I did an interview with The Portland Pick about the band and our upcoming record, check it out below!
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
Wednesday, March 6, 2013
New Song: "Child of Tomorrow"
Always looking for that next song
We recently finished arranging a full band version of a new song called "Child of Tomorrow" and performed it for the first time live last week. We don't have a good recording of the song yet, but I thought I'd share the lyrics, since I just finished my first complete draft of them, and I like how they're coming along.
you were the promised land
you were the northern star
but now it's left your hands
just like it left your heart
now everywhere you go
it's all you're thinking of
caught in the undertow
of never good enough
Child of Tomorrow
born among the stars
you've got no dreams to follow
go find out who you are
you were the silver spoon
inside the horse's mouth
that life is gone too soon
the colors all run out
and you've got time to kill
the future's coming slow
right now you're standing still
right now you just don't know
Child of Tomorrow
born among the stars
you've got no dreams to follow
go find out who you are
go find out who you are
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
A (Not So) Brief History of the TKB
Playing live at the Spare Room in 2012
I started playing music seriously when I was in middle school, beginning on the piano. Even in my earliest stages of learning, I was interested in writing music. At first, it was video game music that inspired me—the soundtracks of games such as Donkey Kong Country, Lufia II, Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy VII all had a huge influence on my early musical tastes, and I learned several pieces from these games as part of my efforts to imitate their style. Looking back at the pieces I wrote then, I had some good ideas, but my lack of technical skill on the piano hindered my ability to really do very much with them.
I took up guitar when I was a freshman in high school. Along with the guitar came more guitar-oriented music: bands like Van Halen, PfR, Relient K, Reel Big Fish, and Yellowcard had a significant impact on my development as a player and writer. I wrote and recorded songs throughout high school, collaborating on a few occasions with my good friend Matt Bittner. He expanded my musical palette considerably by introducing me to bands like The Police, Mutemath, and Circa Survive. Our collaborations eventually resulted in a six-song album of sorts called "Nine Days Left", which I released on iTunes during my sophomore year of college. One of the songs we wrote together, "Help Me Out", still remains a live staple of the Tim Karplus Band.
Here are two of the songs from that record, one with me on lead vocals and one with Matt:
Toward the end of high school, I formed an instrumental power trio called Motive with my friends Chris Johnedis and Andrew Cauthorn. Influenced heavily by my time spent listening to artists like Steve Vai and Yngwie Malmsteen, I wrote several guitar-led instrumentals and jams for the group. Chris and Andrew were vastly superior musicians to me at that point, and I realize now how much they did to try to push me out of the rock n' roll meat and potatoes style I tended to write in at that point. In response to my presentation of yet another song with a straight 4/4 rock beat, Chris once told me, "There are thousands and thousands of feels you can do, why would you only use one of them?". I didn't fully appreciate his words of wisdom at the time; it wasn't until years later that I really understood what he meant.
Here are two of the songs from that record, one with me on lead vocals and one with Matt:
Toward the end of high school, I formed an instrumental power trio called Motive with my friends Chris Johnedis and Andrew Cauthorn. Influenced heavily by my time spent listening to artists like Steve Vai and Yngwie Malmsteen, I wrote several guitar-led instrumentals and jams for the group. Chris and Andrew were vastly superior musicians to me at that point, and I realize now how much they did to try to push me out of the rock n' roll meat and potatoes style I tended to write in at that point. In response to my presentation of yet another song with a straight 4/4 rock beat, Chris once told me, "There are thousands and thousands of feels you can do, why would you only use one of them?". I didn't fully appreciate his words of wisdom at the time; it wasn't until years later that I really understood what he meant.
After high school, I went on to attend college at Oregon State University. I started out as a math major, but soon found that the music classes I was taking "for fun" were much more interesting to me than anything I was learning in math. Two years in, I switched over to become a music major. Through the music department, I met a music minor named Evan Churchill, who had recently formed a band called Break as we Fall. I expressed interested in joining the group, and ended up playing keyboards and bass for the band over the next two years, recording two albums and playing many live shows. It was in this band that I really developed a taste for funk and jazz, as well as more progressive styles of music. Here I must give credit to my bandmates Alex Moffat, Dan Grossen, and Alec Kretchun for expanding my musical horizons.
Here's "On Our Way Home", one of my favorite songs we did:
It was my experience in BAWF that gave me the confidence and vision to finally put together a live band for the original songs I had been writing. I had had the vision for a band of my own since high school, when I would doodle band names and lineups consisting of my friends on my binders, but hadn't had the knowledge and courage to really do it right. The time had finally arrived.
The first thing I did was recruit my good friend and fellow music major Dave Schwarm to play drums. Dave and I had been playing music at church together since our freshman year of college, and already had a good musical connection. After that, I talked to bassist and chemistry major Jason Lusk, whom I had met at a campus open mic, and asked if he would be interested in playing bass in a band I was forming. He said he would.
We had a show booked before the band had even had its first practice, opening for BAWF at the Impulse Bar & Grill in Corvallis. Evan asked me for a band name for the bill, and I didn't have one, so I told him to just put down Tim Karplus Band for the time being. The name ended up sticking.
We weren't great. Or, I should say, I wasn't great. I had never sung lead in a band, and the role was not a terribly natural one for me. Still, there was a certain creativity to the trio that I felt was special. We played a few more shows and recorded a 4-song EP before we all graduated and went our separate ways, Jason to UC Irvine to continue his studies in chemistry and me to Phoenix, Arizona, where my wife Caitlin had just gotten into medical school.
Here's the full 2010 EP in all of its glory:
Phoenix was where I really learned to be a singer. Playing open mics, open jams, and gigs around the valley, often having to sit in with people I'd never played with before, taught, or rather forced me to project and perform confidently. All the jazz and funk I'd been so heavily steeped in while living in Oregon went out the window, as the Phoenix scene was pretty much all about classic rock. It no longer mattered what sort of far out note choices I was hip to—all that mattered was being able to own the stage and keep good time. I was also reintroduced to the magic of rock n' roll while playing bass with Phoenix rock band No Regret, who ended up being the best friends I'd make in the year I spent there.
Here's "Dark Night", a No Regret song built around a bass riff I came up with:
After a year, Caitlin was able to transfer back to Portland to continue her schooling, so we returned to Oregon. I quickly set about looking for a bass player for the band. Through Craigslist, I met Apollo Gott, who had recently moved to Portland from Atlanta, Georgia. He joined the band and quickly got up to speed on the TKB material, while I also ended up playing guitar for a project of his.
We played shows around Portland and Corvallis until the summer of 2012, when Apollo decided to move up to Washington to go back to school. Steve Hammond, who was actually my own replacement in Break as we Fall, replaced him on bass in the TKB.
Well, that pretty much brings us up to now. We're currently in the process of recording a new, longer record, with a whole bunch of great new songs. Thanks for reading this and we hope to see you at a show sometime soon!
Rock on,
Tim
Here's "On Our Way Home", one of my favorite songs we did:
It was my experience in BAWF that gave me the confidence and vision to finally put together a live band for the original songs I had been writing. I had had the vision for a band of my own since high school, when I would doodle band names and lineups consisting of my friends on my binders, but hadn't had the knowledge and courage to really do it right. The time had finally arrived.
The first thing I did was recruit my good friend and fellow music major Dave Schwarm to play drums. Dave and I had been playing music at church together since our freshman year of college, and already had a good musical connection. After that, I talked to bassist and chemistry major Jason Lusk, whom I had met at a campus open mic, and asked if he would be interested in playing bass in a band I was forming. He said he would.
The first show poster!
We had a show booked before the band had even had its first practice, opening for BAWF at the Impulse Bar & Grill in Corvallis. Evan asked me for a band name for the bill, and I didn't have one, so I told him to just put down Tim Karplus Band for the time being. The name ended up sticking.
We weren't great. Or, I should say, I wasn't great. I had never sung lead in a band, and the role was not a terribly natural one for me. Still, there was a certain creativity to the trio that I felt was special. We played a few more shows and recorded a 4-song EP before we all graduated and went our separate ways, Jason to UC Irvine to continue his studies in chemistry and me to Phoenix, Arizona, where my wife Caitlin had just gotten into medical school.
Here's the full 2010 EP in all of its glory:
Phoenix was where I really learned to be a singer. Playing open mics, open jams, and gigs around the valley, often having to sit in with people I'd never played with before, taught, or rather forced me to project and perform confidently. All the jazz and funk I'd been so heavily steeped in while living in Oregon went out the window, as the Phoenix scene was pretty much all about classic rock. It no longer mattered what sort of far out note choices I was hip to—all that mattered was being able to own the stage and keep good time. I was also reintroduced to the magic of rock n' roll while playing bass with Phoenix rock band No Regret, who ended up being the best friends I'd make in the year I spent there.
Here's "Dark Night", a No Regret song built around a bass riff I came up with:
After a year, Caitlin was able to transfer back to Portland to continue her schooling, so we returned to Oregon. I quickly set about looking for a bass player for the band. Through Craigslist, I met Apollo Gott, who had recently moved to Portland from Atlanta, Georgia. He joined the band and quickly got up to speed on the TKB material, while I also ended up playing guitar for a project of his.
We played shows around Portland and Corvallis until the summer of 2012, when Apollo decided to move up to Washington to go back to school. Steve Hammond, who was actually my own replacement in Break as we Fall, replaced him on bass in the TKB.
Well, that pretty much brings us up to now. We're currently in the process of recording a new, longer record, with a whole bunch of great new songs. Thanks for reading this and we hope to see you at a show sometime soon!
Rock on,
Tim
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