On the edge of retirement, Road Soda is Colby’s top band
“[Baseball] is designed to break your heart,” former Major League Baseball Commissioner Bartlett Giamatti once wrote. The same is true of Colby student bands. Every couple of years here, a transformative group of young musicians arrives on the scene, only to leave as soon as they came.
In 2017, it was Jelly Sauce, a collection of scraggly seniors, and one first-year, who drew cult-like followers with their loose Grateful Dead style of jamming. Those performances were legendary, with crowd surfing and screaming that lost the voices of whole Monday morning Spanish classes.
When they graduated in 2019, the loss was tremendous, but the void was filled with new talent. There was the all-female Free Chips, whose cover of “Good Kisser” by Lake Street Dive, sung by Lili Garza ’20, held more than a candle to the original.
Who could forget Tonic Engine, the experimental cousin of Jelly Sauce, led by now Maine-based artist Tom Crisp ’19. Both of these groups reached the height of their power right before the cap and gown, a solemn reminder of the mortality that all college bands face. They play their last chord, then disappear into the world. Guitarists become analysts, drummers go to grad school, and so on.
When students were sent home in the spring of 2020, everything unplugged, and the lineage of music went along with it. In this confusion and isolation, a new student band emerged, weathered by a brave new world. Their name: Road Soda.
As their set list of grunge rock and mellow indie suggests, the group’s story is anything but linear. Drummer Carter Feiss ’22 went on leave in the fall of 2021, working as a house painter and weed trimmer in southern Maine. Connor Powers ’22, one of the finest guitarists to ever come through this school, suffered a torn ligament on his left foot this fall, abruptly ending his senior football season. He managed, though, to sling his six string on Halloween, sitting in a chair with a cast — still maintaining that characteristic swagger that draws “CP!” chants from the audience every time.
Road Soda thrives in the chaos of the times, weaving together a quilt of personalities — from the dry humored bassist Erik Cohen ’22 to the eccentric pianist Keerthi Martyn ’22 (who is sure to be talking to the crowd this Doghead), creating a sound that is distinct and crowd-pleasing. To top things off, Trevor Yamada ’22 sings with a timbre that’s half Tame Impala, half Blink-182.
Through all the devastating blows to live music on campus, from COVID-19 restrictions last year to sound complaints from unreasonable professors this year, Road Soda — with all its raw talent — sits on the eve of Doghead ready to show proof of concept in their last year together.
This Friday, March 11, Powers, Feiss, Martyn, Cohen, and Yamada are set to perform what I believe will be the pièce de résistance of years of practice, triumph, and heartbreak. Come see it for yourself because before you know it, they’ll be gone. You can call me sentimental — a columnist resisting the passage of time — but it’s just the opposite. Road Soda, and all the bands before it are part of the revolving door of talent, with each graduation presenting a new opportunity for another group of musicians to carry on the torch. Still though, they’ll break your heart when they go.
~ Donovan Lynch ’22
