Artist Spotlight: Recreational Fungus
Meet Recreational Fungus
The members of Huntsville-based Recreational Fungus describe themselves as “five people who probably shouldn’t be in the same room together.” Caleb Eades (vocals and guitar) and Austin Pitts (drums) started the band in 2021, adding Max Martin (saxophone and back-up vocals), Jonathan Martinez (vocals and bass), and Christopher Payne (vocals and keyboard) as the band evolved. With musical backgrounds ranging from gospel to metal to 90’s rock to jazz, they meld their styles into original music that draws inspiration from psychedelic-inspired bands across time. Their debut album, Me, Myself, and Mycelium is planned for release in May.
Q&A
North Alabama Arts: So, the band name. Where did you get your inspiration?
Caleb: When it started, it was just me and Austin at the time. I knew I wanted to name it after mushrooms because they’ve been an important experience in my life and for the music. Me and Austin agreed on Zeppelin and The Doors and some psychedelic stuff, that’s what our common ground was. I was just looking through my phone at other names for mushrooms, slang terms, anything, for like 20 minutes and like 10 pages through Google. Then I found “recreational fungus.” Everybody loves it. And when Chris joined the band, first thing he says is, can we change the name? [laughs]
Chris: I was just worried about prejudice from some places. I’ve grown to love it and accept it. And, we’re psychedelic, you know.
Max: It stays in your mind. There’s a lot of weird band names out there. Recreational Fungus is kind of an easy one to remember because it’s silly.
NAA: It definitely does. How does the ‘psychedelic’ sound come into your work?
Chris: We definitely try to be multigenerational. Psychedelic indie and jam, we try to take from all, anything psychedelic influence, anything that has that name on it, whether that be Floyd or Psychedelic Porn Crumpets.
Max: An example of that being multigenerational is in the same show we will play some song like a “Sunflower” or “Campus” that’ll get people out to the front of the stage dancing, all the young folks. Then we’ll play a Floyd deep cut and you’ll hear some old dude in the back go “yeah!” It’s just nice to bridge that gap. Any Grateful Dead song will have young and old out the front dancing. And that always warms my heart…seeing people dancing at the stuff we’re playing.
NAA: You describe yourselves as having very different tastes. How do you reconcile that?
Chris: It’s a very democratic group in that there’s a lot of respect for everyone’s opinion and point of view when either introducing a song that they’ve written or fill in a song or coming up with parts. So we all foster and curate each other’s contributions to a degree…I’m a huge fan of jazz, and I went to [UAH] for it. I’m a huge fan of Bill Evans, Chick Korea, Herbie Hancock, those guys. Part of the appeal of joining a psychedelic group is the chords. I really love a, non-diatonic harmony is the nerd term, and that’s what we do in this group.
Max: We all come from different backgrounds.
Chris: But we come together for this. It’s very collaborative.
Caleb: We share a lot of stuff and influence each other.
NAA: So, Chris, you went to college for jazz. How did you each get into music?
Chris: I was like 10 when I got a guitar. It was 2007 when Guitar Hero 3 came out. You [didn’t] have to sell me on music at that age. I just wanted to do it for the rest of my life…11 is when I went to open mics. Coffee Tree, which used to be open across the street from Grissom High School. That was my earliest start. And then I used to call Voodoo Lounge and Copper Top when I was like 13, 14 and asked them to let me play their stage. As soon as I went to college, I answered a Craigslist ad to join a rockabilly band.
Caleb: I also got a guitar when I was like 10. I also played Rock Band and Guitar Hero. And my older brother was in a death metal band, I thought that was pretty cool. I wanted to play drums but my parents would not give me a drumset. So I got a guitar. I joined band in school…played trumpet and baritone…bass and guitar…played big crowds at the state competitions. It was cool. But it’s a very different experience.
Max: My dad was always really into music because he was a drummer in some bands when he was in high school and college. He always listened to Zeppelin and the Beatles and the Grateful Dead. We also had a piano in the house, and I would sit down at that piano and try to teach myself music. Then in middle school, I chose to take band. I saw a YouTube video of this guy going to the mall somewhere wearing pants, suspenders, and nothing else and playing Careless Whisper on the Saxophone. And I was like, I want to be like that guy. My first time playing a paid gig was actually with [Recreational Fungus].
Austin: I only play the drums. I got my first kit when I was four. I was always around [music], my granddad played guitar, and he played all kinds of instruments. My dad played drums. So it was all gospel, church music. I was probably like 11 or 12, playing the youth groups and stuff like that…but only drums. I've never been able to pick up anything else. I've tried the bass. My fingers don't work.
Jonathan: When I was 13, I think. That's when I picked up a guitar, just six string guitar, and never really put it down. And then I kind of found out that I like to write songs, so I would put them together and write words down, whatever, and then I play them for some friends at school. And then I graduated, still kind of played guitar, was writing songs, but didn't really do anything with it. I think I only performed maybe three or four times in high school, like at Bridge Street. I've always loved the Beatles, Dave Matthews, Three Days of Grace, Guster, stuff like that.
NAA: How did you end up with Recreational Fungus?
Max: I put [saxophone] down after high school just because it felt like work. Second year of college, I made a friend who played guitar and he asked, do you want to try and play saxophone over some of my music? I said, yeah let’s do it. That’s what got me back into it. I got to playing at the open mics with that group and heard some of Recreational Fungus, they were a trio at the time…I was thinking, I'm probably not good enough to play with these guys, they’re really good. And Caleb said, just come play with us.
Jon: I had all this music, and I was embarking on trying to figure out what I was going to do in life, and I really went all the way around to come back to Huntsville…I just so happened to have some friends who knew people that played around and I said okay, I'll do the open mic nights again…and then I heard them play “Golden Teacher” and I thought, I need to meet these guys. We had a two band group going for a while, but as things happen, [Recreational Fungus] is what survived that. That's how I ended up joining and all that backlog of music that I had has been able to help.
Max: Then Chris came, and he was all four horsemen.
Chris: I ran into [Caleb] at the Magnolia Room. I didn't even want to go out that night. But I went to this variety show…[Caleb] came up to me and was like, I got Fungus. It would really mean a lot for you to come. And I'm like, let me finish college because I'm in my last semester, but I'm in. And then I listened to “Valkyrie,” and “Valkyrie” was it. I was sold.
NAA: What do you think is your greatest strength as a group?
Austin: Our ability to just pick up and play. We do that at shows. And we all feel each other out without--we don't really look at each other. There's not many cues. It's just mainly everything's all feel, and I haven’t got that a lot with people I play with. Playing in church and stuff, everything's set in stone, practice, practice, practice. Here, we can just play. And it sounds good. It's pretty surreal. I'm not used to it, and I've played my whole life. Sometimes we'll lose each other and then we find it somehow. Every time it happens, we'll look up and say, we just did that.
NAA: Where is your favorite place to play now?
Chris: It’s gotta be Voodoo [Lounge]. We started there, and they treat us the best. They treat all their artists, I think, the best.
Caleb: It’s our home base. We used to play the open mic like every week, so we built our audience there.
Chris: I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say we’re part of the Voodoo culture.
NAA: Do you have any special memories from Voodoo?
Jonathan: It was at Voodoo whenever we ran into Duane Trucks, the drummer for Widespread Panic…he gave us a run for our money. We were playing Turn On Your Love Light by the Grateful Dead, and Austin was playing, but he stood up and did a, “can I?” Austin just gave him the sticks. He came up, and we were good, and then he really went like [intense drumming noises] and I was struggling.
NAA: That’s pretty cool. What’s your goal for music, individually or as a group? Do you want to pursue music full time?
Caleb: We want to be the first band on Mars.
Austin: I just wanna keep having fun. I don't care if I make it big, if I'm having a good time doing it, that's all I care about.
Max: Mine’s just to make good music that makes me smile first and other people second.
Chris: I agree with that. I think we’ve all talked about this goal of being prolific and just active and promoting that in the community, because there’s a lot of prevailing attitudes and cultures. If we could lead by example and put out two records a year, we’ll see if that’s feasible, that would raise up the community, raise up ourselves.
NAA: What do you mean by prevailing attitudes? How else could the Huntsville scene be better?
Chris: There’s a lot of opinionated people who are not involved.
Max: To add to that, it feels very cliquey sometimes, especially with [a certain] crowd, like if you’re not in that group then you’re not playing house shows. And if you’re not in that group you’re not playing, you know, these small venues that get you put out to a lot of people.
Caleb: Huntsville is growing but we need more venues, and we need more smaller to mid range. You have a lot of smaller stuff and then you have the Orion and then you have Mars. But there’s not a lot of medium.
Jonathan: It's like the music scene is here and it's just kind of waiting, like a fruit that's getting ripe. Not just music, arts in general. I think what could be helpful would be more streamlined opportunities for bands that are good and want to move forward and not just grow and become better, but also represent Huntsville anywhere that we would perform.
NAA: And finally, what does the future hold for you? What are you working on right now?
Austin: We're going for a full album. There's 12 songs. We have almost all of our originals. It's kind of cool how it's come to play because we have three people that write three different types of songs. You go to John and it's got more like the heavy rock to it. And then Caleb's the more psychedelic feel, more math rock, and then Chris, it's almost like playing church music again. It’s a good mix. I'm ready to see how it turns out.
This interview was recorded on 11/23/2024.
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