The house was pulsing with expectation last Friday afternoon in a home not far from downtown Eugene. It felt like Oscar night.
The front door was open and it was like a beacon of welcome to this tight-knit group of young guys in their early 20s. Guys were wandering in and out. Zak Hawver, the bass guitar player for the band, Lost Theory, bounded through the door and across the living room with the visor of his motorcycle helmet up. Ian Hanley, the lead singer was asleep in a back bedroom.
Ben Carmine, (that’s pronounced “Car-meen-ee,”) Ian Hanley, Zak Hawver, Luke Houke and Estaban Mendez are the members of Lost Theory, the band that played at Hagen’s Restaurant & Pub, 50 E. 11th last Saturday. Fred Hoglund, the employee who books entertainers, said they feature many types of bands and that Lost Theory’s alternative music is good. Lost Theory is a band that Carmine began with lead singer, Hanley, whom he’s known since attending Central Catholic in Portland. They became good friends when they were freshmen in high school because they didn’t fit in with the other students.
Hanley went into theater after an injury forced him to leave football. He said he got into theater because it was “the only expressive part of Catholic school.” After high school, Ben and Ian moved to Eugene in the fall of ’99 and by fate ended up in the Creative Arts dorm at the U of O.
“Last summer, I got a really good amp in a little crappy apartment and looked for people to play with,” Carmine said. “I had the set up and needed a band.” A friend told him about her neighbors, and Carmine knocked on their door and met Hawver, a bass player from Kansas. Houke, from Madris, is Carmine’s lucky find that came from another band, Nobody’s Business.
He is an “extremely good drummer,” Carmine said. “He’s committed; he has rhythm, timing and hits really hard if he needs to.”
Carmine said KRS 1, “a guy from the East Coast that did hip hop,” changed his interest from rock to rap.
The band is very knowledgeable about the stages that music has gone through.
“Young people are so obsessed about music that we knew everything,” Hanley said.
“1991 was a very important year — the year Seattle exploded,” Carmine said. He said when he heard bands like Nirvana, he thought, “Hey! What’s going on? It has almost more energy and rawness then rap.” He said that bands in punk, alternative rock and rap have gotten “signed after one show.”
The band has been influenced by a wide variety of music genres.
“We like to combine … blues, jazz and funk into a real hard rock sound,” Hanley said.
“We’re a mixture,” Hanley said. They played reggae, a fun song called “The Hoe Down” and “Sitting By the Dock of the Bay,” though most of it was original music.
Hawver and Hanley explained their perspectives of the difference between rap and hip hop and punk to someone who is musically dysfunctional.
“Rap doesn’t define hip hop but contributes to it,” Hawver said, comparing it to the role a horn plays in a jazz band.
“Punk is fast paced … against institutions,” Hanley said. “I like their style, their courage to be on the edge.”
At 11 p.m., after the third song, Hanley took off his shirt.
“Here’s a song we wrote yesterday,” Hawver said. The band joked in between songs. “It’s going to be huge.” Carmine told the crowd Hanley was going to play the trumpet. During the song, Hanley pursed his lips and squeezed out the sound of a muted trumpet.
“They have no inhibitions,” one audience member said.
So what is their style?
“There’s no method to our mayhem. A lot of time we’re just free styling,” Carmine said. Audience members didn’t seem to mind their free-styling mayhem.
“They’re awesome,” a young man in the audience said. “They’re one of the best bands I’ve heard, and I’ve gone to quite a few shows,”
Hanley describes the band’s style as something “you can’t really put down on paper.”
For a “big combination,” he said, play “one riff,” let it “grow” and “change.” Add “inflections,” and allow for “changes in overall style.” In their case, the temperature may need to be adjusted depending on altitude, like baking a Betty Crocker cake mix on Steen’s Mountain.
“I’ll be hearing from these guys,” a man in the audience said. “They have the energy.”
During one song that Carmine called the friend’s drum party, seven people, including the band members and friends, dropped all their instruments but the drums for a goose-bump inducing moment.
The band’s influences are diverse, but Lost Theory’s music “speaks to the youth,” Hanley said. “We’re saying to them: Pay attention to the world … Stand up for your beliefs — and have fun.”
And Lost Theory knows where they’re going.
“Alternative music went away around ’95,” Hanley said. “We’re trying to bring it back.”
Lost Theory will be playing at John Henry’s on Sunday, July 23.