Cowboy Indian Bear, Haii Usagi and Paint Hands are set to play at the Boobie Trap Bar  Saturday, July 24, 9 pm and it’s shaping up to be one of the most anticipated shows in recent memory. Why? Because the bands are made up of such cool people, that’s why. AND their music captures all that is good in the new sounds of Northeast Kansas.

Here’s your opportunity to read up on two of the featured bands with Topeka roots, Cowboy Indian Bear and Paint Hands.

Cowboy Indian Bear

[by Melissa Sewell | photo by Colin MacMillan / Nathan Ham Photography | originally printed Dec. 2009]

Cowboy Indian Bear is made up of three stand-up guys with incredible talent and a bit of local luck.  Mark my words, ladies and gentlemen: they’re on the road to fame.

Beau Bruns – percussion, vocals, glockenspiel, guitar
Charles Calhoun – vocals, guitar, bass, keys, percussion
Martinez Hillard – vocals, guitar, keys, bass, percussion

We have to ask: What’s with the name?

Beau – It’s an alternative version of the game rock, paper, scissors.
Martinez – You gotta watch the Youtube videos.
Beau – Cowboy beats Indian, of course.
CJ – It’s historically accurate.

For people that have never heard your music, how would you describe it?

CJ – I guess I would say pop.  But we’re pretty broad in what we do.  We’re very rhythmically focused, and our songs feature a lot of percussion and bass.  Bass is the starting point of everything we’ve ever written.

Beau – I liked what that guy in Omaha said.. that we’re like M83 on steroids.

CJ – People have also told us that we sound like TV on the Radio, Wilco, and Broken Social Scene.

You’ve been playing with the Republic Tigers!  How cool is that?

Martinez – Very cool.  Our November show will be our second time this year.

CJ – We’ve also played with Sunny Day Real Estate, The Thieves, Murder by Death, Peter Bjorn and John..  We’ve had a lot of great shows.

If you were stranded and had to cannibalize one of your members, who would it be?

Martinez – Me.  I would die before I’d eat one of these guys.

CJ – I’m pretty sure Marty would stab me in the back.  He’s got at least 50 lbs on me.

Beau – I would probably eat Marty.  He eats really good food.  I eat only fruit and hot pockets.  I’m also a smoker.  I would taste like your grandma’s house: old food and cigarettes.

What superpower would you choose for yourself?

Beau – Ever since I was a kid, I thought it’d be awesome to be able to pull a hundred dollar bill out every time I put my hand in my pocket.  So if I wanted $10,000, I’d have to stick my hand in a lot.  But thousand-dollar bills would be too much, because sometimes I just wanna spend like 60 bucks.

CJ – I want the power to say whatever I’m thinking without people becoming pissed off.  Like, “That skirt looks really dumb on you,” and they’d say, “Oh.  OK.  Thanks.”

Martinez – I’d want to be able to breathe in any environment.  Underground, in water, in outerspace, in lava…

Beau – Ok, so wait.  You could breathe in lava, but wouldn’t you still just burn to death?

Martinez – …Yes.  I would.

Cowboy Indian Bear plays at The Boobie Trap this Saturday, July 24. Check out other show dates and sample some of their music at www.myspace.com/cowboyindianbear

Paint Hands

[by Leah Sewell | photos by Jeff Carson | originally posted July 8, 2010]

Three Kansas kids with a low key approach to the live music world, Elizabeth Carson, Karl Fundenberger and Timothy Volpert make up local band Paint Hands, an outfit that produces arguably the most experimental sound to show up in Topeka in recent years. But it’s really no big deal.

“We don’t stress out about much. As weird and honest as our music is, we’re really just doing it to have fun,” says Timothy Volpert, who plays keyboards among other instruments.

The band’s sound, although pegged as “experimental,” is far from an incongruous cacophony, Volpert explains, partly because his band members complement each other, each with their unique musical sensibilities.

“I’d say I kind of tend to push more in the experimental direction, like noise and sound collage,” says Tim. “And Elizabeth has a really great ear for melody, and Karl’s got a really good sense of like pop sensibility,  a sense of what’s going to be catchy.”

Paint Hands has played several shows around town at the late Bosco’s and at house shows in Topeka. Last May, they had the opportunity to play at the Granada in Lawrence for a benefit concert for Greg Volpert (Tim’s dad).

“It was a lot of fun, a great opportunity,” says Tim. “We opened for Jerry Miller from Moby Grape, which was a band that was influential [in the 60's] but not that well-known. And he told me all these great stories about hanging out with Paul Simon and Miles Davis and I was like, ‘I opened for that guy.’”

Concert-goers gave good feedback after the performance, but Paint Hands isn’t the usual stuff on the bill at the Granada, or anywhere in Northeast Kansas for that matter. Their sound is unique. Tim thinks on it and brings up that pessimistic viewpoint on the arts, that idea that “there is nothing original in [writing] [music] [art] [what-have-you].”

“If there’s nothing original to be done, we can try to at least make things interesting.”

At the Granada, says Tim, Paint Hands was “pretty weird compared to other acts that played. We try sometimes to write songs that don’t have a typical verse-chorus-verse type of structure. Our instrumentation is the biggest thing, because between songs we trade off what instruments we play. And there’s a lot more melody in the basslines than in the guitar. The guitar is often more of a rhythm instrument.”

Watch videos of Paint Hands Live

Their next big appearance is at the Boobie Trap Bar Saturday July 24 with Cowboy Indian Bear. That is going to be a must-attend event.

“It’s really exciting, because Cowboy Indian Bear is awesome!” Tim laughs.