Not to be technical, but according to Chat GPT, “math rock” and jazz share some similarities despite being different musical genres. Common elements between the two include complex rhythms, improvisation, unconventional song structures and avant-garde aspects. Speaking to bassist Dane Harter and drummer Shannon Paine-Jesam, two Loyola-trained jazz graduates who comprise the math rock-esque duo Secret Cowboy, it’s almost too easy to see where the two genres inform the other. On a sweltering hot July afternoon at Artisound Productions on St. Claude, where they recorded their latest self-titled album, Secret Cowboy, Baton Rouge-native Harter and Paine-Jesam (originally from Dallas) almost finish each other’s sentences, which to this author displays their intimate musical and personal connections.
Secret Cowboy is a purely instrumental outfit. Despite the fact that this author may have heard a Boss OC3 pedal (hailed as a secret third member of the band), the instrumentation actually manifests itself into some lyrical content. (Do you see yet why this piece was destined to start with some Chat GPT?)
“When we write, we mostly just improvise,” explains Harter of the band that sounds to this ear like Primus meets The Refreshments and System of a Down. “It’s not stuff we plan out really far in advance. We don’t want to make this long complicated super-technical thing. We’re very spur of the moment and the music naturally comes out. It’s us having fun but throwing a wrench in there when we feel like it.”
Harter quickly points out that although he is about to attend graduate school for jazz, none of his family actually listened to jazz. Now Harter sits in with a jazz outfit at the Royal Frenchmen Hotel, and says “Dad totally loved Metallica and on my own I discovered Korn, Deftones and Meshuggah. I got into jazz through school because if you wanted to play bass at my school (like me and just one other kid) you had to play in a jazz band. I had a lot of fun improvising, then I got into listening to (bassist/singer-songwriters/producer) Thundercat, and then dove deeper into who he said he was listening to—like Herbie and The Headhunters, Thrust and Alan Holdsworth.” (As an aside, Thundercat might be the epitome of what OffBeat EIC Jan Ramsey begs for in her blogs). Harter is also a former member of crossover thrash metal band, Suicidal Tendancies, who has worked with Kendrick Lamar. The Compton, California-based Thundercat also interestingly cites The Temptations and Gladys Knight as some of his biggest influences, plus he was also raised by a jazz musician father).
Paine-Jesam brings more metal, which is probably why I feel at times thrash-band Municipal Waste has made an appearance on the record. Shannon is a native Texan who was heavily influenced by older brother Ian (who has played in Chicago indie-rock Ratboys). Ian introduced Shannon to nu metal which led him down an ever-darkening path. But Harter appears to be the more Metallica of the bunch, while Paine-Jessam admits to starting the metal motorway with Megadeath. But the two seem to agree that the “Deftones are a great band.”
Secret Cowboy formed in late 2019, just a few months into gaining steam before that dark March 2020 descended upon humankind. They had just performed six months’ worth of material at The Mudlark Theater (y’know—where America’s Got Talent veteran Poose the Puppet haunts) before having a show canceled on March 16. Paine-Jesam got his first at-home tattoos and the band did the mandatory hiatus thing, writing here and there when they could.
Ultimately, despite agreeing that it’s a “long process” to make songs work, especially when it comes to muscle memory, the two enlisted New Orleans-based audio engineer Keenan McRae, of Artisound Productions, to document their stream-of-consciousness sounds into actual notation. For an album cover that tapped into the duo’s childhood love of comic book fare, artist Wade Minter developed a ketchup mustard style duel where a little guy trumps the big one—something you can hear a lot in the thumps and claps of the self-titled album.
This fall, Harter heads to south Florida for graduate school, replete with lessons in jazz instrumentation. However, the bass player fully plans to continue to helm Secret Cowboy and hopes to hop on the bill of unconventional Southeastern music gatherings such as Florida’s “Fest” and New Orleans’s own “Creepy Fest.” Paine-Jesam will continue to travel to Dallas, Texas to play in his metal band that he’s been in since high school, Maldevera. But the two agree this is absolutely not the end of what Secret Cowboy has in store.
After all, this summer Harter was sitting in a diner wearing his own band-branded shirt when a waitress approached and asked if he had seen the band—definitely a sure-fire sign that this band needs to keep giving audiences what they want.
For more information on Secret Cowboy and to download their album, click here. Follow them on Instagram here.
