Cue the buzz, this hive’s alive
Bee Master will unveil new album, five years in the making, on Saturday
Bee Master’s new album sounds absolutely stunning. It ought to. The thing took five years to deliver.
“It was a superlong and tedious process,” says engineer Ryan Ray, inducing laughs from the members of Bee Master, seated around a table in the break room of the studio in the back of 11th Street Records, where the band will unveil its masterwork Saturday.
Ray, who was once part of the act, recorded the album in dribs and drabs over the course of 60 months at Digital Insight Studios.
“I’ve recorded plenty of albums, but never one that took five years. I’ve been working at the studio for six years,” he says. “We started recording when I started there and finished just a couple months ago.”
Bee Master maestro Brian Cantrell says, “We’re better musicians. It’s been five years. I had different equipment and different skill levels by the time I was done playing.”
Not to mention a different name: When the group stopped gigging and went on hiatus in June 2010, it was known by the amusing but ultimately unwieldy handle Bee Movie the Band. The new moniker is an upgrade in that it pays homage to the past while besting other proposals like King Gorilla and Wizard Sticks, names that were bandied about in numerous latenight text exchanges between band members.
But the name wasn’t what held things up. Nor the songs, which were written in two months.
The timing was ultimately dictated by economics.
“I was on a coffee budget at the time,” Cantrell says. “So it was kind of like: How do I pull together
the next bunch of hundreds of dollars to record guitars?”
With hundreds of guitar tracks committed to tape, Cantrell had his hands full. The rhythm section — drummer Brett Bolton and bassist Mike Montoya — took less than a week to record, so Cantrell logged most of the time in the studio working on guitars.
“I would bring two guitars and two amps,” he remembers, launching into a detailed explanation of how he compiled the intricate layers.
How intricate, you ask? Well, let’s just say replicating this sound live is incredibly challenging. For Cantrell’s part, it takes three different amplifiers and an elaborate pedal board.
Doing the recordings justice, however, requires the inclusion of guitarist Brendan Scholz, whom Cantrell enlisted initially to add vocal harmonies but who later was persuaded to become a full-fledged Bee Master member.
Scholz, an exceptional player in his own right, does far more than merely fill in the gaps. Like Bolton and Montoya, the guitarist is a longtime friend of Cantrell’s; the two grew up together in the same scene, sharing bills with each other another at ill-fated all-ages venues.
During that time, the pair developed a mutual admiration. So when Cantrell asked him to join the band, Scholz didn’t need persuading.
“I think he’s one of the most talented people in this town,” says Scholz. “I respect him greatly, as a guitar player and a songwriter.”
Not only does Scholz round out Bee Master’s sound, but he fits in perfectly with the rest of the band, who has developed an unmistakable chemistry.
“When I came to the first rehearsal,” he remembers, “they hadn’t even gone over the songs, and it was still tight. It was just nice to walk into.”
“There are no egos,” Montoya points out, explaining why the players work so well together.
“We give notes and ideas,” adds Bolton. “It’s not like, ‘Oh, you do this. You do that.’ It’s cool.”
“It’s different when you love each other,” Cantrell interjects.
“If the chemistry’s not there,” Scholz says, “it’s not worth it, no matter how good you are.”
Rest assured, these dudes are good. Damn good. And you can attribute that directly to all of the years Cantrell and company have been playing music, both original — like Mercy Music, Scholz’s main band, Jr. Anti-Sex League, one of the combos Bolton and Cantrell played in together, Burning Agrestic and Same Sex Mary, a few of the other outfits Cantrell moonlights in — and covers. Both Cantrell and Scholz have spent time playing other people’s music besides their own. And although those types of gigs are grueling — in Cantrell’s case, performing 33 songs a night, six nights a week for four months — you can hear the payoff in their prowess and interplay.
Just before the foursome starts running through songs for its release party in the studio where the shindig will be held — a choice setting to see the band in a space as unconventional and unique as Bee Master — Scholz starts playing an instantly recognizable classic rock riff. Within two or three notes, Cantrell intuitively joins in.
The minute Bee Master starts rehearsal a few beats later, the guys get lost in the music, a mesmerizing take on rock with keen dynamics, powerful vocals, prog-infused fretwork and ambitious time changes.
With tidy pop structure but yet considerable movement, the songs never meander in one place too long. And that’s a reflection of the band’s disparate sensibilities rather than a desire to show off or impress.
“I listen to a wide variety of music,” Cantrell says. “So it will be like, ‘Oh here’s a cool part,’ and then, ‘Well, what can we do to make it so that every verse is different, and make it so the chorus has a different feel.’ I kind of enjoy the jerk-neck changes in things.”
Watching Bee Master play live is as exhilarating as listening to the album — actually, scratch that. It’s more so
The record doesn’t capture the way that Cantrell performs with complete and exuberant abandon. One song into the set, he’s playing with so much unbridled energy that the strap on his black and white Telecaster comes unfastened. Two songs later, his glasses fly off his face, and he pushes through undaunted.
Aside from a few friends, there’s no audience tonight. No matter. You get the same show, either way, from the sounds of it.
“This is normally where we’re like, ‘Hey, guys, we’re glad you’re here,’” Cantrell mutters breathlessly between songs. “But we’re awkward as hell, so I’ll probably just tune my guitar.”
It’s hard to imagine that this is the same guy who spends his days working in accrual-based accounting. It’s not too big a stretch, though, when you hear stories about how he once sent his bosses into a panic by serendipitously revising established internal processes.
“I’m like, ‘This freaking thing doesn’t make any sense at all,” he says. “Can you explain to me what it’s supposed to be — you know, it’s like a calculation tab. So I broke the entire thing, scared the crap out of everybody and put it all back together, and it was like, ‘Oh, that’s great.’ And it’s like, ‘Yeah, now I understand how it works.’”
Reverse engineering has likewise been instrumental to Cantrell’s music development, from deconstructing guitar tabs pulled from the Internet to giving Tom Scholz a run for his money with Bee Master’s new album.
Although the new recording is brand-new to the rest of the world, Cantrell is already planning its follow-up. He has some ideas he’s ready to work on, and he’ll be reaching out shortly to Spencer Olson — the masterful local illustrator who designed the cover of the latest — to work on the next one, tentatively titled Bee Master II.
“A straight-up sequel,” Cantrell says. “But hopefully it won’t take five years.” Read more of Dave Herrera at bestoflasvegas.com. Contact Dave at dherrera@reviewjournal.com