Artist Profile: Indigo Wild
By Chris Dobstaff, News Editor
On a cool fall day in Athens, Garet Camella is singing in the street. With dark rain clouds looming overhead, he strolls through the middle of Ohio University’s East Green, acoustic guitar hung over his shoulder. Cameras follow him as his lilting voice sings the opening verse of “When You Say,” the first song off of If By Sea, his band Indigo Wild’s debut EP.
When he hits the chorus, he joins his bandmates sitting on a stone wall where the impeccable harmonies that define Indigo Wild commence. It all seems so natural for the group of young musicians, but in actuality, this environment is completely new to them.
“It was crazy,” Camella later says of the video shoot. “Like, when we walked up there were just seven people standing there, and one guy is holding a boom mic. I was like, ‘what the fuck? This is going to be awesome.’”
The shoot was inspired by La Blogotheque, a French website which transforms established artists into street performers. This particular video was made with hopes of pushing a relatively new Ohio band with vast potential into the spotlight.
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Indigo Wild, whose robust harmonies draw easy comparisons to bands such as Fleet Foxes and Local Natives, came together through a series of unlikely circumstances.
Camella, a disarmingly attractive 20-year-old with a charming smile, played in a band called North Dakota during his freshman year at the University of Cincinnati. Through mutual friends, guitarist Michael Norris made known his desire to join the group through a lunchtime meeting with the band.“So we played a couple of weeks, and then everyone gave up except [Mike and me],” says Camella.
“So we kept working on the songs that we had written as that little project.” Those songs eventually bloomed into the band’s first single “Rowboats,” as well as “On the Hill,” which remain two of Indigo Wild’s strongest pieces.
Drummer Jason Winner learned of Camella through his girlfriend. “I wasn’t playing music and I desperately wanted to play music with somebody,” recalls Winner, an Ohio State student. “My girlfriend was always like, ‘Well, there’s this guy on UC’s campus and he does solo acoustic stuff. You should ask him to play drums.’ So I was just picturing this Jason Mraz guy.”
“Which I was,” Camella admits with a laugh.
At a Local Natives concert in Columbus, Camella and Winner spotted each other, after which Camella swears he “felt something” between the two. He soon sent what he calls a “really awkward” online message, which spawned jam sessions between the three musicians.Bassist Chris Carter, another Ohio State student and the only member of the band legally allowed to drink, joined after friends of Camella’s ex-girlfriend talked of a “cute kid in the fucking dorms that played music,” says Camella. Remembering these conversations, Camella messaged Carter suggesting a jam session.
Carter arrived, appearing nervous in front of the other three members, but they soon started playing. And it just worked. “We finished ‘Rowboats’ and we were like, ‘Shit.’ And then we were a band,” says Camella.
“He just laid down the most disgusting bass line I’ve ever heard,” asserts Winner. “So we all just looked at each other and were like, ‘OK.”
“We didn’t question anything from there,” Camella adds. “We just went with it. I don’t even think we made anything official. We just accepted we were a band.”
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Indigo Wild is anchored by its three-part harmonies. Camella, Carter and Norris each add a layer to the vocals and provide a timeless sound both on the record and in a live environment.
Carter claims that the complex vocal arrangements are “probably the most natural thing we’ve ever done as a band.”
“We knew we wanted that sound,” Camella adds. “There’s nothing like voices harmonizing together. But getting there was definitely, like, step by step.”
Adds Norris; “Our demo sounds more Fleet Fox-esque than If By Sea, with a more acoustic sound.” As their songs and recordings grew more refined, the group upped the electric sound and came out with a sound more reminiscent to the band at whose show Camella and Winner first saw each other.
Norris’ voice was the missing piece that helped boost the band to where it wanted to be. Before Indigo Wild, the guitarist, whose smooth and fluent licks add yet another weapon to the group, didn’t sing much at all. Getting comfortable as a singer, as well as gaining the comfort of singing together with different parts, took time. But the time was well spent.
It’s shocking how new Indigo Wild is to playing together. The band’s first show occurred September 3, 2010, and in the time since, the group has played numerous times throughout the state of Ohio, plus once in Kentucky..
Even so, it’s hard to imagine Indigo Wild being caged inside Ohio for much longer. With each show, the band has grown stronger and has received positive responses at each gig.
“We’ve been received really well,” says Carter. “Honestly, we’ve had so much positive support since day one, from anyone who could possibly be involved.”
That doesn’t mean it’s been incredibly easy. Growing as a group in the Columbus and Cincinnati music scenes, Winner says there is always a challenge to get better.
“I think the thing about Cincinnati and Columbus is that there’s so many bands and such a huge art culture that you sort of have to make yourself stand out. It’s easy to write off certain bands because there’s so many.”
By releasing its debut EP last month, Indigo Wild has definitely done its job in standing out. The five-song album showcases a sound much more refined than anything three 20-year-olds and one 21-year-old should be able to put together in a basement.
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Each member of the band discovered his love for music at a young age. Winner, who sports a black leather jacket, thick-framed glasses and wavy blonde hair, credits his parents with allowing him to find love in bands such as the Beastie Boys, Nirvana and Metallica. After his dad bought him a drum set at the age of 13, he began taking lessons and soon after joined a band in high school where he learned to play as loud as he could.
Carter, tall and lanky but with a winning smile and quirky sense of humor, readily admits the “nerdy” nature of his discovery of the bass. Seeing a friend play the instrument in seventh grade jazz band and thinking it looked cool, he went out that very same night and “spent half of [his] money on an old Fender Squier bass.” He soon found himself playing in the high school jazz band himself and now enjoys “having a little bit of bass sex” onstage.
Norris looks the geekiest of the four members of the group. He wears very thin glasses and his blonde hair is cut short around the sides and grows longer on top. This shouldn’t fool anyone, for after talking with him for only two minutes it becomes quite clear that he’s enviably cool. After picking up a guitar in the fourth grade, he became hooked on the idea. It took until eighth grade for him to get his own instrument, which he plays left-handed even though he is typically right-handed. “Back then all I listened to was Led Zeppelin,” he says. “I went through some weird phases. I had a rap phase, classic rock, punk and then I heardRadiohead and my life changed.” He says this last part with a laugh, but it’s obvious that Jonny Greenwood has had quite the influence on Indigo Wild’s lead guitarist.
Camella’s parents were the ones who bought him a guitar when he was in fourth grade. He would sit in his room and pretend to play along with his boombox for imaginary audiences. He eventually started getting serious about the instrument in the seventh grade, when he began taking lessons. “I’ve also always been in choir and theater,” he says.
While their parents may have helped each member discover music, that doesn’t mean that they have all been entirely comfortable with the amount of time their children put into the group.
“I think my parents are really supportive of me and they want to see me do what I want to do,” says Camella. “At the same time, I think it’s the practicality of the whole thing.”
Winner notes that his own father, who believes school is very important, can also see that the band is what truly makes his son happy. “I think [Jason’s] dad comes to our shows and can see our passion,” explains Camella. “Whereas our parents, they’re just listening for everything at face value, and don’t really see what we’re trying to accomplish.”
“I want this to be what I do for the rest of my life. I want to be the Rolling Stones and I wanna be onstage looking like I’m about to die, but I’m still playing ‘Rowboats,’” says Winner with a huge laugh.
“I think all four of us want to take this project as far as it can go,” says Carter, with true passion behind his eyes. “This started out as maybe a hobby but as we started making music together and becoming closer friends, we all started realizing that this isn’t a hobby anymore. This is a business. It’s everything we’re trying to make it. And we’re just trying to push this as far as we can, with as much energy and passion as we can bring.”
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Following a day of long car rides, video shoots and interviews, the band takes a break to attend a local friend’s improv show in Athens before it plays Casa Cantina later that evening. Winner arrives at the venue first, where he talks to me about buying records and how rad it is to finally live in his own apartment rather than a dorm. There are constant reminders of the youthful nature of the band.
Finally taking the stage at 12:30, Indigo Wild swings the crowd into motion. Winner drums with an intensity that he attempts to mask by his calm demeanor, but by the end of his show he can’t hold it in. Carter lays down his “sexy” bass lines. Carmella and Norris rage into scorching guitar freakouts. All the while the harmonies sound just as pristine as they do on If By Sea.
By the time the group closes with a boisterous version of “Rowboats” in which they extend the final chorus, screaming it out with smiles seen on each face. The crowd screams it back, dancing all the while. When it ends, there are yells begging for one more song, and the band looks ready. They want this. But when they look to the sound engineer, Indigo Wild is denied an encore. With a sad shrug from the band, it starts to pack up its gear.
Nevertheless, there’s a definite buzz in the crowd when the show is over, a buzz that undoubtedly suggests that Indigo Wild won’t have to worry about being denied an encore much longer.
