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the BAM SEQUENCE

By Amanda Zackem

Someone is bringing house music to Ithaca, and you know what? It’s about friggin time. They call themselves the The Bam Sequence and they are one of the newest additions to the Ithaca music circle. Started a year ago and composed of members Brandon Meyer (guitar), Robby Sahm (drums), Jamie Searl (bass) and Matthew Goodwin (keyboards), they have become one of the tighter local bands—so tight you could call them the New Deal’s younger brother. This band is embracing the terra incognita of electronic house music in the Ithaca community and representing to the fullest. I sat down with 3/4 of the band

How was the show last night?
Brandon: The show was very, very, very interesting. We played a show out in Mecklenberg for about 75-100 kids. A lot of crazy things went down—a bunch of people dancing, rockin.
Robby: It was fun. We came off of a long break—I wasn’t here this summer. The first couple of shows were a little shaky we, weren’t very confident with what we were doing. But now we got a pretty tight connection back, about where we’re going when we play, because we make it all up. It was really fun.

Alright, the birth of The Bam Sequence. Let’s hear it.
Robby: We were all in different bands, I was in a band with some kids from Cornell, Jamie was in a band that is still around today—The Bomb Squad, and Mountain Mojo Authority).
Brandon: The first night at Ithaca College I was chillin up at a friend’s place and I saw this kid wearing a flannel shirt and Boston hat in the corner, really extremely incoherently chillin—that was Searl. I think immediately thereafter we started playing some shit and collaborating. We brought in a bunch of programmers and sequencers and everything and that’s when we started jamming and getting the whole electronic idea. And then we were searching around for a drummer, jamming around with some kids, and it never really formulated to anything, and then we found Robby and it was like the perfect fit.
Robby: We hung out freshmen year but we didn’t like each other much though.
Jamie: A key element is that none of us really like Robby’s sound very much. (laughter)
But yeah, it really started when Meyer and I did our first performance in an open mic coffee shop, playing as loud as we could and seeing peoples faces being like “This is the most uncomfortable I’ve ever been watching somebody and I want to leave,” but they were too polite to leave so it was a great experience and we figured that we could do that all over town, and it would be great. It was me on guitar, Meyer on acoustic guitar and a kid named Jake playing the bongos.

Where’s Jake now?
Jamie: He lives around Ithaca
So he’s like the lost Beatle?
Robby: Yeah, he’s like Stu.
Robby: And then it progressed into us playing in our rooms getting busted by the cops every week. The fun police came and shut us down every time, and for some reason that just fueled our energy to keep going.
Jamie: We had people dancing outside dorm rooms.
Brandon: Garden 29-9-2 was a big deal.

Let’s talk about the name. How did you come up with it?
Meyer: The name was concieved way before the band was even formed. Basically, me and Searl used to have conversations where we would theorize the idea of something that was great and intense would be like "BAM!" Like, that show last night was like "BAM!" So, we eventually twisted the saying as describing those things as a sequence, and that good things are like a sequence of a Bam. So, essentially, when the band was finally formed and we were looking for a name and moniker to go by, The Bam Sequence was ideally the only thing that was going to describe the music that we are playing. And it stuck, and people seem to like it. Maybe they hate it....
Jamie: It also went well with having the sister band be the Bomb Squad because then we could all be the BS crew. The Brandon Scott Crew or the Bullshit Crew.

How often do you guys practice? Daily, monthly, weekly, never?
Jamie: We train by the minute. Even when we’re not playing music we’re training musically because music is a parallel to life and that’s what the Bam Sequence is.

So you don’t practice.
All: Exactly
Brandon: No, we practice. I know last year we did. We had official Tuesday nights with the Bam. Garden 29-9-2, we used to practice there a lot and that’s when we really started formulating a lot of ideas and now that the three of us live in the same house it’s a lot more convenient. I would say we have bi-weekly practicing.

Classify your music for me.
Brandon: Instrumental, electronic live mayhem.
Jamie: It’s like if you went into the swankiest bar in the crazy, most backwards part of the universe this is the reggae you would be listening to in that bar. And that seriously is what this music is.
Robby: When you’re the most pumped up as you can be this is the music that plays in the back of your head that you don’t even know about. When you’re in a new situation and you’re really, really excited this is the feeling you get.
Bystander named Schroeder: My mom saw the show and she didn’t even know what was going on, but she liked it.
Jamie: As much as we hate to admit it it’s got a pretty big New Deal influence.

Yeah I definitely picked up on that at your show the other night.
Jamie: That’s just cause they play house music and we play house music.
Brandon: The only thing that differentiates them from us is that they have more synthesizers and basically more electronically induced instruments and we’re working more with real time analog. Pretty much straight up. We don’t use any effects at this point.
Robby: We try to keep it very organic.
Jamie: I grew up listening to a lot f DJ’s and a lot of my friends spun records but I would get so pissed off going to all these raves watching people get down to all these DJ’s with like pre-recorded beats and there wasn’t the ability to change the moment or change the vibe and I thought what if everyone was doing this live with like real instruments and you had the ability to change it according to the moment.
Brandon: I’d say DJ Meco was a huge influence.
Robby: Sex.
Jamie: Yeah it’s sex music.
Roibby: We don’t want to gross you out but that’s pretty much how it works.
Brandon: You build it up until it reaches the climax and that’s how a lot of things happen.

What makes you guys stand out from the other bands in the Ithaca scene?
Jamie: It’s a difference experience each time. We get on stage and we don’t have any songs and we feel it out and just play. And the tension from being nervous about completely bombing makes it end up being really high intensity and really good. It’s not like the audience comes to watch the band, it’s like the band comes to watch the audience just as much.
Brandon: I think personally the electronic scene in Ithaca is really weak for the most part. There is not enough going on. It needs to get a boost from something or someone because there’s not enough. And there’s only a few national drum and bass and DJ’s that are keeping it real around here. Like Buddha Spaceship. They’re the shit.
Robby: We try to bring in DJ’s and electronic musicians that we know and like to come play with us.
Jamie: Yeah there are four members of the band that aren’t here. We have a kid who plays the keg and the cowbell and a DJ too, but it’s like whenever we all feel like getting together and playing we do.

CD’s? Do you have any? Do you want to have any?
Brandon: We have many live shows archived right now that we’ll eventually release.
Jamie: We’d like to record a studio album but we have to find a good perspective to do it, which we haven’t really hit since it’s all improv. and we want to make it original, and recording a cd is a lot different than playing a show. You have to take it from a different way. We’re not really sure how to make it so “car stereo rockable” yet and that’s the goal.

Influences? Individually or as a whole?
Robby: Trey Anastasio. Jon Shaft.
Brandon: Chris Berg and Ryan Keville, Jeff Baker, Amon Tobin.
Robby: Chad Smith. DJ Shadow.
Brandon (looking at Robby): I actually think early punk for this kid. Green Day….
Jamie: I’ve been playing music since I was eleven years old so I’ve been influenced by the people around me.
Brandon: Actually you can put as our influence 1992 pop music. It was a great year.

If guys could open for any living band who would it be?
Jamie: Chucho Valdez.
Robby: The Rolling Stones.
Brandon: Mike Ill and Mad Happy.
Jamie: I would say Michel Jackson, probably.

How far do you guys want to go? Are you happy with local exposure or do you want to see your face on a billboards nationwide?
Brandon: World Domination.
Robby: We just want to be as intense as we can in as many places in the world as we can.