll, a self-professed marlin wrestler, panda trainer, mime, closet Starbucks employee and the newest drummer for the Harvard-bred art-rock band, the States.

Coming far from their first “unmentionable gig” at the Annual Miss Harvard Pageant to win Buzzplay.com’s Best Unsigned Band contest this past June, the States returned to Cambridge on Sunday, Nov. 21, to play to a small but enthusiastic crowd at the Middle East Upstairs. A stomach flu and equally heavy amounts of caffeine and alcohol obviously did not affect the quality of their performance, as they gave in to the audiences’ frenzied demand for “one more song.”

The States, formed in October 2002, consist of three Harvard students: Chris Snyder ’04 on guitar and vocals, Previn Warren ’04 on bass guitar and Ian Mackenzie ’04 on drums. Leaving behind their Crimson-stained roots, the trio have since expanded beyond the campus circuit to the bright lights of New York. Stroll recently replaced Mackenzie on drums, who left the band to pursue a career as a teacher.

Laughing, Snyder recounts how Stroll came to join the band. “We started a search for the most talented drummer in the Tri-state area, and Joe was our only response.”

The addition of Stroll has given the States an edgier, bombastic, even slightly abrasive sound. “It was a breath of fresh air,” says Warren, and glancing at the casually smoking Stroll, adds, “carcinogenetic air.”

The States emerge from the humble origins of Leverett House’s basement. Warren and Mackenzie had been playing in the Black Yankees, a hip-hop band, when Warren got a hold of one of Snyder’s self-made recordings and sent him an invitation to jam. Emerging from several sessions that just consisted of playing around with Radiohead covers, the group, by then dubbed the States, began playing in the local circuit at Springfest and Loker Commons before moving on to play at the Sky Bar, the Middle East, T.T. the Bear’s, Kirkland Café and the Roxy in their senior year.

While the name of the band may have had political and psychological intentions, Warren ruefully explained that after time, the name stuck and is no longer intended to be political or a reference to the country. Although Snyder professes strong political opinions, such beliefs are not found explicitly in their lyrics, and he denies any similarities to the partially Harvard-bred Rage Against the Machine.

“More than a political band, we’d rather be an honest band,” says Snyder, “and if that means saying something about politics, it means saying something about politics. And we will, if pressed.”

Instead, writing songs is a cathartic and collaborative process for the band, inspired through many sources—from a bad day at work to falling down the stairs.

“It’s hard to be alive and 22 and not feel strongly about a lot of stuff and that includes fear of the world, because it’s a huge huge place, or pain in relationships, or whatever, all that general stuff. But that’s not what really happens in the room. It’s a lot about personalities coming together and when we’re smiling in the practice room we know we got something that we want to keep,” says Snyder.

For winning the Buzzplay.com contest, the States were flown out to Los Angeles, and recorded The BAD EP, a three song demo, in the same studio used by Earth, Wind and Fire. Stroll enjoyed his taste of the bigtime, citing the benefits of their hotel on Sunset Strip and certain R-rated television channels.

They have since come out with a four song EP, Modern Medicine, released on Tuesday, Nov. 9. According to Stroll, the new disc is “dropping like it’s hot.”

Joking about the trials of starving artistry and making negative money on gigs (if you account for gas), the members of the band have more typical, though perhaps less exciting day jobs. Snyder works for D.E. Shaw and Company in Midtown in New York City and Warren works at the Public Defenders Legal Aid Society in Brooklyn. While Snyder said that Stroll works at a Starbucks, the drummer denied the fact, offering one of his seemingly typical outrageous and obviously false responses that he trains pandas to shoot eucalyptus plants which emit gamma radiation.

Yet, in his advice to current Harvard bands, Snyder and Warren emphatically recommend that they should “just do it.”

“Everyone will tell you that you should get a job and you should be secure, that’s especially true of your mother (but she’ll come around), and the only thing you have to regret is spending the years 22 to 25 of your life locked up in a prison, in some cubicle, which I do,” says Snyder.

But he adds, “The most difficult thing to do is play a show or have band practice and the next day wake up and have to go to your job—that’s the most difficult thing you could possibly ever imagine. But the most awful thing would be to wake up and not have had band practice last night, and go to your job anyway.”