Fighting Gravity: The Frat Trap
OK, class, pop quiz. Question: Assume there is a crowd-pleasing seven-piece ska-influenced group from Richmond, Va. Let them be called Fighting Gravity. Take as a given that every year, Fighting Gravity travel tens of thousands of miles up and down the Eastern seaboard playing both on and around college campuses for varying fees. Factor in that the band has done so ever since its founding at Virginia Polytechnic Institute approximately one decade ago. Now calculate exactly what Fighting Gravity have learned after all that up-close experience with higher education.
Answer: That they’re ready to graduate. Now.
Tonight, a Thursday in December just a week before exams, the band is heading down Interstate 64 west from Richmond to the University of Virginia in Charlottesville to play a fraternity party at Chi Phi. Tomorrow evening is a student-union gig at Washington College, a small school on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Saturday night will find the band providing entertainment at the Tower Club, one of Princeton University’s coeducational eating clubs — basically a frat with less beer and more attitude.
It’s another grueling road trip for the tireless and industrious Fighting Gravity, who play 150 to 200 dates a year while somehow keeping their day jobs in Richmond. Four of them — guitarist David “Tree” Triano, bassist Dave Peterson, keyboardist Eric Lawson and trombonist Chris Leitch — work for the Dalkon Shield Claimants Trust. Lead singer Schiavone McGee is a care analyst assisting uninsured patients at a Richmond hospital, while drummer Mike Boyd teaches music. Only the most recent recruit, saxophonist Karl vonKlein, doesn’t work another gig — he feels that Fighting Gravity is his job. During the week most of their college and club gigs are within three or four hours from home. On the weekend the band members — who range in age from 23 to 30 — cover much of the East Coast, from Florida to Vermont, in an ongoing struggle to at long last become a full-time national touring and recording band instead of local heroes and campus darlings.
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Over the years members have come and gone, and even the band’s name has changed. It was only last year that it switched from Boy O Boy to Fighting Gravity because of trademark problems. “It’s fitting,” says McGee, “because, believe me, it’s been a fuckin’ fight the whole way.”
In recent years a number of bands playing the same lively Eastern circuit of campus gigs and college-town club dates have graduated to major-label deals and the big time. One of them is a little band by the name of Hootie and the Blowfish. Then there’s Better Than Ezra, From Good Homes, Edwin McCain, Seven Mary Three and, of course, the band’s Virginia homeboys, Dave Matthews Band. For the guys in Fighting Gravity, the success of these one-time colleagues is both exciting and, though they are loath to say so, a tad worrisome. It can’t be easy for Fighting Gravity — and other unsigned bands like Spider Monkey, the Gibb Droll Band, Too Skinnee J’s and Egypt — to await their shot patiently. As gracious as these fellows are, a big question hangs over them: When does our turn finally come? Then there’s a tougher question: Does our turn ever come?
“We feel a mix of excitement, jealousy and anxiety,” says McGee. “You’re happy for any brother band that signs on the dotted line, but it gets you thinking.” “About two years ago we were supposed to play a show with Hootie in Chapel Hill [N.C.],” says Peterson, “but we both got punted from the bill for a cover band, the Stegmans, who did, like, ‘Amie,’ by Pure Prairie League.”
More than most bands playing college campuses, Fighting Gravity seem a professional operation. Virtually everything they make playing these shows and selling their CDs and merchandise goes right back into the band. While the band’s touring life is by no means glamorous, it’s a cut above the usual college act. They eat regularly and mount a serious production with two crew members who travel ahead of the band with the equipment and do damage control.
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