Higher Ground Music Festival Artist Preview: The Tragic Thrills
by Tim Wenger
The Tragic Thrills know what it’s like to live out of a van. They know what it’s like to drink crappy motel coffee every morning. They know what it’s like to drive 35 miles per hour across the country because the biggest blizzard of the winter seems to have the exact same tour dates as them, following them like a curse from the East Coast westward as their van rumbles on through 8 hour drives that should have been done in 5.
The San Diego-based folk/indie rockers also know what it’s like to poke their heads through the storm by getting on stage each night and jaw-dropping a crowd made up of everyone from the giggling teenage girls up front to aging, slurring dive bar staples staring from the back of the room. Not bad for a band that is coming up on their second birthday this year. “Our set is very dependent on the performance,” says front man Zach Porter. “It’s very raw. It’s very important for us to be on our game, and that starts with us being on stage in the pocket together, and that translates to the audience.”
The CMB team caught their second ever Denver gig on February 24 at Lost Lake Lounge in anticipation of their set at this year’s Higher Ground Music Festival. “We were so misguided, because we started (the tour) in Florida,” says Porter. Then they headed up to the northeast, which as anyone following the news has heard, has been continuously pelted with snow. “We were having the best time ever, then it slowly dawned on us that we were going to be annihilated every day. We’ve had so many days of ten hours of driving, driving through gushing winds and snowstorms.”
Their sound is a post-Lumineers, folk infused indie hybrid that on the surface represents the current trend in mainstream rock. But down deep, buried within the lyrics and brought through a captivating and emotional on-stage delivery by Porter, a deeper layer can be discovered. Denver seems to fit the band’s personality pretty well, although they did follow the snow in, and the abundance of good beer doesn’t hurt that cause. “It’s a really cool town here,” Porter says. “We met Denver fans, had a couple good beers. You guys got a lot of those!” Much better than the coffee they have been waking up to on tour. “It’s usually hotel coffee. It can be dark.”
“Emotionally dark,” laughs drummer Ans Gibson.
“But it’s the right price because it’s free,” Porter adds. It also keeps them from feeding the ulcer. “You drink one glass less a day when it’s ‘dark.’
The three guys, Gibson, Porter, and lead guitarist Chris Morrison, all came into this project with prior touring experience, so the road coffee is nothing new to them. “It was already our lifestyle (when we started the band),” Morrison says.
2013 saw the birth the band. Good beer, bad coffee, and the transient lifestyle were what the guys signed up for when they started The Tragic Thrills, and they wouldn’t have it any other way. “We just kind of accepted that already, it’s just inherent, a part of us,” says Porter. The live shows make it all worth it for the band. “We drive at least five hours every day, five people in a motel room, eating crappy food, just to go up on the stage. It’s definitely about the show. That’s what we’re here for, it’s what we like to do. The rest is cool, but very secondary.”
The band will be hitting the road again with Beta Play in June and will be finishing the writing of the next album which they hope to release following their performance at Higher Ground Music Festival August 21-22 here in Denver. Maybe Colorado Music Buzz will treat them to a steaming cup of fresh roasted coffee while they are in town. Grab tickets at highergroundmusicfestival.com.
Online: thetragicthrills.com
Category: Buzzworthy2
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