Myles Wood, drummer and backing vocalist for the band “Shade,” said the name came to him while driving in his car.
“I was driving to Corolla, and saw all these tall trees along the road with sections clipped out underneath and thought, ‘Man, that’s a shade tree,’” Wood said. “I thought that would be a cool band name and worked through it in the group 30 minutes later and everybody was like, ‘Shade’s the name!’”
Wood said the name has multiple meanings.
“Whatever we’re doing in the moment: We could be throwing shade, we could be cool in the shade, we could be giving new shade,” he said.
Bassist and backing vocalist Brian Bishop and Wood were already playing together and Wood and guitarist/vocalist Brandyn Napolitano were also talking about playing together. So the natural choice for Shade’s bass player seemed to be Bishop.
Guitarist/vocalist Chuck Hodges rounded out the group.
“We were all talking about playing together and Chuck was coming back from shoulder surgery, so we caught him at the right time when he wasn’t tied up playing with anyone,” Wood said.
The idea for the group was to create a “jam band,” Wood said, where one song runs into another song without a break between.
“We wanted to have this commitment from everybody before we started this thing that we were going to drive it and emulate that style and do something different other than stopping a song, starting a song,” he said. “(We’re) putting songs together and tying them together.”
Wood said the band is influenced by jam bands such as Phish, The Grateful Dead, Goose, The Allman Brothers and more. Jam bands are typically identified by their mixing of genres, such as funk, jazz, and psychedelic rock, and by improvisational jamming, extending a song’s length and often running several songs together without a break.
Shade plays covers as well as original compositions written by band members, Wood said.
“We play some of Chuck’s, some of Brandyn’s (songs),” he said. “We’re in the fortunate position that we play what we want. We’re doing some Talking Heads, some Rolling Stones, we’re working on a Dave Matthews tune. We pick what we want to do but we’re going to do it in our style.”
Shade has been together only since June. While they have had some live recordings, they have not gone into a studio yet, Wood said.
“We want to get a little deeper into it before we put it all down,” he said. “We still need to let the foundation settle. There are things you can’t replicate when playing live and we want to get that stuff down before we go into the studio.”
Hodges said that in the beginning he suggested structuring the band’s set to be one continuous song.
“The first gig we did, the very first set was an hour and a half without a break,” he said. “Myles could barely hold his drum sticks.”
Hodges said the band doesn’t always know exactly where things are going, but someone keeps it all together.
“Brandyn kind of directs that,” Hodges said. “He’ll start something and we’ll be like, ‘Oh, that’s (the Talking Heads’) Psycho Killer,’ so he’s really good at keeping it going.”
“I kind of feel like a jam band DJ,” Napolitano said.
Hodges said the music is fun to play and has a loose construction.
“We don’t make a set list and go, ‘Here’s 20 songs first set, 20 songs second set,’” he said. “We might not even use a set list. It depends on the crowd and what we’re feeling.”
Hodges said he got to see Wood with the Outer Banks-based band The Ramble perform at Seven Sounds Brewing Co., and was impressed with his playing. He met his other bandmates mostly through playing with them.
“(Bishop) and I played together last summer, and Brandyn had been over several times to my house about two years ago, and he had this concept (for a band), and it was (Shade),” Hodges said.
Napolitano was the linchpin that brought the rest of the band together, Hodges said.
The band seems to draw a younger crowd, although several older faces could be seen at their recent gig in Pailin’s Alley. Wood jokingly says their main audience is anyone who sticks around through the first set.
Hodges says the music is groove and guitar oriented, with an experimental edge.
“Every set is an experiment,” he said.
The band’s goal is to play in other areas outside of Elizabeth City and not get saturated in the local market, Hodges said.
“We want to start playing in Hampton Roads,” he said. “We just booked our first gig there at Tap It in Chesapeake (Virginia) for November.”
Hodges hopes that audience members just have a good time listening to the band and can forget their troubles for a few hours.
“It’s a really good vibe and a good ride,” he said. “We hope they hear what we’re putting out there and it connects.”
You can follow Shade at “Shade — the Band” on Facebook and Instagram.
Local News
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