Playing in the band: The origins of ‘Pollen’

I never really enjoyed going to parties in college, until I was in the band playing at them. It’s because of this indescribable excitement, balanced with an element of chaos, which I have grown addicted to. It all started off as brief practice sessions in the basement of the music school. That’s where we shuffled around our line up, trying to find committed musicians. This is easier said than done, and in the end I wound up as the bassist, a role I never expected considering I had come to college as a guitarist of nearly 10 years.

We had a four man line up: Blake on drums, myself on bass, Mike on guitar and vocals, and Chris “Topher” playing trumpet. Collectively we formed the first incarnation of Pollen. As we played parties, more and more often people seemed to come. We got invited back every weekend and started slowly developing a little network of fans.

The parties were fun, but we had aspirations to be in the spotlight. Our friend Matt needed to record a band for a project and we gladly took the offer, giving us a crisp recording that we could send to bars. We also were asked to record audio and video of an acoustic performance for ACE TV, a student based project to record emerging musicians at Ithaca College. After we finished the ACE TV session one of the sound engineers timidly approached us, casually mentioning that he played piano and would love to play with us.

Well we took him up on his offer, and hours after his first rehearsal we played the Pub in IC for an IC Progressives benefit concert. I remember this was the first time I ever played under lights, and I save that memory as one of the first stepping stones for Pollen. Anthony managed to keep up, so we added him to our family, giving Pollen a new fifth member.

Not long after, we were asked to do an interview for an online radio show. Being the practical jokesters we are, the interview quickly deviated from reason after the host asked us about the inspiration of our songs and if we had any pre-show rituals.

We hadn’t played any real shows yet and so the whole thing devolved into a pretty vulgar comedic game of tennis between the band, with us stating that our pre-show routine consisted of some sort of bizarre candle-lit ritual in the woods (totally bogus of course).

We felt like perhaps our group had plateaued because, despite a growing fan base that supported our antics and liked our music, we were still finding it difficult to play legitimate gigs. We sent our Demo tapes, a compilation of our old recordings and videos, and managed to play our first bar show a week before summer began. We realized that perhaps we needed help to get in touch with the right people so Mike contacted Bubba from Ithaca Underground to help us book some gigs.

We played the McNeil Music stage at Ithaca Fest, and when we talked to him after he said our sound was popular enough that we could make it on our own with a little more initiative and (of course) a little luck.

Over the summer I worked at the observatory on Campus and Topher had a day job at Starbucks. In our spare time we started putting together a small EP with this trio entitled “Naked Ghosts”. Somehow, Mike managed to get us a show in Long Island, his hometown, at the Amityville Music Hall. Topher and I split from our jobs and took off on the road trip, not really knowing what to expect.

When we got there, Mike was in his basement desperately banging away at this drum set saying (mostly to himself) that he can play the drums for the gig. It turns out he was extremely ill with an infection that had spread into his blood, and our drummer couldn’t make the trip.

The next morning our pianist and second vocalist Anthony showed up, and Mike was now wrapped up in a blanket cocooned on the couch shouting feverish non-sense. It was four hours until sound check and we had no idea what to do.

We got to the venue without Mike, and wandered around with an envelope full of money from the tickets he had sold. The bar was plastered with stickers and every employee had a mix of menacing tattoos and facial piercings. We quickly realized this venue is not what we had in mind.

Regardless, we optimistically set up everything including a guitar and microphone in case Mike rallied, and then went into the parking lot to patch together an impromptu alternative set for a Piano, Bass, and Trumpet trio in case he couldn’t make it.

A large crowd amassed, entirely composed of faces none of us recognized, including an enormous party of Mike’s family and friends lined up alongside the bar. Punk music blasted through the house speakers and the three of us frantically looked at each other, desperately hoping our front man would show up.

Five minutes after show time, and probably one minute before we would have been booed off the stage, Mike stumbled in and hopped up, mumbling to himself “it’s all about the comeback…It’s all about the comeback…”

He approached the microphone and flatly stated: “Hey folks, we’re Pollen. I have a fever of a 102. Let’s fucking rock.”

With that we blast off into a pretty solid set that had everyone dancing by the end. We encored with a cover of a Phish song, and as I headed to the bathroom afterwards a gnarly looking biker shook my hand with a grip that made my bones creak and said, “Damn, I don’t know what you guys were playing but that was awesome!” I just laughed, wondering how we managed to encore a Phish cover at a punk rock bar to a cheering crowd.

The ride back to Ithaca was an afterglow of sorts. It’s not like we hit the big time, but it’s a crazy feeling to hop out of the menial shuffle of a day job to hit the road and drive 200+ miles to play some music.

After the summer it was our senior year and we realized that this was the last stretch to see how far we could take this. We opened the year by organizing a show with the other biggest bands playing on campus at the time (Imperials and Scopes Monkey Trial), and pulled in a huge crowd all the way out to The Dock, a venue that lies on the edge of Lake Cayuga (host of a weekly reggae night and jazz jam).

After our success with The Dock show we played a series of concerts, hitting Lot 10 one weekend and The Nines the next. Slowly it became nearly routine. You get to the venue and talk to the sound guy, get your gear up on stage, grab a few drinks, wait, and then it’s time to Rock and Roll.

Just when everything seemed to be going smoothly, our pianist Anthony informed us that at the end of the semester he’s going to drop out of college to pursue a solo music career. This hurt our morale but we understood, and as a sort of parting gift Anthony used his position as a Sound Recording Technology Major to get us into the studio to record the first full band Pollen EP.

Shortly after, our friends in Scopes Monkey Trial offered us a gig to open for them at The Haunt, which had been a personal dream of mine since I got to Ithaca. In fact the first time I had heard Ithaca referenced was the famous Phish show from The Haunt in 1991. The show was great, but it was bittersweet knowing Anthony was leaving us. We left for winter break, unsure of what the future of Pollen would be.

Coming back we focused on getting back to our roots and finding that signature sound we had cultivated originally. We played a few shows and realized that the return to the old line up sounded pretty good. Plus there’s no time to stop in this business – it’s sink or swim. We planned an EP release show at Lot 10, and to our surprise social media predicted a pretty enormous turnout.

The show was much larger than we expected, people dancing and swirling in excitement while slowly gravitating to the stage with their alcohol and sweat coming of in an pungent mist. I remember being on stage and noticing the faces in the crowd of kids I have physics classes with who were in disbelief that I was the one on stage. It made me feel like a mini rock star and I loved it.

After the exposure from the EP, things started moving faster. We were contacted by a huge out of town act called West End Blend, who is on a nationwide tour, who wanted us to open for them. It was an amazing experience, and an opportunity to see people living the lives that we were and are so desperately chasing.

Now we’ve been contacted by WICB radio to do a show and interview. We’ve also been contacted by Dan Smalls, the man behind every major curtain in the Ithaca music scene, to open for a Eleanor Friedberger at The Haunt which is an amazing opportunity to again play the venue I see as the pinnacle for any college band in Ithaca.

Retrospectively the whole thing feels like riding a wave. You feel the swell and you paddle along trying to catch it at just the right time. We’ve ridden that wave to little towns and big towns, random bars and cafes, but it’s always worth it to see our name in lights, and on chalkboards and (finally) on tickets. Who knows what the future holds, but looking back it’s been a wild ride and I’ve enjoyed every minute.