Alt-rock band buddies ‘everyday people’
Really? A DJ teamed with a guy who plays the Chinese erhu?
USS (Ubiquitous Synergy Seeker) When: Sunday at 9:15 p.m. Where: Koodonation Stage, K-Days Tickets: Free with K-Days gate admission
So I was talking to a guy the other day who calls himself The Human Kebab.
Jason Parsons really is a pretty articulate guy, especially when he talks about the alternative rock duo USS (Ubiquitous Synergy Seeker), which also includes Ashley Buchholz (a.k.a. Ash Boo-Schultz). Buchholz plays an erhu, among other things, which is a Chinese stringed instrument — played with a bow — that sounds somewhat like a violin. Jason is a DJ.
They met in the years just after university when both were working at a golf course. Parsons was a freshly minted business grad and Buchholz wasn’t. Parsons was a DJ for hire and Buchholz’s sister needed one for her wedding. Love at first scratch, the boys say.
They come from different musical-taste backgrounds. Parsons was weaned on hiphop and electronica. Buchholz followed Nirvana. Ain’t love grand?
“I was excited about incorporating turntables into alternative rock, and Ash was into lacing our music with an electronic coding to it — and just about any knick-knack he would find,” Parsons says. “We had a heart-rate monitor onstage for about four years, for example. We thought it was funny that it beeped when it wanted to.”
The philosophy was: “Why can’t we just throw anything we want into it and still maintain a good song?” Call it kitchen-sink music.
That eclecticism has waned as the two have become more interested in creating songs that can be performed even when the power goes out at the beach party.
They want to avoid what they see happening with electronica.
“I think that in any part of society when something becomes wildly popular things can become oversaturated and you can lose the point,” Parsons says.
In the beginning, head mits, they overdid the extraneous sounds. Now they are more thoughtful and stripped down. Another way of saying that would be they are more professional. In their last two records, Parsons says, they have brought the music back to an underlying principle: “Can the average person still enjoy the song? We sit back and think about songs like Wonderwall by Oasis. That can be enjoyed anywhere. That’s what we think about.”
The duo also tries to vary what they are presenting when they visit a city again and again.
One thing that keeps them unique, he believes, is that they are one of the few alternative rock bands with a DJ element. “We try to appeal to the mainstream. That keeps it fun and original. I really feel that when we travel outside the big cities, most people just want to see a band and they don’t want to be weirded out.”
These days they travel with a drummer. That has made their sound “bigger.” But otherwise, USS remains a cheap date. “Who can roll with a seven-person band in Canada in the winter?”
In February they released the album This Is The Best, their first record with a major label on board.
“We have never had that sort of distribution before,” Parsons says. “Radio has taken us more seriously.” And they’ve even cracked the tough Quebec market.
The name of the band is Buchholz’s creation. It has the potential to sound a bit pompous, but Parsons, the business grad, feels it’s a positive message of seeking unity. For a couple of guys from the suburban Toronto area (Stouffville and Markham), unity is something worth seeking.
“We are everyday people,” says Parsons. The two guys still supplement their incomes by doing roofing work, for example.
And his nickname? “When I was in university I studied Vlad the Impaler.” The notoriously cruel Romanian Prince, who was a model for Bram Stoker’s Dracula, was fond of skewering his enemies on sharpened stakes.
For Parsons, The Human Kebab was just a “funny” concept that worked when he was a DJ for hire.
USS plays the Koodonation Stage at K-Days Sunday at 9: 15 p.m .