Gang(er) Activity

It’s a rainy summer
evening and new york trio Doppelganger has convened after hours at
Ludlow Guitars on the Lower East Side, where guitarist Robert Stewart
picks up a paycheck. Though Stewart and his bandmates, singer and
drummer Ryan Hines and bassist Joey Hamm, now live in Brooklyn, the
Lower East Side is still home. It’s where Hines and Stewart, while
working around the corner at the now defunct Ini Ani coffee shop, decided to
form a band, choosing the name Doppelganger because customers so often
got them confused.

It’s also the vicinity of many of the band’s shows,
and even on this dreary night, the draw of the neighborhood, full of
chatter and music wafting out of bars, is clear. Ludlow Guitars also
happens to have a convenient practice space in its basement. During the
interview, another band’s rehearsal pulses up through the floors.

Doppelganger
makes garage rock with all the best elements of pop: memorable
melodies, major keys, fast tempos. Hines, who goes by the stage name Ryan Oh-no, speed skater pun intended, has only been playing drums for
a couple years, and describes the kind of happy terror in trying to
sing while keeping rhythm when the band first started out in 2008. There was some talk of just using a drum machine, but the idea was
quickly rejected as not very rock ‘n’ roll. On stage, it’s hard to tell
Hines hasn’t been drumming all his life, and the singer-drummer tension
only adds to the band’s charisma, as if the drums and voice are pacing
each other in a race. It doesn’t hurt that he’s the joker in the band,
putting on voices and finding charming things to say about beer both at
a recent show and during our interview.

The live set pulls from the band’s just-released first EP, Get It Over With Already, which
was self-released on iTunes. Written by Hines and stewart before
bassist Hamm joined the band, it’s a chaotic, fun, emotional six-song
collection featuring a standout potential single, “Breaks My Head,”
which drove a recent crowd at Williamsburg’s Glasslands to dizzy
moshing. The band’s newer material features input from all three
members, though some early tracks will carry over to the full-length
album. As of yet, the band is unsigned, but looking. “You can kind of
make it happen without a label to a certain point now,” Stewart, who
goes by the stage name R. Francis, says. But “at some point you need
external help from people who know what they’re doing,” Hamm adds.

Regardless
of where the band ends up, touring will no doubt be a top priority. Few
bands seem to mind that touring is where the money comes from now, and
Doppelganger is no exception. Frequent gigs in new york plus years in
other bands have prepared the three well. They’ll start with an East
Coast tour in the fall and work from there. “If I could make the same
amount of money
touring 200 days a year, I mean, why not?” says Hines, who freelances
in the film industry. “That’s what we love to do, that’s what we’re
good at doing.” Hines admires the approaches of Fugazi and Black Rebel
Motorcycle Club. “I really look at bands like Fugazi, who have done it
themselves since the beginning, and they just do it and they don’t
complain about it and it’s just like, that’s their job.” In the
meantime, the band members will hold down their day jobs.

New York may be home, but Doppelganger is looking forward to playing out of
state and abroad, if only to experience different audiences. The guys
don’t see themselves relocating, but admit that coming back to new york
after a tour will reinvigorate them and their New York fans. While only
in their late twenties, the band members are, as they point out, older
than many local bands just starting out. Age has brought some maturity
and wisdom to the equation. Hines and Hamm, who also plays in Dead Sparrows and used to play with Solid Gold, knew each other back in
Madison, Wis., but being in New York—away from Madison’s insular music
scene—turned a friendly musical rivalry into a friendship and now, a
front-and-center collaboration. The bond between all three of the
members is strong.

While they can easily get in “huge fights” while
discussing their own very different music tastes, something clicks when
they start to write and record. Hamm says it’s a “healthy, no-nonsense”
operation with equal input. Stewart backs him up: “The three of us are
definitely more interested in the final outcome of the song than any of
our respective egos. As a guitar player, I’m way more interested in
writing good songs than showing off any sort of technical skill that I
may or may not possess.”

>> Doppelganger

July 24, Bushwick Starr, 207 Starr St. (betw. Irving & Wyckoff Aves.), Brooklyn, www.bushwickstarr.org; 8, $10.