Review Text
In January of the year 2000, Brett Naylor, the lanky guitar turned mandolin player, decided it was time to play music with real live people and not just his home stereo. Living around Washington, DC, the best source for finding like-minded folks is the City Paper Classifieds, where Brett placed an ad in the Music section which read something like: "String Cheese, Leftover Salmon? Appetite for professional fun. Call..." After sifting through the ill-vibed he received a call from the ultra-vibed Eric Starr. "Are you my man?!" he asked. Turns out he was. The two matched musical tastes and experiences and knew there were more like them out there. The next person to come on board wasn't the "classically trained pianist who plays at the Kennedy Center" but rather the man who was "classically trained and blah, blah, blah," Turns out Starr had met him at a party and knew him only as "Groovebox" with no idea how to get a hold of him. Walking down the streets of the district one lunch break, Starr, the man of many connections, ran into the host of that party and was immediately put in touch with Mr. Box, or as his employer knew him, Fred Miller. Fred's attendance at all the social events around town is typical and at a barbecue for recent Virginia Tech grads he met a guitar-slinging Roanokian named Brice Bartly who didn't go to Va. Tech but did go to Georgetown and was probably there for the spread. Fred and Brice got on the subject of playing in bands and that Fred's guitar player was departing and would he like to jam." "What kind of music?" Brice asked. "Oh, Neil Young and Grateful Dead." Fred responded. Brice grinned. As it turns out Fred had a bespectacled little buddy from Tech by the name of Rob Carbonello who took up playing the bass in college on purpose and now lived in the Maryland suburbs. They had a band in college called Buffalo Hazard, which became the original Ubiquitone around 1998. And so the five gentlemen jammed out some covers and Starr's tunes in Fred's tiny apartment until Brett was called away for a few months, so the rest of them went on their way in search of a drummer. They found him in Andrew Wright. He came with a practice space and a madhouse percussion player named Rob Wickham. Andrew had heard from a friend that some dudes were putting together a String Cheese Incident cover band and needed a drummer so he thought he'd give them a shot. It turned out to be more than SCI covers these guys had been cranking out, in fact they didn't know any SCI songs at all, but Andrew and Starr were convinced they could get some gigs. The seven studs then became Ubiquitone. The name came to a pondering Fred one day and if it were an actual word would literally mean, "everywhere sound"-because, hey, sound is everywhere! It's also a play off the word "ubiquinone" or, Coenzyme Q10, an essential nutrient our bodies need to produce energy. And produce energy Ubiquitone would by quickly becoming "one of the best bands to emerge from the area in a long time" according to long time radio and music scene guru Bill Wright. 6 years, hundreds of shows and 2 1/2 albums later, Ubiquitone is still a solid band despite the exiting of their friend, Eric Starr, in 2003. Brett Naylor would step up as chief singer and songwriter and pen 9 of the eleven tracks to their latest album, Americondition, with Brice Bartley contributing two thoughtfully crafted tunes. With the release of Americondition, Ubiquitone pays homage to the rootsier side of their influences while hinting at a more progressive approach to making their own music. The elements of friendship and music have bonded and many more tunes lay aging in cask barrels to be taken in and enjoyed off of Ubiquitone's greatest album yet, the next one!
