There is already so much excitement in the air for festival season. 2014’s was a doozy for improvisational funk band TAUK. From slots at The Hangout Music Festival, Bonnaroo and Bear Creek, to opening for The Disco Biscuits, everything is pointing towards a long and illustrious career for the foursome. We caught up with bassist Charles Dolan to discuss their upcoming TAUK tour, the balance between studio and live performances and Staukers.
Kicking off in Knoxville, TAUK will be on a significant tour with Umphrey’s Mcgee this spring. “I think it’s something that our camp has been working out for a while. We got to meet those guys at Lock’n Festival when we played this last summer. I talked to Ryan Stasik and they knew about us before that. They heard the music and they liked it, so it was cool just to hear that in general. It seems like a natural thing. We both have similar styles of music that complement each other. I think they recognized that and that’s why they have us on. I’m incredibly grateful for that.”
Watching these guys grow has been quite the treat. Their several trips to Knoxville to play at The Bowery and The International have lead to an ever growing following. “It’s been a lot of work (laughing). We popped out about 180 shows last year and we did a full album. We have been touring with this group for about three years. We’ve been getting play on Sirius. We’ve come a few times (to Knoxville), and it’s grown every time. It’s just a lot of fun to see things grow. We’re really enjoying it, no matter how fast or slow. Just seeing it happen, it’s very motivating. It makes us want to try harder and put more into it. That’s definitely what we plan on doing this coming year. 2014 was incredible. From the summer shows on we just saw a huge leap of progress. To get that kind of acknowledgement, I’d say we’ve infiltrated the scene a little bit. Because we are relatively unknown, it is a good feeling for sure.”
Colissions was a breakthrough for TAUK. It showcases their jam centric nature while keeping the song lengths short enough for indie rock fans. “That was the plan with the first album. Most of the material was unplayed and was unfinished by the time we went into the studio and it worked itself out that way. With this one, we wrote all the songs and toured on them and it definitely gave it a different vibe. We were able to bring more of a live aspect and the power that we do bring live to the CD, Which is good. When you’re touring, you build up habits and the songs become something different when you play them live. Some things that helped a lot, and others were habits we had to break. Sometimes when you’re in the studio you put everything under a microscope and you look at every finite detail and you try to improve it or say that’s what’s needed and what’s not. It definitely helped us. And it was definitely more of a challenge. With Homunculus, the first one, we recorded in the studio and then we played it live. It goes both ways I guess. You want to find a happy medium.With this last album, every song was over five minutes. The album before that we had one or two songs that were over five minutes. We definitely had to hone it in. We need to make the point we’re trying to make in this amount of time, but still not be bogged down by it. We knew that we couldn’t just go off and do a 20 minute song, (laughing) because it’s probably not going make the record. We’ve definitely built a vocabulary from playing together and jamming together. We have to get used to doing that live too. We’ve been doing a lot of opening slots, and for the next few months we’ll be doing that with Umphrey’s. When we get an hour and a half set or two hour and a half sets, we don’t have that thing in the back of our mind where we’ve got to stay within the time frame. We definitely have to do that when we’re opening. We do have a lot of songs with open sections, so we have to plan which ones were going to stretch it out on, or if we’re going to stretch out at all. To show our improvisation chops, we’ve got to choose which ones we really are going to expand on. It’s definitely a skill we’ve been getting a lot better at, especially in the last few months that we’ve been opening. Even a festival slot where you get an hour spot and people are trying to see you for the first time or haven’t heard you at all and you’re trying to give them as much of a picture as possible. It’s definitely a struggle sometimes, but we’re getting better at it for sure.”
TAUK’s street team and fan base have lovingly become known as Staukers. “That came from either the member of another band or the girlfriend of the member of another band. (Laughing) I came up with the idea of the Talking Heads, but people weren’t sure if that would be a problem because there’s a band called the Talking Heads. The Staukers thing just kind of stuck. It came out of Baltimore.”
Blank: With jam bands, People tend to jump on tour and stay on tour.
CD: “(Laughing) and it encourages that”
Blank: You’re the first band ever to encourage stalking on tour.
CD: “Exactly”
After High School, the guys all went to different music schools, but remained close. This unity lead to the stability that you experience at a TAUK show. “That was one of the best parts about music school for us, that you get to play with all these other really great musicians. I think the most important thing about going to music school, besides, you know, learning, is meeting other musicians and learning from them. And we were able to do that. We would come home on our break and we’d send each other songs to learn and we’d book a gig or two. We’d talk about what we’d learned and play around with that kind of stuff. It just allowed all of us to grow individually and then add more to the soup.”
Dolan kept his chops up by playing with as many people as possible while away at school. “I did some work for other bands, but I never had my own band. I did a lot of jazz ensembles. We’d play at Starbucks and Washington Square Park, never anything serious and nothing like we’re doing now. I know Matt had a band in Burlington. One was called Funk Taco. When they would play a trio, they would call themselves Funk Falafel. Isaac was in a band called Niall Versus the Naysayers, a really awesome hip-hop group. I know AC was like me, always playing with other people. Mostly I’d be in like five ensembles at once, doing different things all the time.”
It’s always fun to look back at your beginning. TAUK has been together for much longer than the namesake formally suggest. “The first time I ever played live would either be in a talent show in middle school with Matt and AC or Matt’s bar mitzvah. We would play The Who and Jimi Hendrix songs. I remember Matt’s uncle came in and sang White Room by Cream. We’d always be the closer for the talent shows at our high school and we’d always win. We’ve been playing together forever. Anytime we had a break in school, we would just jam in the basement. That was one of my favorite times when we were younger. ‘Alright we’ve got 20 minutes left on our lunch period, let’s go down there and jam out.’ That’s where a lot of our improvisations together started. It was just going downstairs and trying anything.”
The bug got Dolan early. His commitment started before most kids have given thoughts of future planning any consideration. “Junior year in high school was when I really thought, ‘okay I really need to focus and really start to dig into what it is to play bass.’ It was never like, ‘okay we are doing it.’ It just kind of happened. We recorded a full album in college. We had a singer then. It was a completely different band, but we were still TAUK. We were friends and we felt that we had something special together.”
All the practice, all the touring, all the time in the studio, is just a preface for that moment that everything connects. “I remember the first time we played in a place that we’d never went and there was an amazing crowd response. It was one of the first times that I felt the energy from a crowd pick the band up and elevate the whole experience, for the band and for the crowd. It was Floyd Fest in Virginia. It’s a special festival and it was a special moment for us. We were playing the same time as the headliner (The Lumineers). We were like, ‘nobody knows who the hell we are. We’re playing for free. I hope some people know we are here.’ I guess people heard us playing and by the end, the whole place was full, even behind the stage. People were just going wild. It was a crazy uplifting moment. We had a bunch of more moments like that, especially in the past year. The energy that was in the crowd and on the stage going back-and-forth, that’s what this is all about.”
TAUK will be in Knoxville on January 29th, at The Tennessee Theatre, at Track 29 in Chattanooga on February 4th and 5th, in Nashville at Acme Feed and Seed on February 6th, and in Asheville at Asheville Civic Center on February 7th.
