Aurafixations

“What kind of music do they play?”

“Well, I guess you could call it … you know, ‘The X.’ “

Sometime in Reno’s relatively recent past, a single letter—commonly used to designate the radio station that sends Roots Rock Revival and the Hayseed Hoot through the airwaves to listeners with a yen for eclectic folk rock and such—has become shorthand for a whole genre of music that is otherwise tough to peg. Sometimes, it just makes more sense to quip, “It’s the kind of music they would play on KTHX,” than to hem and haw and finally stumble over comparisons to Elvis Costello or Chris Whitley or Tom Waits.

So, just to get that whole thing about what a band sounds like, what they like and who it is they’re like over and done with, Aurafix Landing (you just can’t beat that name, can you?) might be said to fall within the limits of X-Ville. And let the categorization end there.

“Don’t brand us,” jokes lead vocalist Jason Shipman. “If you label me, you negate me. Was that Kierkegaard or Dick Van Patten?”

Sitting on the patio outside Deux Gros Nez coffeehouse on a balmy Sunday night, the guys of Aurafix Landing are practicing some tunes and awaiting their turn upstairs at Deux Gros Nez’s open mic. They’re also telling me about the band’s origins. As roommates, Shipman and acoustic guitarist Kent Miura used to hang out at home talking music. Miura began writing songs, and Shipman’s lyrical impulses were soon off and running.

“I would be sitting on the stairs playing a riff, and Jason would be standing there, scribbling lyrics like mad,” Miura says.

Shipman has written poetry for years, performing his verse at local open mic poetry functions. He’d grown a bit weary of the craft, though, and found that collaborating with Miura on songwriting projects was just the thing to get the creative juices flowing again.

"[A song] will come out within a half-hour,” Miura says. “[Shipman] will come up with lyrics, and it will just float. It’s uncanny.”

“One day [Miura] said, ‘Listen to this,’ and it just struck me,” Shipman says. “I know nothing about guitar. We all bring very different ingredients [to the band’s sound]. The flavor of our band comes from the broad expansion of our musical tastes.”

In the infant months of their bandhood, Shipman and Miura were playing their songs percussion-free. Then, last December, they asked their drummer friend Mason Needham to drum with them, and the sound clicked. Shipman and Miura weren’t surprised; they’d had their eyes on Needham from the outset.

“I think Mason was a part of the band before he knew he was going to be,” Miura says.

While Shipman and Miura hadn’t a doubt about Needham’s suitability, Needham himself had reservations, since he’d spent his drumming years playing for bands with harder sounds, like pop punk band No Outlet and emo band All Day Drive. But Needham quickly adapted to the new rhythm. Sometimes he’ll even go for a multi-appendage approach to drumming at shows, playing the djembe with his hands, a bass drum with his right foot and a high hat with his left.

“It’s a nice, full sound,” Miura says. “We just keep evolving with percussion parts.”

“It’s an eclectic style,” Needham adds. “We don’t have any Rage Against the Machine covers yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised. There are songs where I have to rock out with all my limbs.”