by Dave Schaefer

There are many bands on the Columbus local scene that are notable, some that aren’t, and a few that I believe music lovers simply must pay attention to.

Our Cat Philip is one of the latter. 

“We met really randomly,” Nick told LotC. “I met Max at freshman orientation in the summer of 2006 and we stayed in touch for the rest of the summer. And when we moved in to the dorms, Jeremy was my randomly assigned roomate. It was really lucky.”

“It was unbelievable,” Max agreed. “I had been doing solo stuff in Cleveland, playing a little bit around there, and i was like, my ideal thing would be to find a female cellist who can sing. And instead I got Jeremy who’s got this beautiful timid wispy falsetto. So, i got about as close as i could possibly get.”

The group laughs at that.  Laughter comes easily to these guys and seems to be a staple to their interacting.  It makes you want to laugh with them.  And you inevitably do, whether you’re in on the joke or not.

It was Max and Jeremy who began playing together first, but Max had some work to do to convince Jeremy to once again pick up a cello.

“I played cello in high school, but not that seriously, and then leading up to the end of my high school career I started playing bass instead. Then when I met Max and when he heard I played cello, he kind of pried it out of me. Without Max I probably would have never played my cello again.”

“Yeah, so Jeremy and I had been playing together for like three months,” Max continues, “and Nick was a good friend of ours and we knew he was really musical and an awesome musician, and we were like, ‘Dude do you think you could play some drums for us, because we're really in a bind.’  And he was like, ‘Yeah!’ And he came in and recorded with us and we just kinda clicked as a band and from then on it was just the three of us.  Pretty inseparable.”

“We were on the way home from recording, listening to “Time is Just a Healer,” and we were like, y’know, we should think about maybe doing something together!”  More laughter.  “And so that summer we got the tracks back from the studio, got a website, posted the songs, and that was pretty much all the promotion we ever had to do. People just started asking us to play shows.”

If you listen to Our Cat Philip, you’ll understand why they’re rising so quickly.  A blend of piano, banjo, acoustic guitar, of course Jeremy’s cello, and an occasional viola, their sound is a unique blend of bluegrass, honky tonk, punky alternative, and acoustic melody.  Max’s voice alone is an instrument that makes you take notice of this band.  It’s an amazing, unusual and beautiful sound that is different enough to be cool, but not too different to be distracting.  Jeremy and Nick’s vocals add to the mix in a way that’s harmonic, enhancing Max’s sound, making it even better.  And they have a remarkable way with lyrics that’s both simple and complex.

Nick: “When we sat down and started playing, it wasn’t like we said to ourselves, ‘Okay we need to be 100% original, and that needs to be the forefront of our ideas.’  That was never what we were thinking. It was just we all had our own styles and when we would hear something someone else had written, we would say, what would happen if I add this?  And our sound just became a collaboration.”

“About 90% of the songs we write have kind of a weird process,” says Max. “Like, I’ll write the lyrics and stuff and sort of a broad melody on piano or guitar.  Since I live with Jeremy, he’s usually the first person to hear it, so he’ll add crazy quirks and his bizarre cello -- I always talk about how he’s got like this weird style -- and between him and Nick, they turn it into a band song. Like, they take it from this little coffee shop singer-songwriter lame shit to Our Cat Philip the band.”

Nick agrees. “Yeah, the coffee shop thing is a lot what they sound like, and we take them and they just become these epic things, that we get so pumped about.”

Max sums it up: “Nick’s got the crazy bizarre rhythms and goofy ideas, and for me, as long as i can right lyrics I’m good to go, and Jeremy’s just a creative beast on cello.”

Okay, so about that name...

“I really, really like cats” Jeremy starts, “and its kinda weird, I’m graduating and all my graduation presents are things you hang up with cats on them and stuff. I don’t really know how that started, but I really like cats. And I really like Philip Carey from Of Human Bondage, its my favorite book, so I wanted to name my cat Philip.”

“I was indifferent to the name when they first brought it up,” adds Nick. “And then when we actually got our cat Philip, I fell in love with the cat. He’s the coolest cat ever. 

“But y’know, there’s a lot of bands out there these days with really convoluted names, where if you want to know what it means you have to get online to look it up. We like the fact that our name sounds like if three kindergartners had a band, that’s what they would name it,” Nick laughs.

Upcoming shows include this Friday’s show at Score Bar downtown where Our Cat Philip will open for Evan Harris and the Driftwood Motion.  Sad Bastards and Akillis Green are also playing.

With that lineup, Nick promises, “It’ll be rowdy and a lot of fun.”

They’ll also be playing The House of Crave on April 25 with Karate Coyote.

Finally, another thing about Our Cat Philip, apart from their obvious talent and creative songwriting, is their stage appeal.  Collectively, they’re fun, funny, and completely entertaining.  Watching Nick play the keys on “Awake Again” is a treat and hearing all of the guys bantering, screwing up, then bantering some more makes the audience almost as much of the performance as the band itself.  You’ll laugh, you’ll want to sing along, you’ll want to follow them to the next venue to see them again.

And I hope you do.