From Princeton to New York

Late one night, I was sitting at a table in the back of Murray-Dodge Cafe sipping English Toffee tea from a lime-green mug. I got there early, but even so, I was lucky to find a free chair — there were so many people there you couldn't refill your mug without bumping into another person.

The door was open, and cold air and the smell of cigarettes filtered in from the people smoking outside. It was cold enough you could see your breath, but all these people put on their hats and gloves to come see the Rhythm Method's first performance.

The band was set up in the back of the cafe, and there were white Christmas lights hanging on the wall behind them. As its audience milled around sipping tea in colorful mugs, The Rhythm Method struck a few chords and then started jamming.

The drums and the guitar filled the room, and I could feel the beat in my chest. The guitar players were standing and moving their bodies to the beat, and the lead vocalist cupped the microphone with his hands and sang right into it.

The drummer, however, was the one that most looked the part of a rock star. He was wearing sunglasses, and he somehow managed to pull it off and look hip even though he said he only was shielding himself from the light provided by the small candles flickering on the tables.

I got up and wove my way through the crowd to get some fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies as the band announced their next song. They were toning it down with a softer ballad called "Charmed."

As I stood in the doorway to the kitchen spilling cookie crumbs on my shirt and letting the chocolate melt in my mouth, they strummed the first few chords and the lead singer's smooth voice came over the microphone.

When they announced that they were playing the last song of the night, the crowd booed because they didn't want them to stop.

Several weeks later, I ventured out to Terrace Club to meet the men behind The Rhythm Method for the first time. I sat down with the band in the "ladies' lounge" — a room with pink walls and bright blue trim — by the women's bathroom.

Ollie Williams '01 — a former 'Prince' editor and the drummer with the sunglasses — lighted a cigarette with his bandmate Jason Park '02 as we all settled down on the cushy sofas.

Ben West '01, wearing a fuzzy brown fleece shirt, took the sofa across the room, and Phil Blodgett '02 sat next to me.

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West and Park are the band's guitarists, and Blodgett is the lead singer. Jackson Carmichael '02 — the group's bass guitarist — was unable to attend the interview that evening.

"I've been singing longer than I can remember," said Blodgett, whose first formal choral experience was in eighth grade at his church. "That's sorta how I got involved with gospel and spirituals, leading to blues, leading to jazz — they're all connected — and then leading to rock and roll."

He also has played the drums since seventh grade, and his guitar since his sophomore year of high school. He also took piano lessons, but he said he liked the guitar better because it's "more portable" than a piano is.

West started playing guitar in elementary school. "I hated it for a while, but I always stuck with it," he said. After he stopped lessons in eighth or ninth grade and his guitar teacher moved away, his perspective changed. "That's when I first bought an electric guitar and really got into just playing stuff I liked," he said.

Williams took piano lessons for seven years until he was in middle school. Then he got his drumset. "I came home from camp . . . and it was just sitting there in my basement, and I was like, 'Rock on!' "

He started playing rock and metal, experimenting with songs from groups like Helmet and Stone Temple Pilots. He remembered one song by Carcass that had "a really sweet double bass part" in the opening that he proceeded to sing for us.

"I was a very crappy drummer for a very long time until about senior year — I started playing with a band in high school called Free Beer," he said. He was in another band at Princeton his freshman and sophomore years, but it wasn't until right before fall break that he had the opportunity to practice with The Rhythm Method and become a member of the group.

Park, unlike the others, did not start with piano. He took violin lessons when he was little, but he said he didn't like it very much. "All my friends played guitar and so, like, being unable to come up with anything independently interesting to do, I just sorta followed suit," he joked.

In a phone interview conducted a few weeks ago, Carmichael, the band's bass guitar player, told me he started out playing the upright bass and then moved on to just playing electric bass for fun. In his Australian accent, he said he loves performing with the group. "I really get a kick out of getting up on stage and playing," he said.

Blodgett and Park met each other when they were both involved with the production of "Jesus Christ Superstar" on campus. They started playing together, with Blodgett on drums and Park on guitar.

Other people joined their group, and the band went through many permutations before it finally reached its current form. They tried several vocalists, but Blodgett was the one who always seemed to work out the best. However, he continued to be the drummer for a while because there are not as many drummers on campus as there are singers.

Blodgett has known Carmichael for several years because they are both in the a capella group, the Footnotes, and that is how he became involved as the group's bass player.

Williams came into the picture during Reunions last year when the musical "Godspell" was being performed in the Forbes College Blackbox Theater. He was playing drums in the pit, Park was playing guitar, and Blodgett was in the show. He officially joined the group in October. Now that Williams plays the drums, Blodgett is free to be the lead vocalist.

With the band finally complete, they have been playing at many local venues — including Charter Club, Terrace, and the recent BodyHype show — in addition to Murray-Dodge. When they have a show, they practice at least three times a week and usually have a longer rehearsal on the weekend.

They will be performing Feb. 15 at the Elbow Room in New York City at 11 p.m. This is a big break for the group as the Elbow Room is a fairly well-known venue.

The Rhythm Method's first "mini-gig," which they played even before Murray-Dodge, was at Terrace elections. Blodgett was running for house manager — which he won — and the band set up all of their equipment there so that he could sing his speech.

Their big debut, however, was their performance at Murray-Dodge, which went really well, if the huge crowd was any indication.

Though things went smoothly once they were there, it was getting there in the first place that presented the challenge. Williams' car — a 1978 canary yellow Ford Fairmount — broke down on the way to the gig. It drove from Terrace to Butler College, where it just sputtered and died.

The band said it was a really stressful experience because they had all their equipment and no way to get to their gig, but luckily an old high school friend who was in town drove in with a big white mini-van and saved the day.

Once they were in the café, things started to go much better. Because of the set-up of Murray-Dodge, with the pillars in the middle of the room, "there was the energy of the crowd, but you weren't intimidated by a wall of faces," Williams said.

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The Rhythm Method recorded a demo together in the beginning of October. They made it in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. — near Blodgett's home — and his friend engineered it in his home studio. They layed down five tracks, with Blodgett on drums because they did not have Williams yet.

At this point, they have more than 12 original songs, enough to possibly put out a full-length album.

They all listen to very different kinds of music, and they have influenced each other a great deal since they began playing together — arriving presently at what West terms their "funk/rock groove."

As Williams described it, "Phil and I have these, like, spheres of drumming, and his is definitely more from the jazz world and mine is definitely more from the rock/metal world, but there's this really comfortable overlap where I think The Rhythm Method falls in."

Park said the other members of the band, especially Williams, forced to listen to music that he grew up thinking was terrible. "But you learn to appreciate it," he said.

Williams [check this] said when he got together with the group, he was inspired to start writing his own music. "I had been playing guitar forever, like I said, but I had never felt empowered to, like, write music for myself," he said. "But these guys — like, it really impressed me that they were writing songs that were, like, really good." It made him realize that "people can actually do that — you don't have to be a rock god to write a cool song."

Williams said he will be in the music business next year regardless of what happens with the band. "I want to give it a shot," he said. "If you're going to try being a rock star, you've gotta do it when you're fresh out of college — you can't just be like, well, I've done this I-banking [investment banking] thing, and I've got some nice mutual funds, and now that I'm 40, I think I'd kinda like to become an icon for 14-year-old girls."

Park said if they were offered a record deal, he would not face a large trade-off if he were to drop his regular job. "I'm a philosophy major, so the chances of me succeeding in the world are about the same as, like, becoming a rock star and making ten million dollars."

But philosophy majors have prospered in the past, so perhaps Park and The Rhythm Method will too.