 "Photo: Steve Cross")
When you talk about the local music scene, the Features are indelibly one of the major topics of that conversation.
They've been around for years and have made a huge impact in the Murfreesboro and Nashville local music scenes.
Fellow Spongebath acts The Fluid Ounces and Self have since gone away. Self moved out to Los Angeles to pursue their musical career and the Fluid Ounces broke up this year.
The local Murfreesboro label, Spongebath, has also since fallen by the wayside. The Features are the last band to grace the local scene from the Spongebath era, and they grace us well.
The Features' story begins in Sparta, Tenn., where most of the members grew up.
Matt Pelham, Roger Daabs and Parrish Yaw grew up and went to school together in Sparta. They picked up instruments and started playing in eighth grade and the band culminated from there.
They played throughout high school and when it came time to go to college, Pelham and Daabs came to MTSU to study in the recording industry program.
Yaw and Don Serggio, the second guitarist in the original Feature lineup, enrolled at Tennessee Technological University. Pelham met the original drummer, Jason Taylor, at MTSU in one of his classes.
That began the original lineup of the Features, and they started playing around town in Murfreesboro. Around that time, they signed up with Spongebath records and they all moved to Murfreesboro to pursue their music career.
"It seemed like at that time, in 1993, there was quite a bit of rock music on the radio," Pelham said. "It seemed like no matter where you lived, whether it be Sparta or New York, you couldn't escape it. Rock seemed to saturate the airwaves at the time. I think just being overloaded with all this music and just entering college was probably a big influence on the way our music went simply because it was a whole new world, and we were introduced to so many different things at that time."
The Features released their self-titled EP in the late '90s. It was a six-song EP opening with the amazing song "Armani Suede." In late '98, Taylor and Serggio left the band, and Rollum Haas came aboard as the new drummer. They did not replace Serggio on guitar, leaving Pelham as the only guitarist. During this transition, the Features' sound changed quite a bit into the "new wave" sound they possess today.
"It changed quite a bit when they left," Pelham said about the evolution of the music when Taylor and Serggio departed.
"Rollum is a lot different as far as drumming goes," Pelham said. "And he brought a lot of things to the band that weren't there before. Songwriting changed quite a bit simply because when the guitarist left, I realized writing a song for a four-piece is a lot different from writing a song for a five-piece.
"The things that changed the most were the drumming, of course, and Parrish, the keyboardist, had a lot less of a role before they left than he does now.
"Now he seems to have picked up where the guitarist left off by playing more counter melodies on the keyboards."
The Features have had two releases under the new line-up. In 2000, they released a 10-inch single with Thursday and Rabbit March. In 2001, they released their second EP, The Beginning, which was influenced by the birth of Pelham's twins in 2001.
"While my wife was pregnant at the time leading up to their birth," Pelham said, "there were a series of songs written, and they all had in some way or another an underlying theme of anticipation of their birth. At the time, we decided we needed to put out something, and we had those songs that fit together as somewhat of a concept. And we went ahead and did those for the Beginning release."
The Features also have some future releases coming up. Soon they will be releasing a 7-inch single with Buffalohead and Oh My Love. And they've been working in the studio toward a full-length CD next summer.
"We had originally planned to do a European tour this year," Pelham said, "but I think it came down to either do a tour or take the money we had saved and record as much stuff as we can to take out and approach labels. So, just weighing the options, we decided let's record and try to spend our money on some really good recordings and go out and shop them and maybe good things will come of it."
The Features pack The Boro Bar and Grill and 12th and Porter regularly with their loving fans.
They also play out of town shows quite a bit and are building a loyal fan base around the Southeast.
Recently, they played a couple of shows with Pere Ubu, a new-wave band that had their beginnings in the mid-'70s punk era. They played with them in Atlanta and Athens, Ga. They also recently finished up a 2 1/2-week tour with Andrew Bird's Bowl of Fire.
"The Madison, Wis., show was very bizarre," Pelham said. "We played with a folk act and were kind of worried after a sound check when we walked out the door.
"There was a line of 45- to 55-year-olds just staring at us like we were silly kids. We were thinking this is just not gonna go over well. Being very nervous getting in front of these people, we played our show and after it, surprisingly enough, eight or nine of them had bought our CDs and lined up at the stage to have us autograph them. It was really bizarre. I never would have guessed that that would have happened."
They also did a showcase in Los Angeles early in November, and last Saturday they filled up the Boro once again for their hometown crowd.
Note: Web surf the Features out at www.thefeatures.com. You can also check them out at Red Rose on Dec. 20, and 12th and Porter on Dec. 12.
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