Loyola Greyhound

Issue date: 9/1/09 Section: Arts & Society

Media Credit: Andrew Zaleski/ Greyhound

Days before the Loyola Battle of the Bands last March, five musicians assemble in an Evesham apartment living room. One guy slaps out a beat on his knees. The sounds of an acoustic guitar break through rapped verses while another guy steadily hums, mimicking a bass guitar line. Five days later, A Cool Stick walks off a makeshift stage in Reitz Arena, winners of the 2009 Battle of the Bands and an opening slot at last spring's Loyolapalooza.

"I was nervous as hell when we were about to go on," says Luke O'Brien, A Cool Stick's 22-year-old rapping frontman. "Winning that, it was like fate - it just all came together."

Since then, A Cool Stick has been riding a constantly ascending rollercoaster of musical success. In the past four months, the five Loyola graduates, four of whom just graduated this May, have played upwards of 30 shows, experiencing rapid success in the Baltimore music scene during their relatively short tenure as a band.

"There's a Baltimore food chain, sort of, and now we're kind of in the middle to upper echelons of that," says O'Brien. "We started at the Brass Monkey, which is as low as it gets - smells like piss when you walk in the door; the sound is horrible; literally in the middle of the stage there's a giant pillar blocking the band - so it's like, that's where you start. You get some gigs there, you get your name out, people start hearin' things, and now we're movin' up to places like the 8x10, the 13th Floor, and the Recher."

The infant band is also producing a six-song EP with the help of Jerome Maffeo, sound engineer and owner of Right-On Recording in Druid Hill.

"The recording's coming together really well," says 24-year-old Brendan "Fuzz" Floyd, the group's bassist and a 2007 Loyola graduate. "[We're] really getting everything tight. Drops are tight, parts are more intricate than they've ever been before - it's comin' together nicely."

For the members of A Cool Stick, their journey to this point has seemed pre-determined. O'Brien and John Fitch, 21, met during their freshman year at Loyola. Initially for them, making music meant driving around Roland Park in O'Brien's Jeep, listening to beats produced by Fitch and rapping freestyle verses. By the end of 2007, O'Brien and Fitch had produced a CD, "Neon City," under the name Luke and John. People started noticing.

"People who I have never met will approach me and explain that they heard it from somewhere and they really enjoyed it," says O'Brien.

Continued...

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