Story by Natalie Horner
Photo by Jenna Westover
Chances are, if you went to any house party or bar last year, you heard Rare Monk play. And chances are, the one thing you remember (if you remember anything at all from that night) is the hazy image of a dude with an impressive Afro wailing on a violin. A Eugene-based band that formed about a year and a half ago, Rare Monk consists of Dorian on vocals, guitar, keyboards (and sometimes violin), Jake on guitar, Forest on bass, Rick on drums, and Isaac on violin and tenor sax.
Natalie Horner: How would you describe your sound?
Forest: I’d say elements of rock, jazz, funk. We all come from very different backgrounds in music. Isaac is classically trained on violin and sax. Jake is from more of a jazz background, I’d say. Me and Rick, we have more of a rock background. And then Dorian, I don’t know…
Dorian: Well, classical, and then more into rock in high school
Forest: So I feel like the sound conveys exactly that, just a bunch of people from all those areas just throwing stuff in.
NH: Do you find it challenging collaborating with so many different people, and trying to work everyone’s ideas in?
Jake: At this point, I feel like we’ve gotten to the stage where we kind of all know each others’ influences and what we can bring. So if I’m coming up with riff ideas, I kind of know what the other guys can add to it.
Forest: At first, I think we were struggling a lot to move from jam based stuff to actually writing songs, because when we first got together it was just so fun to jam all the time. But recently, we’ve been really good at staying focused.
NH: What’s your plan for Bandest of the Bands?
Forest: The songs we’re thinking about playing are like the three longest songs we have. So, yeah, we’re just going to try and fit in what we can. Right now, we definitely know what we want to play, and we have some backups if we end up needing to fill more time.
