THE TAMBOUREENS: Something Old, Something New

by Keith Wilson
Fly Magazine photo by Steve Stoltzfus

Meet The Tamboureens, the Fab Five of Central PA. Part ’60s pop, part Motown and 100 percent rock and roll, these guys are ones to watch in the coming year. You heard it here first. Thanks to photographer Steve Stoltzfus for the cover shot – and to the band for jumping up and down so many times

“A pop song is always a pop song,”

And that, according to Tamboureens singer Sebastian Sizemore, explains his band’s uncanny ability to appeal to just about any music-listening demographic. It’s not the result of some elusive secret formula. On the contrary – apparently, when a band simply de-complicates things and stops trying to reinvent the wheel (oh, and in the process writes a batch of uncannily perfect pop songs), good things happen.

“People want to dance when they hear it. It’s not hard to like. You don’t have to sit there and think too much,” Sizemore frankly states. “You know, we can play our songs in front of senior citizens and get a very good reaction, and we can play in front of teenagers …”
While this could sound a bit presumptuous for band as young as The Tamboureens (all of whom are in their late teens or early 20s), the boast is not unwarranted. They keep a rigorous enough schedule of unbelievably diverse shows to support the claim. However, they owe this track record to what may at first blush seem like a novelty – their original songs sound as if they are being played through a time machine from the golden age of simple rock and roll.

The first question that may come to mind is just how a number of boys born in the late ’80s found themselves writing breezy, jangley pop tunes the Monkees would have traded Micky Dolenz for in order to sing and record. When asked about what drew him to a sphere of influences unlikely for a songwriter his age, Sizemore explains in his characteristically dispassionate manner, “You can’t really escape it on the radio, when you’ve got stations like 96.1 and stuff like that. I had grown up with it. I heard it all my life. I listened to this and that for a while, but when it came down to me being a singer and knowing what I wanted to sing, I kind of always knew that’s what I wanted to go for.”

It is as if it’s never occurred to Sizemore or his bandmates that their very specific taste in music, which has yielded an incredibly unique and bizarrely authentic sound, might be, well, a bit odd. That lack of pretense or self-consciousness may be the very reason for the authenticity. Maybe The Tamboureens really just happen to be a bunch of very young guys playing music that sounds like it was written 40 years ago. And maybe they just happen to be doing it damn near flawlessly. I continue to good-naturedly suspend disbelief as Sizemore says, “We never really said that’s what we wanted to play. It kind of just came out like that. We are all strongly influenced by that kind of music. But we never really discussed it.”

The Tamboureens also don’t agree that their music is a throwback to a long-passed era. Sizemore does admit that when they began about a year ago, the band had to sound like something, but he believes The Tamboureens are now beginning to come into their own. He says, “When you start out, you’ve got to have something to go by. But the more we’re playing together … it ends up sounding more like us and less like something else, even though the influences are still there.

“You know, a lot of people want to say that we sound like the Beatles and stuff, but I don’t think it ever really comes out that way,” he adds. “I think it’s kind of new, in a sense.”

Whether their sound is something new channeled through a Byrds/Beatles/Turtles filter, or something old through a we-are-not-old-at-all filter, what makes The Tamboureens what they are is their live performance. Sizemore talks about recording as if it is a fun and necessary part of the rock and roll pursuit, and yet something that is ultimately peripheral to the interface with a live audience. This interaction, and the band’s evolving stage show, is what drives The Tamboureens. In fact, if they could (and I’m guessing that before long they will), The Tamboureens would spend every waking moment doing it. I was surprised when I looked over their very busy schedule to see that they are playing everything from teenage birthday parties to the kind of rural bar that could be less than hospitable to five young guys in vests, skinny ties and striped socks. Shouldn’t they at least learn “Freebird” first, just in case?

The unflappable Sizemore describes the band’s experience at that sort of show: “I mean, there are times when we get a lot of requests for songs that we would never play. We don’t play Lynyrd Skynyrd, we don’t play Nickelback … and you have to sit there and explain it to somebody, and sometimes they’re already drunk.”

This sounds like a challenge The Tamboureens relish, though. They have four hours of music up their sleeves, obviously consisting largely of covers. Explains Sizemore, “We do anything from some ‘Bang a Gong’ to Bobby Darrin’s ‘Dream Lover’, a lot of ’50s Motown, early ’60s …”

Somehow, they pull it off, doubtlessly due in part to their unassuming optimism and persistence that, when factored in with The Tamboureens’ undeniable skill, can win over even the unlikeliest of fans. “When you play ‘Jailhouse Rock’ and then you go into an original with nice chords and a danceable beat and a good melody,” Sizemore says, “I think people tend to just like it for what it is.”

Despite their hectic schedule, The Tamboureens have found time to record and plan to work towards a full-length in the near future. There are plenty of musicians with a great deal of nostalgia for a faded era when recording your band meant cutting a few tracks with spontaneous energy, with everyone in an expertly miced room recording to big fat analog tape with minimal overdubs. Most of those musicians are now forced to meticulously labor over a computer keyboard to give their digital recordings some of that elusive analog warmth. The Tamboureens, however, befitting their effortless throwback spirit, managed to find a needle in a haystack: an actual, functioning analog studio at the Pennsylvania Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences in Gettysburg. Sizemore says, “I actually got to sing through a mic that Jimi Hendrix used. When you sing into the mic and hear the natural room reverb, you already sound like you’re on the radio.”

Sizemore and I spoke a good bit about the current state of mainstream music and how it has all changed over the decades. He doesn’t fret about what some might think is a sorry state, understanding that it has always been transitory. “What modern music is now is just as much of a fad,” he figures.

Content to listen to the “lesser-known Zombies and Beatles songs” for which he scours the record (and I do mean record) stores and the Internet, Sizemore dismisses mainstream rock and roll. “I think a lot of the beauty has been lost, a lot of the rawness has been lost,” he explains. However, he is a bit dichotomous in saying both, “I don’t think rock and roll ever changed,” and, “I think it never should have changed.” I think what Sizemore means is that if you find real rock and roll, at its core it is going to be the same thing it has always been. If it isn’t, then it was never the real thing in the first place.

And as unlikely as it all sounds, in their show, their recordings and most certainly their songs, The Tamboureens are the real deal.

The Tamboureens Are Hitting The Top Of The Music Lists!

With a wave of English invasion from the sixties, the Beatles and modern pop culture, The Tamboureens are making music news.

The Fly Magazine

Sunday, January 27, 2008

Neither you nor I can actually believe that I'm about to say this, but here it is: I've found the Beatles of Central PA

g and refreshing bands to pop out of the area in years.

Meet The Tamboureens, a group of 19- to 25-year-olds who happen to be one of the most excitinThat's not based on sold-out shows or media hype – they've only been a band for four months. My giddiness is founded completely on the batch of demos on The Tamboureens' MySpace site, a collection of shiny, effervescent, pop-smart tunes that sound like "That Thing You Do" outtakes covered by The Strokes.

Add to that the fact that the band is so well packaged – I wouldn't blink if you told me that legendary boy band producer Lou Pearlman was lurking behind the curtain – and you've got a pop powerhouse in the making. That's right, I said it.

The Tamboureens might be the only original band in PA that you can dance the Mashed Potato to without a hint of irony. You won't look cool doing it, but you can do it. Part rock show, part sock hop, their shows are converting fans faster than you can say "The Pink Spiders," thanks in large part to the fact that this York-based quintet is making music that is wholly different from anything else in the region.

"A lot of people say it's strictly like a '60s retro style, but to me, it's just rock and roll," states singer Sebastian Sizemore. "I'm basically in love with melody. That's what I'm all about. I think the major influences would have to be the Beatles, the Zombies. We're also into a lot of pretty stripped-down rock like Iggy Pop and some Kinks stuff."

After hearing their songs – the bouncy, candy-coated "Ooh La La," the girl-charmer "Be My Umbrella" – it's shocking to learn that The Tamboureens have only been a band for a few months. It's even more shocking to discover that, prior to recording those songs, the band members had never even stood in the same room together.

"We got some studio time, and that was the first time we all five met up," Sizemore laughs.
"We all had the same kind of sound in mind, which is really odd," he says of the initial writing session. "But we never really said that's what we wanted to do. We never really pursued it. It sort of came out."

Since the newly formed Tamboureens emerged from that studio, it's been all systems go. The members gather up to four times a week, a practice that has allowed them to fine-tune their live performance in a short amount of time. Now, apparently, they are as amazing live as they are in the studio, giving the girls even more to squeal about.

"Now we're playing twice a week or more. It's been really fun," says Sizemore. "We're all really happy to be there. We're all really thankful to be playing the show, so when we come out, we put as much into it as we've got. I think people see when somebody's having a good time and really wants to be up there. We're up there and we're happy about it.

"This is what we all want to do," he adds. "A lot of musicians get discouraged, but we're all fairly young. We've got the rest of our lives to work. We all want to do music, so we're going to give it a shot, and we're going to try to do it as long as we can."

So, here's hoping The Tamboureens make it at least to the half-year mark, because I've already played my trump card. It's up to them to prove me right

FlipSide - York Daily Record/Newspaper Company

ERIN McCRACKEN, FLIPSIDE STAFF
July 26, /2007

The Tamboureens causing a '60s invasion

Jul 26, 2007 — Band: The Tamboureens

Members: Scott Brundage, 25, guitar; Jeff Metz, 19, guitar; Sebastian Sizemore, 20, lead vocals

Who we talked to: Brundage and Sizemore

How long have you been playing together? Sizemore: Me and the other guitar player, Jeff, have been playing together for about three years. We were in a band called The Shade Trees before and we played a lot in York, went out to California, came back and I met Scott. I actually got a job with him at Weis. That was like a month ago.

What did you guys do out in California? Sizemore: We went out to play music. We started out in Santa Cruz and then we went to south San Francisco. Jeff went back to Santa Cruz, and I went to Oceanside.

Describe your sound: Brundage: We're influenced by a lot of '60s pop; a lot of British invasion-type stuff: Beatles, Rolling Stones, The Who. The stuff I write is just a modern version of the early Beatles so far. (Our songs) get stuck in your head.

What other artists do you listen to?
Sizemore: I don't really listen to the radio unless I'm listening to Oldies 96.1 (FM). There are some newer bands that don't get a lot of radio play over here on the East Coast, though, like The Flaming Lips.

What songs do you love to cover? Sizemore: We do cover a lot of songs. We like to concentrate more on our originals. We like doing stuff from The Zombies and The Rolling Stones.

Are there other local bands that you guys like? Sizemore: We've only played one show up to this point since we've only been together for about three weeks. On (July 27) we have a show with Paradise Movement. We hope to start playing some shows with some of these local bands. They're pretty good.

What is your take on the music scene in York? Sizemore: It's not the greatest place in the world to be, but we love York. Two of us have been born and raised here. The West Coast has a lot more venues for original bands (that are) out of the ordinary. There are some good venues, and there are definitely fans around here. There's a lot of good artists, too.

What are your goals for the band? Brundage: We're booked up for a lot of this month and next month. We're coming out with our demo. It's going to be a three-song demo... I think we all just want to be career musicians. It's something that we love to do, and I think we're going to pursue it.

Do you guys listen to other genres of music? Sizemore: We're into rock 'n' roll. I don't think a lot of the stuff on the radio deserves to be called rock 'n' roll. I've done a lot of vocal work with the hip-hop group Paradise Movement, so I can respect it and I can respect pretty much any genre of music. But I pretty much stick to the blues and the rock 'n' roll.

Shoutouts: Sizemore: We want to thank Alex Smith. He's going to be playing drums for us in the studio.
Brundage: Everybody come out to (our show). It's going to be a good time.