Meghan
Taylor squirms in an old, torn-up beauty parlor chair in her band’s South Avenue rehearsal space.
“Can
I just say that I’ve had my bags packed for four years? So I’m ready whenever
anybody’s ready,” she says. “My shit’s packed.”
Taylor,
a pink-haired popster, is the lead singer for Bee
Eater, a furious hard-rock locomotive. The band plays at local venues where its
perfect blend of pop and hard rock keeps the audiences singing and headbanging along.
But
the quartet is starting to outgrow this town. Venues are limited; fans are
easily bored. You can play the same joint just so many times before you’re
taken for granted. Sometimes a band has to go away before it’s truly
appreciated on its home turf.
And
that’s been Taylor’s goal all along: start a band, make a record, hit the
road, don’t look back. But Bee Eater wasn’t born with
a blue print. It was born over Blue Ribbons.
“Me
and Sid, the original bass player, started it because we were just drinking
buddies and wanted to start a band,” says drummer Todd “Grimey”
Groemminger.
Bee
Eater started out four years ago as a straight-ahead all-male hard-rock outfit.
Taylor — who was spinning her wheels in Candy Dammit
— was asked to join the band after the members realized none of them could
actually sing. Taylor’s punky, funky, big ’80s take on
music immediately rescued the band from being simply another good band — and
not because she’s a woman.
“I
don’t think having a chick in front is such a novelty anymore,” says Taylor.
“It’s
a rarity in the type of rock that we do,” Groemminger
says. “Meghan definitely sets it apart because she’s a good singer,
she looks good up front, and she bounces all over the place. We were doing more
hard rock, stoner rock kinda stuff. Meghan brought in
a bit of pop and new wave. It fit great.”
Try
to get the band to imagine or describe itself without Taylor and the members laugh; guitarist Brian Dudley pretends to
snore.
The
current lineup came about with a certain degree of rock ‘n’ roll haphazardness.
Guitar monster Dudley was offered the gig four days before a show. He opted to
wait two weeks and actually learn the material. Bassist and newest member Chris
Clinton didn’t.
“I
think I had only four days,” Clinton says. “Because in two days my hands
really hurt.”
Bee Eater is muscular
and sleek, playing about as heavy as you can without skirting metal territory. Taylor sings beautifully between bellows and howls from pipes
twice the size of her small frame. She vaults and pinballs
around the bandstand while the rest of the band digs in and cops the cool lean.
The act is forceful and engaging and just plain good and hard. The band’s well-balanced
pop-rock is what sets it apart from any other act in Rochester.
The
band has recorded four EPs, saturated the regional market, and seems to have
bumped the local ceiling. It’s time to hit the highway.
But
reality, various excuses, or legitimate reasons rear their heads. And so does
the band’s penchant for perfection. Taylor’s not happy with any of the recordings thus far.
“I
can’t get a recording that sounds as good as I think we are live,” she says.
It’s an age-old band problem. So is parenthood; Clinton and Dudley both have babies less than a year old.
But
Taylor’s restlessness isn’t going away. She’s aligned herself with
flexible day jobs so she can take time off when the road calls. In some ways,
she’s already gone.
“I
just want to tour,” she says.
“I’m
ready to go, too,” Groemminger says. “I’m just
waiting to have a good record — not one that’s CD-R’d.”
Bee
Eater is in the studio now working on a record slated to drop in late spring.
Maybe it will help launch the band past city limits.
“As
soon as this record comes out, we’re going to play everywhere possible,” says Groemminger. “Day trips, and if that works out, expand it. If we can actually pull off a tour, off we go.”
Bee Eater plays with Krypton 88 and New York Vaults Saturday, March 18, at
The Bug Jar, 219
Monroe Avenue,
at 9
p.m. $6. 21+. www.beeeaterband.com
This article appears in Feb 22-28, 2006.
