Face Melting Prog Rock
North Trail Rhythm Project
Round about 2012 I started playing with North Trail Rhythm Project (NTRP). The music was hard rock teetering on heavy metal with a significant focus on percussion and odd time signatures. My wife dubbed it “face melting prog rock”.
This band never got any really good recordings. But I love the direction and idea of the music produced so much that I feel compelled to present some of the crappy recordings here. Almost all of the music was written by the whole band. Most of the music was born through improvisational jamming. We would record rehearsals and if a workable idea emerged, we’d listen to it, identify ideas and directions, and massage it into being.
The characteristic I loved most about this band was the focus on percussion and meter. The band was so enamored with rhythm that several tunes evolved from percussion compositions that I presented.
Over the years the band played in many configurations from a duet to a 7 peice. In various configurations, the primary band participants included:
Bamboo Harvester
Bamboo Harvester was written by Ben Galster and Christopher Austin with help from Jon Pettus. This is a rough recording that is imcomplete. We intended to lay solo tracks and never finished.
Live Performances
Here are a few live performances. One is at the Flying Dog in Sarasota with the quintet plus a guest player, Daniel Ruben.
The second is at an art festival, also in Sarasota, with the trio.
Jon Pettus
Bass
Benjamin Galster
Guitar
Christian Merizalde
Drums & Guitar
Jeff Ruben
Drums & Percussion
Christopher Austin
Drums & Percussion
Jett Jettina,
Vocals
NTRP
The Evolution of a Band
From 2015 the band would change dramatically. People flowed in and out, the name changed (really, it just stopped being NTRP and we never renamed it), but the music always remained similar in nature.
Around 2017 or 2018 we invited Jett Jettina, wonderful singer and lyricist, to help evolve some of the music to include lyrics.
With this incarnation of the group and after so many years without producing any recordings, I wanted to accomplish a few things. First, I wanted to fromalize the music structures and get basic recordings. After that, I wanted to rework the rhythm section to include a complete drum battery instead of just drum set. Once that was done, the intention was to do a more professional recording. Unfortunately, life got in the way in 2019 and the band hasn’t recovered. Before the band collapsed, I was able to get decent recordings of several of the songs.
I still hope to dub in some extra percussion.