by Layne Gabriel

Open mic nights can be a mix of diamonds, quartz and unfortunate plastic knock-offs, but they served as matchmaker for Bryan Rogers and Texanna Dennie of Denver's singer-songwriter duo Regarding Fury. Hear Nebraska chatted with the exceptionally thorough Rogers about how the band came together and recorded its debut EP, Moth Season, in a matter of months.

On meeting Texanna and beginning a collaboration:
“I think it was in November, and we met at this open mic and she — it was interesting, because she doesn’t play any instruments. She went to this open mic night that I also went to and sang three songs a cappella by herself. I thought it was kind of strange to see someone singing all by themselves — where’s the guitar, where’s the piano, where’s something? … I kind of dismissed her. … A couple minutes later, I got on, and according to her, she had to hear more, and was really interested in my music …

A month went by before we ran into each other again at one of my solo shows, and when I saw her there, I was like ‘I definitely remembered you from that open mic.’  She was saying she moved here from Texas a few months ago, didn’t play instruments and was really interested in working with me. That was sort of the start of us playing together.”

 

On their separate musical history:
“I’ve been playing music since I was 12, so a good about 10 years. I’m 22 now, Texanna’s 20. She grew up in the church — I think a Baptist church — in Texas. She’s like from the heart of the Bible Belt. She’s been singing in church, her father is a blues musician, so I think she’s been singing since … I’d probably say ‘98 or ‘99.

On performing and becoming even closer:
“We worked out things to perform at open mics, which is a very low-key venue. Every time we played and every time we sang together, people would come up to us … People thought we played for a long time together or were from a big city … [After] the good responses we were getting, we were like ,‘Maybe we can actually do something with this.’… When we started taking it more seriously, one of our roommates moved out and Texanna moved in — I think it was at the moment she moved in, living down the hall from me … that’s really when the collaboration stated to blossom. We’d stay up every night playing stuff — ideas she had for melodies for lyrics of poems she had written.”

On the songwriting process:
“I’m a jazz pianist by trade, but the guitars are really nice. It's a secondary instrument for me, because it’s a perfect tool for songwriting. When you’re writing songs on your primary instrument, it can be very difficult to not get lost in the technical qualities … Writing a song on the guitar for me is, ‘I know these chords, and i know how to play these shapes,’ and the message has to be through my lyrical content and melodies and less about, ‘Oh man, that’s a really cool guitar part.’ It’s really about you saying something interesting, or this melody is very subtle and nuanced. It’s clearly a lot easier to put a guitar around your neck than to haul a piano all over the place.”

On conceiving the EP:
“Increasingly, with every show, we’d get more people interested in the sound and music, so about three weeks ago, maybe a month ago, we decided we should definitely record something. People want to know whether our music is for sale online or anything. Being the typical poor musicians, we could only afford to do three songs, so we did this EP we recorded a month ago.  It’s three of my original songs, and we tracked the whole thing live and did three songs in three-and-a-half hours … It was this really quick process of just trying to capture what it would be like to see us live, so not a lot of overdubs or pitch correction or any of that sort of thing — just a really raw recording.”

On the Omaha show:
“It’s our first stop — our first out -of-state, out-of-Colorado show, really. She’s from Texas, and so she’s appropriately named Texanna, but I grew up in the Milwaukee and Chicago area … I’ve been in many bands that have toured that pathway between Chicago and Milwaukee and Colorado — all that string of pearls all on I-80 … We’re just hitting up all the bigger cities in the Midwest area.”

Regarding Fury celebrates the release of Moth Season at the Barley St. Tavern Thursday, April 14 with Cameron McGill & What Army and Manny Coon at 9 p.m.. The 21+ show costs $5.

Hear Nebraska contributor Layne Gabriel has been writing about the Omaha music scene for more than a decade. Contact her at layne.gabriel@gmail.com.