Words by: Sam Walker-Smart
When it comes to being in a band, a dash of enigma is no bad thing, as the five-piece trespasser no doubt understands. Built around the songwriting prowess of Clay Rodgers, the members met while studying at Wesleyan University, with a rotating cast of musicians jamming on each other’s projects within the energetic local scene. This open exchange of ideas and influences led to trespasser’s ever-evolving sound, encompassing elements of indie, country, and jam band vibes. CONE grabbed some face time with Clay and guitarist Matt and started with their beginnings.
“There were twenty musicians or so who would play together in different rotations all the time,” Clay tells CONE. “In my junior year, I invited some musicians who liked to play songs I wrote. That’s kind of how it took off. We played a couple of shows here on campus, and people liked it, so we just started to take things more seriously. Here we are three years later!”
A year into playing together, the group released it’s all a bit of a story, a confident nine-track project characterized by the frontperson’s fun observations and the band’s nimble instrumentation. When it came to tackling the dreaded sophomore album, the band aimed to broaden their creative process while preserving the electric live sound they had cultivated through their shows. But the attempts to achieve this for Play Games, Die, their latest musical release, presented a learning curve. “With our earlier stuff, a lot of the recording is just me, making it easy to churn stuff out because I can just go in and do it. I would basically just do it in my bedroom,” explains Clay.
The songwriter adds, “For this album, we really wanted to do it together and do it more professionally, step everything up. We went to two studios and tried them. And you know, we made the whole album at the studio, mixed it and everything, and then decided that this just doesn’t sound right. This isn’t good enough. So we redid it at home, basically how we’d done it before, except with everyone playing. Usually, the process is that I’ll record stuff, sort of engineer it, and arrange it. Our drummer Jack does the mixing. It just took a long time. Some of these songs are now three years old by this point.”
It takes a lot of guts for a young act to be willing to scrap a completed album, but the end results were worthwhile. Intriguingly jumping from one mood to another, trespasser’s second album is equally adept at exploring ideas of 21st-century masculinity with the catchy single “Man” as it is at evoking the southern grit of early Kings of Leon on the brilliant “Wasted Time.” It’s evident from the start that the band’s shared chemistry shines through, something that wasn’t fully captured during their time in the studio. “It was like if we were playing a sports match, but we’d gotten drunk right before, you know? It was interesting. There was something that just got off balance,” Matt reflects.
Despite their shared love of The Grateful Dead and live performances that allow the band to get lost in a groove, the five-piece was eager to create something tight and focused, blending the spontaneity of the jam band scene with pop structures. Matt dives deeper into the creative aims of this latest album. “The jam element really influences certain aspects of the songs, even if it’s some kind of country train beat style thing, where you have a nice little solo, and we all kind of go off a little bit. But there are also the more conventional pop-rock songs like ‘Come Back Again’ and ‘Wasted Time’ that still retain this level of jam to them, although it’s a bit subtler,” he explains. Clay adds, “The story of trespasser is that we started as a very artsy, psychedelic jam band and have become more pop, country, and rock. A three-minute song band.”
As for their second album’s snappy title, it fits in with a group whose online bios include, “we’re on your property!’ and the bizarre “trespasser fuck shit christ figure play games; die.” “I gotta say, the album name is profoundly stupid,” Clay begins, explaining the story behind the title. “We were walking down the street one day, and I said some joke, cand then Matt said, “Play games, die.” And I went, ‘Oh, that’s kind of nice.'” Matt quickly chimes in, finishing Clay’s thought, “In my mind, I bastardized the idea of “Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.”
While many groups struggle to generate material for their second album, trespasser had the opposite issue. “At least every album starts with like twenty-five songs,” says Clay. “Then we’ll bring them to rehearsal. There are some songs I really like, and when I bring them to the band, it just doesn’t quite click. And it’s okay. We’ll save that, you know, and vice versa. With the addition of certain pop elements, we felt that the jam stuff was coming more out of left field. They felt a little bit shoehorned into the track listing. So, we made a very hard decision to cut a couple of songs that are, for us, live favorites that may end up going on something else if we ever sit our butts down and record a jam-focused album.”
It’s on the stage that the band shines brightest, with trespasser reserving some of their greatest material for those who experience them in-person. “Probably the best song we play, ‘Running – Stranger,’ we’ve never recorded successfully, and we may never do so.” They both laugh. “It’s funny because it’s like it’s our flagship track live. The sort of anchor, if you will. We’ve tried to record it two or three times now. It just doesn’t come out the same. I’m kind of into this idea now that it’s a bonus for the people who show up to the show.”
With dates in Baltimore, Boston, Syracuse, and more lined up, it’s clear that this merry, absurdist group of pop/jam rockers is prepared to share their latest material with their fanbase and beyond. But how would they describe themselves in five words to new fans? It’s admittedly a cruel question to ask any artist, but they both attempt to take a stab at it anyway.
“Band?”
“Music?”
“Just do it!”
“Energetic, chaotic, unpredictable…professional. Unique. Australian???”
That’ll do.