By Chelsea Hetelson
Though band practice takes place in a storage unit like most other Gainesville bands, Cassette’s space is unusually clean.
The floor is patched up in a dumpster-dive-turned-Tetris masterpiece, with L- and rectangle-shaped pieces of carpet that cellist Marc Hennessey collected and pieced together. The ground is litter-free and newly vacuumed, cluttered only by cables, power cords, amps and other equipment. Small triangular mountain ranges of foam blocks with vertical valleys match their horizontal partners hanging parallel from across the wall, a trick used in recording studios to improve acoustics.
“Aimee,” says Collin Whitlock, pianist, “When Marc’s bow starts moving, that’s when you start.”
“No, no,” says Aimee Gonzalez, violinist, holding her knees to her chest and smiling. “I’m asking you to give me the signal.”
Aimee wants to hear the song they’re practicing without her and Marc’s string section in the beginning. Collin, a Kanapaha Middle teacher, wearing a white T-shirt on his head like a well-structured turban, is over-explaining it back to her.
The song begins and then abruptly cuts out. Everyone looks at Aimee. Aimee looks up from hugging her knees and Collin laughs.
Despite continuous tangents about drummer Kevin “K-Flow” Clark’s gallon of vodka and water (just water), toothpicks up Collin’s nose and an impromptu jam session of easy listening for the over-40 crowd, this practice is serious business. Cassette is flying to Chicago in a little less than two weeks to record in the famous Engine Studios, recording space to Iron & Wine, Modest Mouse, Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy and Broken Social Scene.
“We are turbo-writing [the new record],” said Samantha Jones, guitarist, vocalist and overall mastermind of Cassette.
In between the banter and teasing, all four progress and collaborate on the songs planned for the upcoming record.
“We definitely relate differently at practice than we do at any other time,” Sam said. “I think we’re a lot more frank with each other, a lot shorter with one another; we’re bossy. But we get shit done.”
“We all know what the song needs to be in the back of our head, and we’re just trying to get to it,” Marc adds.
The current multi-minded Cassette wouldn’t recognize itself in early releases. Five or six years ago, the band was just Samantha Jones and, yes, a cassette player. The idea behind “Cassette” was that she would record “ambiance for the songs” on a cassette player and play it back while she performed live music. At the time, though, Sam was already a member of a few other bands, and Cassette became more of a fun and “simple side project” rather than a full-blown band.
Sam first moved to Gainesville 16 years ago from Pensacola, not for any other reason but to straight-up rock out.
She was drawn to the city by the “Gainesville sound,” which she describes as “that calm, sneakers-and-T-shirt sound that comes from bands like Radon and Less Than Jake and those old school bands.” And of course, she just “loved to play punk rock guitar.” She did end up putting herself through college at UF mostly by happenstance.
Her main interest was the music, and the feeling was mutual. Over the years, Sam has played in notable bands and genres, including Rumbleseat with Chuck Ragan from Hot Water Music and, more recently, the orchestral Deep and Holy Sea alongside Aimee and K-Flow, now fellow members of Cassette.
As other bands and projects fell away, she drew herself closer to Cassette and what she wanted it to be. She realized her cassette player, although beloved for its retro-cred and feminine-sounding name, would have to go. The “feminine anachronism” stayed.
“Whenever I wanted to go on tour, I would just go,” Sam said. “I would take my dog, I would take my best friend, whatever, and I would just get in my car and go and I really liked that it was that simple. But I knew that to get the sound that I wanted, I needed more people.”
So she began to recruit.
Aimee had already been aggressively recruited, practically tricked, into playing in the Deep and Holy Sea by cellist Brian Hennessey (no relation to Marc Hennessey, though strangely both play cello) and drummer David Turbeville, now drummer of Felice Brothers. Aimee, who has since graduated from the School of Music with her bachelor’s in violin performance, was reluctant to join Deep and Holy Sea because she had never improvised and played with a band outside of class before. If it weren’t for Aimee’s unguarded reply of “just bored” to Brian’s, “What are you doing now?” one afternoon, Aimee might never have been caught without an excuse and learned to love an aspect of music she had never experienced before.
“I seriously had no idea how to play without music in front of me, but David was really encouraging,” Aimee said.
Everything Cassette does now, “Aimee dips into gold veneer,” Sam said.
K-Flow was recruited 10 years ago at a house show first as Sam’s friend and then as band mate in Holy Sea.
Since both K-Flow and Aimee were in Deep and Holy Sea, it was a natural transition for them to join Cassette. By now, Cassette had become a “snowball avalanche gaining momentum, getting bigger and creating a gravitational force with the size of it,” Sam said.
Collin, pianist and vocals for Shoddy Beatles, was Cassette’s first pick-him-up and run.
“I was watching them play one night, and I thought, ‘That guy, he will be mine,’” Sam said.
Marc’s pick-up also began with a mutual show. Cassette played a show at Common Grounds with Marc’s band, To All My Dear Friends, but this time Collin was enchanted along with Sam.
“I was sitting by myself and I was writing in my journal when he started playing. I stopped mid-sentence…and I wrote, ‘Oh my God, this guy is ridiculous. He’s really good.’ And then when Sam came in, I grabbed her and I was like, ‘We need this guy!’ and Sam’s like, ‘I know!’” Collin said, nearly jumping forward.
Now fully assembled with its collection of precision, genius, gold veneer, beat master flow and country-tinged mastermind, Cassette fits into their own genre of “somber pop.”
“I wanted to draw everyone together [because] I really just wanted to have a sound,” Sam said. “The same way when you smell a strawberry, you know it’s a strawberry. [I wanted] something going on beneath the actual songs, [where] there’s this cohesiveness that brings it all together that when you hear it, it’s distinct even if you don’t see it or don’t hear the name of it. That’s what’s important to me.”
Cassette has grown from a small tape deck to a five-piece “dark and glittery” ensemble mixing backgrounds and genres to create melodic pop with a somber twist.
