By Desney Cody
Photo Credit Jodi Corcoran
Three high school boys with a passion for music, and the talent for it, come together to create a band that could be Minneapolis’s next best thing.
The Contingents are a three-piece that are made up by Ted Tiedemann, Nick Corcoran and Jackson Peters. While still being young, and trying to figure out who they are as individuals and as musicians, they are able to come together and establish a sound that is not like most. However, most of what they play are covers, they are able to add their own sound and still be a parallel to the original band’s work. The Contingents describe their music as barebones and raw with little to no influence from outsiders. They play what they want and sound the way they want. With the band’s influences of Radiohead, Pearl Jam, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Who, Led Zeppelin, and The Beatles, they can learn from them, and establish themselves as their own.
Is there an image you want your music to convey? If so, what is it?
JP: I want my music to convey the emotions that I am feeling, or that the band is feeling.
NC: We have the ability to make different emotions through our music, so there would be no image that we would want to convey. There are no set guidelines when it comes to our music.
TT: I don’t want to be pigeon held with or by a certain image. Just take the music for what it is.
What is the meaning of the band’s name?
TT: We were throwing around names for a while, and couldn’t agree on one in particular. Then I just threw out the name Contingents. It means to depend upon or rely on. As a band, we rely on and depend upon each other.
Is it important to you that each and every audience member is able to connect with your music?
TT: If people don’t like our music, it’s just like “Okay, cool.” It’s secondary to musicians to truly care what others think and how they feel about our music. We want people to connect with it and enjoy our music, but it doesn’t who does and who doesn’t. We would just hope that somebody does.
JP: It’s not very important to me because as long as we are doing what we love, and are still enjoying it, that is all that matters.
NC: As far as having out music connect to our audience, I would find it awesome to have that. But I would not go out of my way to specifically write a song for our fans. In other words, I wouldn’t want a lot of influence, as far as writing music, to come from the people that listen to our music. I’d rather just write our music. I would rather write about the things I enjoy or even whatever comes to my mind, and just be grateful for whoever would come to like it and connect with it.
What would the band lose without one of the members?
TT: I dive deeper into the songwriting, and I try to push the band more into the area of more original work. But I usually come up with the central idea and then bring it to the group and we will work on it together.
NC: I do a lot of the constructing the rhythm. I always try to come up with new ideas and something that is original, and uncommon from what we have done previously.
JP: We wouldn’t be the puzzle that our band is without any single one of us. I personally, add a nice layer to the sound being the bass, but I couldn’t imagine what it would be like if it weren’t just us three. As well as the feelings would be gone. We are in this band because we connect and work so well together.
The Contingents played at the Pourhouse in downtown Minneapolis on April 27th. It was a very intimate performance in a small venue, and there wasn’t a ton of people. However, the Contingents can really connect with their audience in a good way. Each band member brings something completely different to each song; with the way they play, the songs they play and each member gets off to the song in their own way, making even the covers their own. They cover a lot of ground by being a three-piece. They do covers of bands that are about four to five pieces and can make it sound just as good. The Contingents couldn’t be placed under one specific genre either. Most of what they play is rock, they can play everything from classic rock, to indie grunge, but they couldn’t be just classified as just that. There is much more t0 them.
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