Over the past five years, through several iterations, Common Center has plied its Psych/Groove/Prog wares around Greater Cincinnati, amassing a loyal fan base while tweaking its Indie Jam sound. Until late last year, Common Center’s development had been undocumented in the studio; that changed just before Thanksgiving when the Northern Kentucky septet released its excellent debut album, Gypsy River.
Oddly enough, Common Center formed in the same way Jim Phelps assembled a Mission: Impossible strike force in the ’70s — one gifted team member at a time. The process began with guitarist/lead vocalist Liam Hall’s relocation from Dayton, Ohio to Covington, Ky., which led to a chance meeting with drummer Austin Garrison. After some cajoling, Hall convinced Garrison to retrieve his kit from his basement for a jam.
“We were both like, ‘Yeah, we need to do something with this,’ ” Garrison says. “It was almost instantaneous.”
After a year of duo work, Hall ran into Sasha Suskind (son of noted local Jazz flutist/saxophonist Sandy Suskind) playing guitar on a Clifton street and asked him to sit in with his twosome. Suskind responded that he also played saxophone, but didn’t immediately accept Hall’s invitation.
“I started in band in fourth grade, and this was where I started subconsciously trying to resolve my daddy issues the wrong way, so when they asked what I wanted to play, I said the saxophone… like dad,” Suskind says. “Liam kept texting me, and I was a depressed fucking teenager, I dropped out of high school, and finally I got this weird hair up my ass, and I was like, ‘I don’t have anything to do anymore, I’ll go play saxophone with this guy.’ ”
“I hounded him for a really long time,” Hall says. “Then it was a three-piece for awhile and we did recordings in the living room.”
Common Center went dark for a year, but Hall eventually rekindled the duo with Garrison. In impossibly short order, the band expanded. First came keyboardist/vocalist Lewis Connell, who offered his services after seeing the band live.
“I was a fan before I was a member,” Connell says. “For about two hours.”
Hall then met violinist Jessica Graff at a late-night party. Graff supports Hall’s claim that she recruited him as her spiritual advisor.“He gave me spiritual homework and then brainwashed me into joining the band,” she says.
“It was loud and we were all drunk, but there was this really drunk guy who was like, ‘You should play in my band,’” Hall says. “And I leaned over and said (whispering), ‘You should play in my band.’”
Graff had little interest in anyone’s band, but eventually she relented to Hall’s persistence and sat in on some gigs. She was hooked.
“I wasn’t really feeling the music anymore,” Graff says. “But he gave me some space and kept reaching out, and I finally gave it a shot. I told them, ‘This is what I’ve been looking for.’ ”
Next came percussionist/vocalist Ian Smith, a fan who became a member by virtue of constantly attending shows and jamming with the band. Although Common Center employed a bassist, Dennis DeZarn had topped Hall’s original list; when DeZarn’s then-band, Dept. Store Alligators, packed it in, he was offered Common Center’s bass role. The final puzzle piece clicked when Suskind saw the band in its newly expanded form and rejoined the fold.
“We basically went from a two-piece to a seven-piece in six to eight months,” Hall says.
One of the natural pitfalls of large bands — particularly ones that draw on influences as wide ranging as Classic Rock (“My mom took me to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame when I was 3, and lost me, then found me on a listening station listening to The Who’s greatest hits,” Suskind says), Prog, Psychedelia, World, Ska/Reggae, Folk, Tango, Pop, Jazz, Hip Hop, Classical, R&B, Punk, Metal and carnival music — is the tendency of members to run into and over each other. Common Center isn’t afflicted with that problem; the musicians play with an almost supernatural synchronicity.
“All seven of us were the singer in different bands previously,” Smith says. “The fact that we get along musically is weird because we all come from being the star. We’ve already had that, so we’re totally OK with not being that.”
“It’s our listening,” Hall says. “We listen.”
“I think we all want to write good songs,” DeZarn adds. “We want what’s best for the song, not what’s going to make us shine (individually).”
Common Center’s ongoing sonic evolution has been fascinating. With the septet established and hitting on all cylinders, the sound — self-described as Psychedelic Gypsy Rock — exists somewhere at the intersection of Rusted Root, Destroyer and the dramatic Prog Pop of ’70s cultists Pavlov’s Dog.
“The sound has definitely evolved,” Hall says. “The reason I love playing with other people is they inspire me to write. When we write together, just out of jams, you start imagining what everyone can do. So the album is half songs that I’d written a long time ago that we’ve played and kept alive, and the other half is new stuff that we’ve all composed together. On the way here, (I heard) a radio interview with a composer and he was like, ‘I write quiet music and loud music.’ I’d like to think I write pretty music and dark music.”
“Like (the Common Center song) ‘Inner Earth,’ it’s pretty and then it goes ‘Yaaaarrh,’ ” Smith notes.
“I love to mash up major and minor,” Connell says.
“ ‘Inner Earth’ is a good example, it kind of covers a lot of stuff,” DeZarn adds. “Bi-polar.”
However the band’s sound is ultimately identified, Common Center will be creating a lot of it in 2016. The group has already written a wealth of soon-to-be-recorded new material since completing Gypsy River, which itself evolved from stage to studio.
“We were all rewriting parts,” Graff says. “It was an all-day process of ‘Let’s try this or that.’ Liam let us be very free with it.”
“I don’t know why I use math to describe this, but I think every song grew into twice what it was before, once we put it under that microscope,” Suskind says. “At least twice.”
And there’s the new tagline — Common Center, masters of Exponential Rock.
COMMON CENTER (commoncentersounds.com) plays Jan. 30 at Covington’s Leapin’ Lizard Lounge and Feb. 6 at Newport’s Thompson House.
This article appears in Jan 6-13, 2016.