Having grown up exclusively during the current millennium, it could be guessed that the seminal influences of rock musicians just entering their 20s might be bands like Kings of Leon or The Black Keys. Perhaps something like Parquet Courts if these folks were able to find the underground. Yet upon hearing The Kubes, it’s obvious their musical passions come from a generation (or two) before the music that’s been dominating rock radio formats for the last two decades. A brand-new live album captures just what this trio is all about.
“Before getting together, all three of us had played in other groups,” said Kubes singer/guitarist Travis Flippo. “We had all been dissatisfied with the direction music was going. A lot of the groups around Fort Worth are sort of punk influenced. The punk kind of attitude didn’t really appeal to us. I suppose we’re much older souls than that.”
The name The Kubes is a subtle hint toward where Flippo, bassist Spencer Fortner, and drummer Landry Smith draw their inspiration. The moniker isn’t just a tricked-up spelling of the geometrical shape. It’s actually an homage to Stanley Kubrick. It’s the auteur’s general Technicolor milieu that informs the band’s cultural core. Paisley-printed psych-rock makes up the marrow in the bones of their sound, especially, according to Flippo, the most quintessential of power trios.
“What really got me into playing guitar was hearing Eric Clapton playing on the Cream records,” he said. “I showed Cream to the other guys and said we should really get a band going like this. They also only needed three guys.”
While a thicker, syrupy psychedelia a la the Jack Bruce-fronted jam band certainly does form the basis of much of The Kubes’ early music, with Discovery One, their second album, released in November, the trio seem to channel a different version of ’60s flower power: The Beach Boys. Discovery One is a pseudo concept album about an unnamed protagonist who, while exploring the cosmos, learns to play “space blues” over the course of the 11 songs. Tracks like “Moon Going Round” and “The Ninth Circle” leave behind the heavier sound from the band’s first album, With The Kubes, and give way to an airy Brian Wilson-esque pop. With lines like “The mountains are made of paint / My eyes are made of glass / I’m going to Hermit’s Pass / So come on a safari with me,” Flippo’s lyrics are rife with wit and whimsy as the tale of the galactic musical journey unfolds.
“Our sense of humor is what keeps the band going,” Flippo said. “It keeps our spirits up, so we like to infuse that into our music. We enjoy writing funky, far-out lyrics that are more wordplay-involved than maybe a heartfelt message.”
Beefier versions of the above songs appear seamlessly alongside renditions of some of their earlier heavy material on Live at Dr. Jeckyll’s, the latest document of The Kubes’ jam-centric freakouts onstage. The performance was tracked in January at Pantego’s Dr. Jeckyll’s Beer Lab and showcases the trio’s penchant for hooky melody and drawn-out psychedelic improvisation.
“We wanted to do a little bit of everything,” Flippo said. “Some of our fans like the older stuff, and some of them like the newer stuff better, so we wanted to try and equally represent everything. We wanted to try and give a good representation of what The Kubes do onstage.”
In keeping with their signature playful sense of humor, to tease the release of Live at Dr. Jeckyll’s, the band staged a “leak” of the record on social media, a tongue-in-cheek attempt at promotional intrigue.
“I’ve been told by girlfriends and other fans of the band that we’re the least mysterious band out there,” Flippo said with a laugh. “People love to see and hear things they’re not supposed to, so this was our way of trying to add some interest around the album release.”
When asked if — to borrow the title of Robert Heinlein’s classic sci-fi opus — Flippo and the other Kubes feel like strangers in a strange land, offering their groovy brand of space blues in a world made mostly of post-punk and Red Dirt, he shrugged it off.
“The bottom line is, if what music you’re making makes you happy and you’re proud of it, that’s all that really matters.”
