Months after the most recent Spring Scream, when the Liufu Ranch had returned to being just another big empty field and Kenting had reverted to the lazy days of a Taiwan-style seaside resort, the concert's co-founder and organizer, Wade Davis, sat at the wheel of his light blue 1980 Ford Grenada and reflected, "You know, every year Spring Scream has one surprise, one band that nobody expects, and they just show up and blow everybody away. This year it was definitely, definitely Guardian Alien."
If you didn't see any of Guardian Alien's several sets at the four-day music fest, you might accuse Davis of blatant nepotism, because Guardian Alien is after all his brother's band. However, many of this year's Spring Screamers felt the same way.
Based in Seattle, Guardian Alien has been together for six years, mostly playing the club circuit of the northwestern US. Tonight at 9:30 pm at Taipei's Witches Pub, they begin a 11-day tour of Taiwan, which will include at least three shows in Taipei, two in Taichung and appearances in Kaohsiung and Hualien.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF GUARDIAN ALIEN
According to the band, the tour's timing was worked out "just because it seemed like a good time to come" and also because they "love Taiwan."
"Taiwan seems to me like Seattle 11 years ago. There's so many up-and-coming bands and people just doing it," said Guy Davis, the banjo picker and bass player who founded the group.
"Now in Seattle, everyone's seen everything. Literally, there's one thousand bands living in the city," he said.
Guy Davis has been playing in bands in Seattle since 1990, the high-grunge era. In the early and mid-90s, he said he did "like 18 national tours" with Sage, a rock trio that put out some CDs and played with more than a few rising stars in the music industry.
They opened for Alanis Morrisette at the Dragonfly in Los Angeles "literally a week before she became huge" in 1995, for Radiohead on its first US tour (just after the 1995 album release of Pablo Honey), for Urge Overkill, Morphine, Krist Novoselic and several other major acts.
While Davis was playing bass for Sage, he picked up the banjo so he could have an instrument on the road he didn't have to plug in. First he learned the claw hammer technique and then the three-finger style. After that, it wasn't long before he was composing songs.
Many of the musical ideas he began developing on banjo came to fruition during a six-month stretch in Taichung in the first half of 1996. Drawing on musicians from both Seattle and Taichung's expat scene, he formed two bands, Guardian Alien and Banjovi. He also put a pickup into the banjo, plugged it in and made it electric.
Banjovi, with banjo, bass and drums, was country punk. Guardian Alien, meanwhile, added other instruments and sounds to become something more eclectic, non-traditional and just plain out-there.
Though vastly different, the bands were two sides of the same coin. At one point, they even merged into something of an all-star ensemble, though they've since distilled back down to what they are now -- a trio.
"The songs had so much melody, but there were so many instruments," said Davis. "The trio just feels more natural."
Guardian Alien only became a trio again recently, after losing a powerful force in lead vocalist Christina Honeycutt, who was still with both bands in April for Spring Scream.
The change prompted Davis and his bandmates to write some new material, which they'll be playing on their current Taiwan tour. Davis described one of the changes as a new banjo sound that is "big and really crunchy and really drives the music forward. Before, the sound was much more ethereal."
At present, Banjovi and Guardian Alien consist of exactly the same lineups: Davis on bass, banjo and vocals, Douglas Sowers on drums and vocals and Eric Kubista playing bass and a squeezebox that's either a bandoneon or a concertina ? they're not quite sure. Both bands mix up the instruments, though Guardian Alien makes more use of the bandoneon. Other than that, the distinguishing factors between the two alter-ego groups are in the music and the energy they create.
"At a lot of shows, we open up for ourselves," said Davis. "You know, the bands have two different styles, personas, they're even visually very different. So I think a lot of people -- maybe because they're at a club and drinking or something -- don't even realize it's the same band."
Banjovi will open for Guardian Alien three times in Taiwan, at Witches, Napoli and Underworld. Several other appearances will take place in the context of larger events, including the opening of The Good Place (
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