Almost Famous

The scene is tragically prophetic as Justin Wilson drawls about his place as front man in buzzing Bowling Green band Sleeper Agent.

“I’ve always liked bands that are really good live. I feel like you have to have a good entertainment aspect as well as good music, which is why I joined this band.”

Nashville venue The Mercy Lounge grows increasingly sparse. Sleeper Agent is slotted to perform last in an evening which features nearly a dozen bands. Despite the wait and uncertainty about the exact performance time, Sleeper Agent’s five-piece comprised of Tony Smith, Michael Dean, Mike O’Brien, Thomas Bullen and Justin Wilson make it a productive evening by playing a game of Life and pursuing lurid frivolity.

Wilson continues as the rest of the band dives into beer bought for the occasion:

“I can have the microphone and I can say something stupid and make people cheer for something I said that’s fucking retarded. You know, be like, ‘I’m wearing pink panties — Woo!’ Anybody can do this shit. You just got to have no reservation about bearing yourself as a dumbass in front of people you don’t know.”

If only it were really that easy.

The unassuming romp-around is what drew Sleeper Agent together in the first place. As their now-famed MySpace page used to note: “We did not plan this.”

Guitarist/vocalist Smith and lead vocalist Wilson began dreaming up the idea of a local supergroup while watching Dean and O’Brien’s fallen band Bossa Nosferatu play their final show at local dive Tidballs.

“Me and Justin were in bands at the time too, and it was kind of our thing to go to Tidballs over the summer,” Smith says. “We were both sitting there kind of discontent with our inactivity in our other bands. We just kind of decided that we’d talk to them [Dean and O’Brien]. It was kind of a joke thing, you know: Make some rock music, get really drunk, play some cover songs, and make a little bit of money.”

The band picked up guitarist Bullen (who played in the band Perfect Confusion, which is now Bowling Green success story Cage the Elephant) and Sleeper Agent began working on their craft. The uniqueness of their music comes from the diversity of their backgrounds.

“We’re not trying to fit a scene,” Bullen notes. “We’re not like, ‘We’re a hardcore band. Let’s play hardcore music.’ We’re just a band who plays music, and it just so happens that’s where our paths all cross. If you listen to all the bands that we’re in and you throw them all in a pot, that’s sort of where the crossroads is.”

While the term hardcore would not describe their sound, there is
certainly nothing soft about Sleeper Agent’s music. Driven by competent rhythm selections, highlighted by Dean’s near melodic bass lines, songs like Chinese Water Torture and Red Handed are head bobbing inspirations. Complementing the backbeat of O’Brien’s busy drumming, dual guitarists Smith and Bullen complete lo-fi garage rock-inspired shredding with the occasional solo riffs from Bullen.

Most interesting are the vocals. Wilson does much of the vocal work, moving through the songs with a charming, droning yelp. Showing off their songwriting chops, the band builds and falls in all the correct places and provides plenty of ooh’s and ahh’s to complete their hooks.

After getting word that it may be time, O’Brien and Wilson stretch in a corner of the backstage area dubbed the green room in anticipation of their impending show. The antics appear to be over as the band prepares to take the stage.

“Are you too drunk to play bass?” Bullen asks Dean as he and Smith tune their guitars.

Deans manages a “No, I’m fine,” as he drops his drink and begins to tune his bass.

The same attitude that Sleeper Agent exercises at the Mercy Lounge was used to record their latest and only release We Got Drunk and Did This, an EP recorded soon after the group was formed.

“We wrote all of the songs over two months and Justin joined the band and the lyrics were written,” Bullen says. “We recorded in one day and did more vocals next weekend. All-in-all it took us 20 hours total for 5 songs and we paid 100 bucks for it. The studio came to us too, and we recorded in the basement of Mike’s house.”

Their EP gained credible buzz, buoyed by a Cage the Elephant MySpace blog post by band member Brad Shultz in support of the band.

Despite their gains as a popular local band and their expansion into Nashville, Sleeper Agent is convinced that they can maintain their carefree attitude.

“I think that kind of helped us out not having a complex about it, just make a lot of music and no one gave a shit, and — I don’t know — the story is still kind of going on.”

Smith trails off in search of another beer. If every story has a villain, perhaps Sleeper Agent’s antagonist will be the tragic fate of their give-a-damn attitude.

At nearly 1 a.m. the band takes the stage to a nearly empty Mercy Lounge. Saturated with song and weary from melodic rocking, the crowd has given way to mostly empty floor space, leaving a few attentive listeners.

Wilson is unaffected.

He sings, prancing to every corner of the room, as if motivated by the specter of the long-gone crowd’s cheer.

Even without the benefit of a warm-bodied audience, potential business partner and friend of the band Ryan Zumwalt seems impressed by the marketability of the performance.

“I am checking them out. I saw them play last week and I’m seeing them tonight. I think we’ll maybe move forward from here, put a plan together and get some music recorded.”

Wilson crawls on the floor as the band wraps up their short but powerful set. He twists into an almost fetal position and drones into the microphone from the floor, his voice simultaneously monotone and excitable. The rest of the band holds it together and moves through to what are becoming fan favorites like “Red Handed” and “Cut of My Jib” with experienced tightness.

For a performer like Wilson, stage presence transcends any venue. It is rooted in the tradition of rock ‘n’ roll performance that has driven most artists to share their music: to emote the feelings they experience when writing and performing admittedly shallow songs that people go crazy for.

According to Zumwalt, it may be working just the way the band envisioned.

“I listen from an A&R standpoint, so I listen for what is capable, for what is the future. I think that there is something there that can develop into something great.”

The band as a whole seems less sold on the idea of the importance of the future of their sound, and is more concerned with relating the free wheeling sensibilities which led to the bands creation. According to Wilson, both may be doomed.

“When I go out on stage, I’m just making sure that we’re making everyone watching me feel like they’re having as much fun as I am,” he says. “And I know they’re not, and I kind of feel sorry for them.”

Perhaps Wilson is correct to be leery of the viability of his band’s dream of wide-eyed stardom from the ground up. Perhaps fun without a wink no longer has a place in even the periphery of alternative music. But Wilson, Dean, Bullen, O’Brien and Smith carry on in the pursuit of convincing the unaffected, unassuming, youth culture attempting to move away from suffocating shadow of Almost Famous nostalgia, to just loosen up a little.

It may be cliche, but at least it’s honest.