Midwestern transplants still chasing music dreams

By: JIM TRAGESER - Staff Writer | Wednesday, November 7, 2007 12:07 PM PST ∞

Can a rock band named after an obscure figure in jazz history, and formed on the Ohio State campus, make it big in San Diego? If nothing else, at least the men of San Diego rock band Emery Byrd won't have to worry about sharing the above distinctions with many other combos.

A listen to the tracks on the band's MySpace page (as well as a sneak listen to its upcoming full-length CD, set for an early 2008 release) shows a band with a power-pop sound.

But with day jobs to hold down and the music recording business in disarray, the members of Emery Byrd (playing Friday night at the Whistle Stop Bar in San Diego) say the future is promising, but confusing.

Even with a CD coming out (the band is self-releasing it), lead singer Matt Carastro and guitarist Brandon Leck said a full-on tour is probably out of the question for now. Instead, they're aiming for a series of regional tours, up to the Bay Area and inland to Las Vegas and Arizona.

"We're just getting promo copies (of the CD) out and trying to get them into as many media outlets as possible," Leck said by phone. "This winter, we're going to try to go up the coast; we've done San Francisco and Sacramento, but would like to go further."

Carastro added that "It's kind of hard to take off time from all your jobs and go tour." Still, he said that one of the things they're looking at is setting up a couple of mini-tours.

"The MySpace thing is cool because there's little pockets of people all over the country that will offer us a place to stay."

As for the music itself, Carastro said it's a distillation of all the band members' own influences growing up.

"I think it was just a real collective of what we enjoy in playing, and then throwing in what we'd had growing up. It's just a real mix-up ---- there's a background of Motown, and then, like, The Verve, and early '60s Kinks. It's not that it all filters through exactly, but it's there."

Leck, bassist Bobby Pratt and second guitarist Andy Pozniak grew up together in the late '80s and '90s in Toledo, Ohio, before heading off to Ohio State, where they met Long Island, N.Y., native Carastro. The four of them started the band, playing campus parties and local clubs.

The name is taken from a shadowy Los Angeles figure who supposedly supplied jazz legend Charlie Parker with drugs.

"Emery Byrd was actually a real person," Leck said. "When Charlie Parker came out to California to play gigs in L.A., Emery Byrd owned a shoeshine shop that sold records. Charlie Parker actually signed over the rights to one of his songs to Byrd in exchange for his habit. Byrd ended up in prison and then nobody knows what happened to him." (The German-language Wikipedia entry on Parker confirmed this story, although the English-language version is silent on Byrd.)

But how did they hear about him?

"My dad is a big jazz guy," Leck explained. "We'd been playing around with some names, and that one just stuck."

As the lead singer, Carastro said people often assume that he is the mysterious Emery Byrd, since that's the band's name.

In 2002, the members of the band decided to leave Columbus and to do so as a group.

"There's only so much you can do and we all needed a change," Leck said of their relocation to San Diego. "We didn't want to go to the East Coast, because that's where Matt's from, and we didn't want to go to L.A., because that was so mid-'80s."

They sent Pratt out to scout other Southern California locations, and he came back glowing about San Diego.

Carastro dropped out when the others graduated, and they ended up sharing a hotel room in La Mesa for awhile.

Four-plus years on, they're still playing out, still writing new music, still holding on to their dream as a band.

"We're trying to do it ourselves ---- we'll see what comes of that," Leck said. "The important thing for us at this point is just to get the CD out and make ourselves as visible as possible.

"Control what you can control."

Emery Byrd

When: 9 p.m. Nov. 9

Where: Whistle Stop Bar, 2236 Fern St., San Diego

Admission: Free

Info: (619) 284-6784

Web: whistlestopbar.com or myspace.com/emerybyrd

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