The Kaufman Archives: Groove Town Assault, 2016

It’s a Saturday night at The Boardroom, and Groove Town Assault’s resident rapper Cory Brodsky has made a giant mistake. Surrounded by his bandmates, guys that he considers friends and family, he has committed the cardinal sin of ordering a less than manly drink.

“Is that a buttery nipple?” one of his bandmates asks with sincere dread in his voice. Cory admits that, yes, he’s been fighting off a cold and … he never gets to complete that thought.

“What are you drinking that for?” asks Billy Martini, rhythm guitar, with high-pitched incredulity.

The bandmates are quick to pounce on Martini’s screeching. “You realize only dogs can hear you now, right?” cracks Owens Warren, bass.

Effecting an effete British accent, Derrick Ludaway, lead vocals, calls for another buttery nipple and a white zin.

This sets off a chain reaction of bandmates cracking wise, cracking on each other and cracking each other up. Eventually, somehow, the group consensus is that a buttery nipple mixed with white zin should be called a “Dirty Shirley.” In a separate conversation running simultaneously, it’s decided that “Two Fingers and a Dog Collar” would make a great title for their next album.

And to think, all I asked was, “How did you all meet?”

It’s a moot question anyway. How they met is meaningless next to this amazing bond that has formed between bandmates.

To understand what makes Groove Town Assault work, you first have to understand why it shouldn’t.

The best explanation for this strange phenomenon comes by way of the humble bee. You see, according to all known laws of aviation, there is no way a bee should be able to fly. The bee, of course, flies anyway because bees don't care what humans think is impossible.

If much the same way, this seven-piece genre-defying musical maelstrom is like anything, should not be able to come together to create such a face-melting sound. Every member looks as if they are on loan from a different band just for the night.

In a band full of characters, Warren is the character among characters. After the buttery nipple conversation, the band prepares to go on and Warren is busting out his finest dance moves, wearing a hat he’d stolen from someone in the crowd. Dallas Ackerman, drums, is laser-focused in sharp defiance of his young age.

Even at 20, he’s fully locked in, asking Sammy Passaloukas, lead guitar and keyboard, to play “November Rain” as he sets up. Passaloukas declines, his long hair swaying as he shakes his head “no” with a chuckle. He’s trying to get two instruments set up, and one of them isn’t cooperating. “This is actually the first time we’ve used this keyboard in a while,” he says, untangling a snarl of cords.

Among them walks Billy Martini, his tie-dyed T-shirt and baggy jeans making him seem like a refugee from a jam band (in fact, he Sammy and Dallas are the band’s resident metal heads). Martini is tapping an iPad that is synced to the band’s sound system, getting every level perfect (and showing utter fearlessness in calling out bandmates who haven’t adjusted their volume). Behind the soft glow of his computer, DJ Brian Eason queues up the interludes that will keep the music going non-stop through the night and gets his turntables set for that throwback scratching that partially defines the GTA Sound.

“Corey and I are really the hip hop guys,” he says, attempting to define the fuzzy lines that separate every band member’s sensibilities. As he talks, Brodsky paces just off to the side, running lyrics through his brain to the blistering rhymes that he peppers each song with.

And cooling his pipes off with a beer, Ludaway just tries to stay out of the flurry of activity. His long dreadlocks, wide smile and imposing physical presence mark him as the front man, but his voice is what makes him lead vocalist. At the drop of a hat, he can go from dripping Marvin Gaye levels of honey to snarling out a nu metal growl. But before then, he stands aside while what the band refers to as “beautiful, organized chaos” ensues.

The band is, as Ackerman refers to them, an unusual cast of characters.

“For people who don’t know us, if you just look at us all on stage you might think, ‘Oh this is going to be awful,” jokes Warren. “And then we start playing – the white dude raps, the black dude sings… you just say to yourself ‘What the___ is going on?’”

And when that moment comes, the band playing to a dense crowd this Saturday despite the approach of December onto Hilton Head, beautiful chaos and seven completely disparate bandmates somehow impossibly come together to create something completely amazing. The band defies genres, flipping back and forth between covers and originals, but through it all a thread remains of seven guys who all just really like music.

Bees should not fly. But they do. Seven guys from all points of the musical map should not be able to melt faces with this kind of efficiency.

But they do. And if you want to see for yourself, you’ll just have to seem them live.

Find Groove Town Assault on Facebook for upcoming dates and pick up their latest album, “Safety Meeting.”