Article published Sep 18, 2008

Band ‘Caught Up’ with originals
By ANDREW S. HUGHES Tribune Staff Writer

Jim Robinson had no intention of forming another band when he invited Steven Barr and Rebecca LeVeque over for a jam session a little more than two years ago.

Then he heard LeVeque’s voice and some of her original songs, and suddenly, the three of them were asking Bruce Langton to play keyboards and guitar and Frank Santilli to play drums with them.

“She played one of her songs, and I was really impressed with it,” Robinson says about that first jam session and ZONIXX the Band’s beginning. “Once you play a lot, it gets in your blood, and the music sounded great and I thought this would be an opportunity to play out again. … I was impressed with her voice. There was something different, and there seemed to be an honesty in her voice.”

Now, ZONIXX will release its debut album, “Get Caught Up,” with a gig at the Midway Tavern on Saturday, two weeks to the day after Barr and LeVeque married.

“I went down to Rebecca’s basement just shortly after I had started dating her, and they were playing some music I didn’t recognize, but it was really good,” Barr says about discovering LeVeque’s songwriting talent. “I asked who had done that song and she said, ‘I wrote that song.’ It amazed me that she was just doing this in her basement and not letting it go, not getting it out there.”

Not so, anymore. From the beginning, ZONIXX has incorporated its originals — mostly LeVeque’s pop-rockers, but three of the other band members also write — into their set lists of classic and contemporary rock.

“They like you to do cover tunes,” Langton says about most audiences at area clubs. “Us being artists, we like to do our originals. As we do our gigs, if there are 10 songs per set, we’ll throw in a couple of our tunes. As the evening goes on, we’ll ask if the audience wants more originals, and sometimes they say yes, which is real nice.”

Robinson, who has played in Mack Pherson & the Struts With Jackie Pittman, Skybolt and The Jimmy James Band, says it was “exciting” to finally be able to record one of his songs — “Gossip Tree” — with a band.

“I’ve done mostly cover tunes, and every time I’ve mentioned originals in other bands,” he says, “they’d say, ‘Maybe some day,’ and that day never materialized.”

Robinson’s “Gossip Tree” has an ominous, slow-burning ’70s hard rock feel to it, while Barr’s “I Wasn’t Looking” has a late-’60s electric blues-rock feel, and Langton’s “Don’t You Understand” has a similar pop-rock feel to it as LeVeque’s songs.

On “Get Caught Up,” that aspect of LeVeque’s songwriting comes through on such songs as “Lipstick” and “Crash Landing,” while “Push” has an edgy, defiant outlook and the title song has an urgent, upbeat feel to it.

“Sometimes, when you just want to tune out and forget about things, it’s fun to pick up your guitar and come up with a new melody, something you’ve never heard before,” she says about songwriting and cites Alanis Morrisette, Heart and The Cranberries as influences. “A subject comes up and is in my head, and I’ll build on that idea. I use to write poems.”

LeVeque “begged” for a guitar for her 13th birthday, got one and took lessons and learned from various musician friends after that.

One of those musicians was Santilli — the two have known each other since they were teenagers, and, he says, he used to sneak her into Peddler’s Pub to play her guitar.

“Her songs were always rock ’n’ roll but on acoustic guitar,” he says about LeVeque’s songs. “A lot of people would try to push her into a folk or country category, but it isn’t. … This band has been nothing but a good thing. It’s made the music stronger and tighter.”

LeVeque agrees about both the former perception of her songs and the effect the band has had on her music.

“For years, my music was just acoustic and it was just myself, so it was a softer style and would almost sound like a folk sound,” she says. “It’s evolved into a fuller sound. It sounds better. I like the fuller sound of the band. It makes it more of a rock style.”

For eight years, LeVeque worked at the Woodwind and Brasswind, and while there, she bought equipment and started holding Friday-night jam sessions in her basement.

“It was a fun thing to do, but it helped me learn how to play with other musicians because my songs weren’t structured,” she says. “I just played in a freestyle.”

After she and Barr started dating, Santilli convinced the two of them to form an acoustic trio with him to play gigs at The Volcano restaurant before Barr’s chance run-in with Robinson that led to ZONIXX’s formation.

“We just happened to meet at just the right time,” LeVeque says about forming the band. “I finally had the opportunity to meet with the right musicians at the right time. Sometimes, I wish we were all in our 20s, but it wouldn’t have happened because we wouldn’t have our life experiences. I hadn’t planned to play in a band. It just happened, and so far, it’s been good.”

As for “Get Caught Up,” the band looked inward to design the album’s cover: Three of the band’s members, after all, are professional artists. Barr and LeVeque work as graphic designers, and Langton is a fine artist and an illustrator for children’s books, including “H Is for Hoosier,” which is used across the state to teach Indiana history to fourth graders.

“It was my idea originally to have us standing around a back alley, like we were outside a lounge or tavern taking a break,” Langton says about the back cover photo, taken in the alley behind McCormick’s Coney Island in South Bend. “It started raining, which is cool because that happens at gigs. Steve and Rebecca were dancing in some, and then somebody said, ‘Pretend you’re putting on some makeup.’ As soon as she did that, we knew we had to move ‘Lipstick’ to the No. 1 slot (on the CD). Sometimes you get happy mistakes.”

Barr came up with the concept for the album’s title, “Get Caught Up.”

“Steve and Rebecca’s original concept was to have the broken TV out there,” Langton says, “and it was meant to say, ‘Throw the TV out and go out and see some live entertainment and get caught up.”