Breaking rad

Cory Barringer wants to make something clear.

“Full disclosure: Broken Voice Club [is] only a band, technically,” Barringer blurts out—completely unprompted—at the beginning of the interview.

“Really, it’s a club comprised of best friends,” he says.

He’s not kidding, at least in the sense that Broken Voice Club isn’t a band in any traditional sense. Of the nine-plus people involved with the project, typically only four or five of them will play at any particular gig.

And on its album, the whole who-plays-what-on-which-song makes for a total jumble. The band members each played different instruments on every song—no one player performed on every song.

Perhaps a more apt description of the group, which performs two sets on Thursday, August 21, would define it as a cross between a collective and a local supergroup. The members include everyone from Barringer’s group, the Kelps, as well as the entirety of Honyock and Silver Spoons (though, truth be told, everyone in Silver Spoons is also in either the Kelps or Honyock).

Musically, Broken Voice Club plays a similar mix of those other bands’ sounds: roots, alt-rock and musical theater.

The real difference is philosophical.

“We really want to make Broken Voice Club a fun thing. We don’t want the feeling of ’got to get it done,’” Barringer says. “With the Kelps or Honyock, we love making that work. With BVC, we want to keep it broken.”

The whole thing started in 2012 when the members of Honyock and the Kelps got together to casually record an acoustic EP. They quickly abandoned the ’acoustic’ and ’casual’ part, however, and dove in pretty deep, recording a bunch of tunes over several lengthy sessions. Different members were present on different days, and everybody played and did pretty much whatever they wanted. The result was Being Part One, a collection comprising everyone’s weirder songs—ones they thought wouldn’t fit with their “proper” bands.

“When you record something in the Broken Voice Club, it’s like, ’I’ve been wanting to do this for a while, but I’m not sure if I’d fall on my ass completely. So I’m going to fall on my ass in Broken Voice Club first,’” says band member Spencer Hoffman.

So far, Broken Voice Club has only played a handful of shows—all last-minute gigs, subbing in on slots originally intended for one of their other bands.

Unlike with their other bands, which the members rehearse and prepare for meticulously, BVC plays with an anything-goes attitude.

“A Broken Voice Club show is so selfish. It doesn’t matter if the audience doesn’t like it. If they do, it’s completely incidental,” Barringer says.

A BVC show is nothing if not different. For example, there was the show for which Barringer decided to sit in the corner doing nothing for the length of a song—just because. When he finally returned, he just started beating on the drums like a maniac.

Before recording that first BVC album, the members of the Kelps and Honyock enjoyed playing on the same shows, but didn’t know one another very well. Part of the motivation to record the EP was an excuse to become better friends. Now, the two bands are inseparable, and, its members say, Broken Voice Club has become this umbrella that all of them use for their different projects.

Most importantly, Broken Voice Club has also become a record label by the same name. In February it released its first record, a split EP with Honyock and the Kelps. Since then, it has also released EPs by Honyock and Silver Spoons.

Next up, everyone’s pushing to eventually make another album—and to push musical boundaries. More immediately, however, are this week’s shows—the first ones booked specifically for the band.

Barringer concedes it might be time to shift the band’s philosophy on this one—at least a little.

“I think we may want to rehearse for this show,” he says. “It would be nice if we were a little tighter, a little more professional.”