Marinade

Marinade wants to get you wet. As guitarist Jimmy ‘Rockstar’ Lauscher puts it, Marinade will go “wherever we can go and marinate people ... soak ‘em, make ‘em all wet and juicy.” After over 100 shows in 2010 alone, it’s safe to say that many people reading this have already bathed in Marinade’s melodious musical mixture.

About two years ago, Talia Keys, James Trevino and Matt Pizza got together to play a house party. They realized that they had a real rapport together after that first show, and decided to book a few more shows to see if what they had was as good as it seemed. Lauscher, a graduate from the jazz program at the U and an all-around heavy metal guy, loved Marinade’s bluesy-jammy vibe. He says, “They invited me to come sit in one night. I was thinking it would be for two or three songs, but three hours later I realized we had real chemistry together.” Spencer Kellogg says, “I was just free,” to an eruption of laughter from his bandmates.

When Keys was nine years old, her mom bought her a drum kit from Sears. She says, “I was hitting everything else, and my mom thought, ‘How about we get you something to hit that’s not going to break.’” At 16 she learned to play guitar, then at 21 she picked up the mandolin. There aren’t a lot of drummers on lead vocals, but for Marinade it was a natural choice. For Keys, singing and drumming was just more natural than singing and playing guitar. She’s sort of a Phil Collins, except with hair and soul—Phyllis Collins, maybe.

The members of Marinade are all multi-instrumentalists. Lauscher can play just about anything with strings, as well as the didgeridoo, which he picked up during a month of unemployment and TV-watching. Kellogg plays basically any woodwind instrument. Keys says, “He blows a lot of things.” The band laughs again, proving that they are all good-natured and really enjoy each other, which translates to their great musical chemistry. Pizza garners a lot of respect for his percussive aptitude, but it’s in his wielding of dreadlocks where he really tries to shine. He says, “Turn up the dreadlock? It’s up to 11 all the time.”

It’s not all jokes and jamming for Marinade. This band works hard. You can regularly find the band playing around the state at places like Woody’s Tavern in Moab, the Park City Arts Festival and the Hog Wallow, as well as at nearby festivals like Desert Rocks, Powellapalooza and Boulder’s Big Hootenanny. All of this gigging has helped them accumulate over 10 hours of material, so they can play a different set every night. Yet, their musical relationship is so strong that they really could play the same set differently every night. They say they just play whatever happens, and they make it work.

Speaking of the local music scene, the band agrees that there are a lot of great reggae, psych rock, jazz, blues and jam bands in Utah. Keys says, “I feel like we add bits of each of those genres and just jam all of that out.” Marinade has hopes to tour the northwest next year, but in the meantime, they are reinforcing Salt Lake by playing shows, as well as going to shows, which they feel is really important.

Some of their favorite acts to see and/or share the stage with are Stonefed, Wisebird, The Vision, Dead Horse Anonymous and the Desert Rocks homegrown bands. The band released an EP in May, and has sold all but 12 of the 500 pressings. The band is currently working through their material to find the best songs for their upcoming full-length release. Keep up with Marinade on their Facebook where all of their shows and plans are continually announced. Keys says, “I whore the shit out of our Facebook.” Realistically though, the band works so hard and plays so often that you’d probably need to put effort into missing Marinade these days, and that’d be wasted effort for sure. - Slug Magazine

"The band is called Marinade. What I saw assembled on the stage was an eclectic collection of musicians who looked like a combination of ski bums, blues players, REI employees, jazzsters and one little pixie/hippie girl named Talia Keys. I never saw Janis Joplin play but it was always a dream of mine, well my dream came true in this tiny little venue in Salt Lake City of all places. Talia seems to me to be a reincarnate of Janis Joplin and the more I think about it the band sounded a lot like a modern version of The Holding Company. Talia’s voice is huge, I couldn’t believe it was actually emanating from such a small package, she delivered every song with passion, poise and power seldom seen these days, oh did I mention she was also playing the drums?...The band moved effortlessly between funky blues, psychedelic rock, Michael Jackson covers, and even a few groovy jazz numbers. One song in particular was announced as George Bush song, this original song proved that these band not only rocked hard but could also write with depth, beauty and relevance...they seemed to love to throw the focus around one minute a blistering harp solo, then over to the guitar and or sax." - http://gonzoshots.com/