Today I talk to Jeremy Savo of the Philadelphia-based band Out of the Beardspace. If you’re in the area, go see their show on January 11 with past BandsLikeZappa feature Statospheerius. And also check out their new experimental EP.

Ben Sommer:  I’m here with Jeremy from the band, Out of Beardspace. Jeremy, first of all, tell me about the band, and if you don’t mind to start with this out of left field name you guys came up for yourselves.

Jeremy Savo: Well, the name is Out of the Beardspace, and it comes from an idea and the idea is of the beard space, and it’s a simple idea. It’s just when you stroke your beard, you are in the beard space.

Ben: Got it.

Jeremy: So if you think of the famous statue of the thinker, it’s basically you are in thought, and so out of the beard space simply means that it’s a creation that you make, so it’s something that came of your thoughts.

Ben: Are you guys hirsute, all have beards or any facial hair of some kind?

Jeremy: Actually, only one of us does.

Ben: Oh. My favorite music blog these days is BeardRock.com. They have a similar gimmick. Everything is facial hair themed.

Jeremy: Yeah. We haven’t gone there. I’m actually not sure we can go there yet. We are pretty young.

Ben: Oh, well, how old are you guys?

Jeremy: Our oldest member is about to turn 22 and our youngest member is 18.

Ben: Oh, wow. So your music style is very progressive. You’ve all got chops obviously. Usually kids with those kind of chops and who are playing such a harmonically, rhythmically, adventurous music have some sort of jazz background. Is that true with you guys?

Jeremy: We actually have a rock background. We all went to a place called The School of Rock, but one of the main themes of this School of Rock was Frank Zappa.

Ben: Oh.

Jeremy: And so we all basically, throughout our teenage years, spent a lot of our time learning and performing all sorts of different songs from all sorts of different genres, but mostly with a rock background and then it’s been actually in more recent times that we’ve all gotten into jazz.

Ben: School of Rock, what is this? I’ve heard of this, but who runs this?

Jeremy: Well, when we went there, it used to be ran by a guy called Paul Green who actually founded this school and he created this school, which is now across the country. But we all went in Cherry Hill and most of us, but actually all of us except one of use was in something called the All-Stars. There were all these schools all over the East Coast and the All-Stars brought together. It was like an audition group. It brought together the best of the schools, and through that we got to go on tour and play with some people like Jon Anderson from Yes and Napoleon Murphy Brock from Frank Zappa and John Wetton from King Crimson.

Ben: Wow, and so I’m looking it up now as we talk, so it’s a Philly area kind of thing. Is that true?

Jeremy: That’s what started it, but it’s as far as California and Texas now.

Ben: Right, right. So I’m so out of step. I mix up that stupid movie with the School of Rock. Now, I’ve heard it mentioned several times. In fact, there is this girl. I forgot her name. She’s a young bassist, kind of a hot shot. She has played with a lot of progressive musicians. I follow her on Twitter. I think she went to School of Rock, too.

Jeremy: Julie Slick?

Ben: Yeah. That’s the one.

Jeremy: Yeah, her and her brother.

Ben: So it spawned some minor stars, so that’s pretty cool as you guys are carrying on the tradition. Did you guys go to college?

Jeremy: Well, currently, none of us go to college full time. Three of us go to college part time, which means basically we each take two classes at the community college down the street. But I used to go to college for Music Industry briefly and Sam, our keyboard player went to Berkeley for two years and Zack, our other guitar player, went to school for music for two years. We kind of all pulled out from that a little bit to more concentrate on our band and on other things th[...]