You can go home again

The Heavy Pets to play homecoming show in Chester, By Justin Aclin CHESTER — Forming a rock band is a rite of passage for high schoolers. Plenty of teenagers do it. But how many people can say they’re still playing with basically the same group a decade later, touring the country to promote an album? The Heavy Pets are living that dream. The band is now based out of southern Florida but traces its roots back over 10 years, to when several of the members played together at Goshen High School. They’ll be back in the area on July 29, playing at Bodles Opera House in Chester. The band took some time to speak to The Chronicle while on the road between stops in Chicago and Minnesota during their tour to promote their new double-album, “Whale.” The Heavy Pets — Jeff Lloyd and Mike Garulli on guitars, Joe Dupell on bass, Ryan Neuberger on drums and Jim Wuest on keyboards (all the members sing) — began life in Goshen High School as a three-piece outfit called Anthem. Lloyd and Dupell played with a drummer named Jesse Margiotta, and Garulli was invited into the group after they all saw each other perform at the high school talent show. The Pets still carry the spirit of those early days, playing the songs they wrote as Anthem. “Those tend to be some of the most fun for us,” Lloyd said. “When you [think of it like], ‘Wow I wrote this song 10 years ago and here we are still killing it and still getting people with it,’ — it kind of is a confidence-builder, and it makes it really easy to sing these somewhat cheesy lyrics that I wrote 10 years ago.” The band performed off and on during their college years until finally reforming in Florida several years ago. To get his former bandmates to move cross-country and start playing with him again, Dupell took a unusual tack — he gave them all jobs. “I started an Internet advertising company and we started doing really well, so we were in need of some sales people,” Dupell said. “I was looking to start playing again with Jeff and Mike. I thought it was a good opportunity for them to come down and give them some work and start the band thing up.” The band were soon joined by Wuest, whom Lloyd and Garulli had played with in a band while Lloyd was at Syracuse University, and Lloyd’s cousin Neuberger joined on drums. And with that, the jam-heavy Pets were unleashed on a Florida scene mostly used to cover bands. They soon found a loyal fanbase that also proved a sort of unofficial marketing team for the group, taping performances and putting videos up on YouTube. When it came to developing their style, their long history together again proved useful. “We have a really good connection when we play live or even when we’re just working out original tunes in the practice space,” Garulli said. “It’s been such a learning process, learning how to play music throughout the years with the same guys. We really are able to read each other because of that and really play off each other well.” Now the Heavy Pets have a new album out that they’re extremely proud of. They are touring to support it. “Having the record to push makes it feel so much more substantial when we leave somewhere, just knowing that we’re leaving behind a trail of our music,” said Lloyd. Their tour takes them all over the eastern U.S., including their hometown show this Sunday. Their stop at Bodles last summer was encouraging “It was one of my favorite nights of the entire tour,” Lloyd said. “It was for most of us having family ties to Goshen. It was really cool to get our families out to see a performance. To see my grandparents come out to a show, I feel very blessed that they were able to come out. So that’s probably the best part about playing Bodles. The room sounds great. It really was an all-ages kind of show. I had little cousins there and my grandparents. It was a really wide spectrum of people that were in attendance, which really was a little bit of a challenge for us. Playing to that kind of crowd is different than playing to a festival crowd. This year we’re doing it slightly earlier than a normal Heavy Pets show.” The trumpet section The Heavy Pets first started when Lloyd met Joe Dupell. “We were both playing in the Goshen music program,” he said. “I think we actually met back in middle school. We were both in the trumpet section. When we got up into the high school, more like eighth grade, we started messing around with electric guitars. And then we were in high school I met Mike and we started playing together. This was pretty much the beginning of Anthem when we were playing with Jesse [Margiotta]. “We just sort of stuck with it through college. We took some time off my freshman and sophomore year, we were pretty much only playing a few nights a year as anthem. And then my junior year at Syracuse University I kind of figured things out up there and was able to start booking a lot of shows up there. I met our keyboard player Jim Wuest in Syracuse. We were playing in a band up there called My Friend’s Band which originally had Joe Dupell on bass, and then we had to get someone that lived in Syracuse. He was actually in Binghamton at the time. We were playing often enough that we needed someone that was right there. We pretty much closed it up as soon as we all graduated. But then I moved down to Florida to work and live with Joe. He had started an Internet advertising company. And then pretty much one by one he moved us down here to form the Heavy Pets. “There’s probably a little less original music going on in Florida than in the Northeast,” Lloyd said. “People have been very responsive and supportive from the beginning. When it comes to people who’ve come to every show and taped them or people that are videotaping our shows and putting them on YouTube — just kind of doing all these things that would take us a tremendous amount of time and figuring out.” Dupell said when he finished college in 2003 and didn’t have a job lined up. “My parents split up basically that year,” he said. “My mother moved to Ohio and my father moved to Jacksonville. So I drove my car down there, lived with him for about a month, then I figured I’d try Fort Lauderdale out. A lot of action was going on down there. So I checked it out.” “I really had no place to go,” he said. “My dad had a nice big house and I had my own room. I’m glad I did because it’s gorgeous and the weather is nice.” He said he wanted to play again with Jeff and Mike, who were playing gigs up in New York City. “There really weren’t too many bands in the Fort Lauderdale area doing the kind of music that we played up in New York,” he said. Garulli said he discovered his bandmates by playing at the high school talent show. “I saw both of them play, they saw me play. We all realized that we were jamming. I think I just bumped into Jeff in the hallway and we started talking about playing some music. He had invited me to come over to his place where Anthem was rehearsing. I think it was Jeff, Joe, and Jesse at that time with a keyboard player. I stopped over there and the music sounded great and we’ve been playing ever since then.” He is looking forward to introducing to a hometown audience an album that took a year’s worth of time, hard work — and money. “We got a really solid product that we’re really proud of, so it’s really cool to drive around the country and get it out to people, put it in people’s hands,” he said. To make reservations for the Bodles show, call 469-4595 or visit www.bodles.com.