Success comes full circle for Killing Moon

The Killing Moon’s story is a cautionary tale to all rock star hopefuls getting started in the music business – but it’s also a story about good luck, bad luck, and figuring out what really matters. Which, in their case, is the music.

In 2002, Ryan Hannan, Jeremy Yehle, Chris Michaud, Trevor Geaghan and Dan Lafayette were students at Hampden Academy. They all played in the jazz band. Hannan, who plays guitar and sings, wanted to start a ska band. The other four, along with a bunch of other random musicians, were game for whatever. They picked a silly name – Animal Suit Driveby – and started playing Reel Big Fish cover songs for their friends.

“It started out as a joke. High school kids love ska,” said Michaud, who plays saxophone. “We had eight kids in the band. We just had fun.”

Eventually, Animal Suit Driveby began to change both its sound and lineup, until just the original five remained. Then the ska element left entirely, though the horns stayed. The music got darker, heavier, more complex. Within a few years, it was an entirely different band – and one that stood out from the emo crowd, with inventive, jazz-influenced horn arrangements courtesy of Michaud and trombonist Lafayette, and Hannan’s deft, accessible songwriting.

ASD played tons of local shows, including weekends at Geaghan’s family’s business, the Whig and Courier in Bangor. And the kids showed up – they routinely had several hundred people at their shows locally and in Portland. By the time the band members were all ready to graduate high school in 2004, ASD was a household name among local teenagers.

Those shows turned into shows in New Hampshire and Massachusetts. And then those shows turned into playing throughout the Northeast, which snowballed into touring the Midwest – all while the boys were in their first semesters of college. And college just wasn’t in the cards for them.

“I had a class where the grades were based on four tests,” said Geaghan, the bass player. “One test conflicted with us opening for My Chemical Romance, and another conflicted with us opening for Story of the Year. At that point it was like, ‘Well, guess I’m not going back to college!’ Our parents were not psyched.”

Here’s where the luck part comes in. The band’s former manager sent its EP, “A Message Through Your Teeth,” to music review Web sites, including one called thescout.net. A reviewer from that site heard it and liked it. Then that reviewer got hired as head of A&R at Fearless Records, a major emo, screamo and punk label out of California.

Long story short, within a few months they were signed to Fearless, which rereleased “Message” in March 2006. The band changed its name to the Killing Moon, to reflect the massive changes that had occurred since its days as a high school ska band.

For almost two years, the band criss-crossed the country in a van. The band spent $20,000 on gas in five months, and played some really big shows.

“We played Warped Tour, we played South By Southwest,” said Michaud. “We played the Bamboozle Fest in front of thousands of people at Giants Stadium. It was unbelievable.”

With the prospect of big time rock ‘n’ roll stardom tantalizingly close, the band hunkered down to write songs for a full-length album. And here, now, is where the story takes a wrong turn.

“At that time, which was about a year and a half ago, the big thing was the Plain White T’s, with that ‘Hey There Delilah’ song,” said Yehle. “The label wanted pop songs. We wanted heavier stuff. It wasn’t working out.”

The Killing Moon might be a bunch of goofy, funny guys, but one thing the band takes very seriously is its music. You don’t drop out of college and devote your life to something that you don’t take seriously. And writing radio-friendly pop-punk songs was not something the band wanted to do.

“People sell out all the time, but it’s hard to play music you just don’t like. We really poured ourselves into those songs, and it wasn’t cool to be told that they weren’t any good,” said Michaud. “They were stringing us along for a long time, and eventually it was like, ‘Let us record, or drop us.'”

And so, in the spring of 2007, Fearless Records dropped the Killing Moon. The boys returned to Hampden, got day jobs, and resumed playing weekend shows, just like they did while they were in high school.

“In a way, we’ve come full circle,” said Michaud. “Though the scene isn’t anything like it was three or four years ago. Sometimes we play shows, and it’s like a high school dance, with kids in really tight pants.”

Despite the setbacks and the good luck gone bad, the band perseveres. It just recorded another EP with producer Jonathan Wyman in Portland, which the band is shopping around. Big tours like they were on in 2005 aren’t an option anymore – too expensive. It’s hard to keep a 15-passenger van going when gas is $3.67 a gallon.

But the big motivator? The giddy, intoxicating rush of playing live. That’s all that matters to the Killing Moon – playing music and feeding off a crowd’s energy.

“Performing is pretty much the best thing ever,” said Michaud. “You’re head banging, and sweating. I say, if you throw up at the end of a show, then you know it’s a good time.”

“It’s like running a marathon. I feel like I’m going to have a heart attack sometimes,” said Yehle. “It’s awesome. That’s the whole reason we do it.”

The Killing Moon will play at 5 p.m. Saturday, May 10, at the Deering Grange Hall in Portland, at 6:30 p.m. Saturday, May 17, at the Keith Anderson Community Center in Orono, and at 6 p.m. Saturday, May 24, at WCYY-FM’s Rave n’ Rage at the Lewiston Colisee. For more info, visit www.myspace.com/thekillingmoonrock. Emily Burnham can be reached at eburnham@bangordailynews.net. Attention readers: Rockin’ Out will be rocking out somewhere else next week. It will resume publication as usual on May 23.