Kicking out the spacey, southern-fried jams with Post Pluto

Profile of local band originally published in Splash Magazine, July 2015

    Five young men from Gulf Breeze are reinvigorating the familiar jam band structure with energetic grooves, powerful pop dynamics, and a heavy dose of southern flavor.  In the space of just a few Post Pluto songs, you can pick out traces of BB King, Sublime, and Pink Floyd, all run through an uptempo New Orleans funk filter.  Lead singer Mike Garcia sounds a bit like Jethro Tull frontman Ian Anderson.  The boys themselves mostly claim jam band legends like The Grateful Dead and The Allman Brothers Band as influences.  They identify their style as “Jam-Funk Fusion,” but they gleefully talk about trying new things on a whim, coloring so far outside the lines that trying to categorize them at all is nearly impossible.

    They’ve managed to harness that creative energy quite well, too.  Listening to Post Pluto’s debut EP, “Good Water,” you would never in a million years guess that all the songs were recorded in a laundry room with a single microphone set in the center.  But that’s been Post Pluto’s style, getting great results with limited resources in a way that comes across as almost effortless.  They clearly share a sense of vision and drive--when they talk about promoting themselves, booking shows, and recording, it’s remarkable how well-developed their ideas are.  Considering they’ve only been a band for about two years, their relative prominence on the regional festival circuit is a testament to their ambitious work ethic.  

    “We would really like to make music our main occupation.  It’s already enough work to be a full-time job,” says guitarist Gordon Frank.  

    Garcia adds, “There are a lot of things that need to come together for us to get to where we want to be.  The really successful bands out there have their albums, their touring, and their merchandise synched up just right, and that’s something we’re working on right now.”

    In the meantime, they still enjoy playing in bars for non-paying audiences, typically on Pensacola Beach or downtown.  

    “We definitely like to play our own songs, but we have a bunch of covers we like to play too,” says drummer Max Gerke.   “Sometimes we’ll play stuff from other jam-type bands, like Santana’s ‘Evil Ways,’ but we like to have fun with songs people might not expect.  Pop and R&B from the 90’s can be fun, like ‘Say My Name.’  Lately we’ve been playing ‘All Star’ by Smash Mouth.”  They all laugh.

    Bassist Tommy Pelkowski’s house serves as band headquarters. The living room is decorated with flyers from Post Pluto’s gigs, including those headlined by such names as George Clinton and Zach Deputy.  The practice space, however, is wallpapered with posters of the band’s influences:  The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, The Black Keys, The XX.  Prominently displayed also is a poster of Tila Tequila torn out of a 2008 issue of “Maxim” magazine.  Following our interview, they begin their practice session with “Deja Vu,” the momentum-building opening track of their upcoming album.  Frank, Pelkowski, and keyboardist Jeff Smith break into uncontrollable grins while playing.  They follow up with a cover of Smash Mouth’s “All Star.”  The fun is infectious as they barely keep themselves from laughing. 

    Post Pluto’s next big step will be the release of their full-length album, “New Horizons,” named after the real-life space probe currently on a mission to Pluto.  The album was originally set to drop on July 15th, the date that the satellite will pass the ex-planet; unfortunately, that timing proved too good to be true, and the release has been delayed until later in the summer. But more important than timing for the men of Post Pluto is making their debut album a Pensacola product through and through--it was recorded at Pensacola Audio Documentation, and the band plans to throw a party in town to celebrate the release.  

    “We’re really trying to keep that local focus,” says Frank. “The hometown crowd has been so supportive and really helping us do what we love.  It’s really important to us that we stay rooted in that kind of local environment.”

More info: postplutomusic.com

(sidebar)

What’s in a name?  

    Post Pluto named themselves in reference to the scientific community’s decision to reclassify Pluto as a dwarf planet in 2006. 

     “It’s like a generational thing now, recognizing Pluto as planet,” says Gerke.  “When we were in elementary school, we all had to do these models of the solar system, and Pluto was always this little guy out on the edge.  Now it’s not a planet anymore, officially, so it’s like we live in a time that is ‘post-Pluto.’”  

    “Plus,” adds Gordon, “it matches our music--kind of spacey and out-there.”