Thirty-One West
31 W. CHURCH ST., NEWARK 740-258-6002, www.thirtyone-west.com The front man for Lucero, Nichols also does solo work. 8 p.m. Saturday $20
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Carly Fratianne didn’t start a band until her guitar was stolen.
After graduating from Westerville North High School in 2012, she packed up her stuff and moved to Los Angeles. She spent the next three years wandering up and down the West Coast, playing her music when opportunities arose.
“It was cool from an artistic perspective,” she said. “Like ‘God, I’m so down and out right now. I have so many things to write about.'”
She moved back to Columbus in late 2015 after someone broke into her car — taking her clothes, art and music supplies.
The sunnier skies of Ohio proved a breeding ground for her melancholy tunes, and Fratianne teamed up with Jack Lynch (drums), Ted Langhorst (guitar) and Alex Randall (bass) during the summer to form the Saturday
rasping blues-rock band Souther.
When she performs at the Shrunken Head on Saturday, though, it will be to release her personal project — the EP “Is For Lovers.”
Fratianne, 22, spoke with The Dispatch before the show.
What’s your music about?
The music that I write is often about the melancholy. It’s often about that real deep cathartic sadness — a lot of what’s on “Is For Lovers.” But making it, to me, is that pure elation, that joy of creating. The birth of an idea, its entrance to the world and the way you can manipulate it to where it’s just right to express the sentiment you’re looking for, to me, is just the most profound thing ever. It’s a fusion of those two things.
I don’t even think about it. I’m just having such a great time being sad.
This is your first band. What’s it been like to play with others?
I’ve been writing songs for a long time, and I always envisioned them with a full band, so I would write a bass line and drums and stuff. It was my goal: “Someday, I’ll have a band!” But I never quite had the community or the connections. I tried the Craigslist thing for a while but it never panned out like it does in the movies. It was kind of discouraging.
It was right after that I met (the band). They liked the ideas, and they were able to put their own magic on them.
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