Music Road Co: The Best of Both Worlds
-The following first appeared in The Floyd Press on January 23, 2020.
It was a big year for Music Road Co (MRCO), a popular local band that includes two sets of brothers, three of whom currently live in Floyd County on Music Road. The band’s year included high-energy performances of their Reggae/Funk Afro/Latin inspired music at Floydfest, Yoga Jam and other regional festivals. It concluded with an opening set at the Harvester Performance Center for the chart-topping musician Michael Franti and a rocking New Year’s Eve show at Floyd’s Dogtown Roadhouse.
MRCO was formed two years ago by members of two other local bands, The Alliens and Spoon Fight, after the bands broke up when a member of each band moved out of state. The Alliens featured the Allen brothers, Janiah (drummer) and Jamiel (keyboard player) and others, while Spoon Fight consisted of Luke Thomas (lead guitarist/vocalist), his brother Jake Thomas (drummer) and friend Isaac Wright (bass). Both bands were creating original music and drawing enthusiastic followings, which MRCO is building on.
Janiah Allen, a drummer who learned to play bass because MRCO needed a bass player, describes Luke, Jake and himself as the founding fathers of the band. Other core band members of the 9-piece band are Floyd Countians Deb Tome on trombone and Abby Thomas (married to Luke) on vocals and percussion. Roanoke’s Keyboardist Jamiel Allen, trombone player Joel Stopka and saxophonist Willis Greenstreet play most shows. Other musicians, such as hand-drummer Vladimir Espinoso (who Allen credits as teaching him everything he knows as a drummer), are added or rotated as schedules dictate.
The brothers all grew up out of the country, which has influenced their World Groove musical sensibilities. The Allen brothers were born in Key West, Florida, where their father still works as a musician. They grew up in Ecuador, where their mother, Anga Miller, an early back-to-the-land Floyd transplant and co-owner of Dogtown Roadhouse, ran the Winter Sun hand-painted clothing business. Janiah’s musical career started at an upper level of musicianship, playing drums as a teenager for the high-powered and renowned Latin dance band Solazo after the drummer left the band.
The Thomas brothers grew up in South Africa before moving to Floyd with their family in 2002 when they were 10 and 12. They were homeschooled and their mother was a teacher at Floyd’s Blue Mountain School, which is where they met BMS student Isaac Wright. Wright and the Thomas brothers shared an interest in music and formed Spoon Fight in 2009. The Thomas’s played in Richie Ursomarso’s band, The Wildlife, when they were teenagers. Ursomarso, a Floyd songwriter, vocalist and lead guitarist was an inspiration to the brothers. “I learned a lot from Richie,” Luke Thomas said.
Janiah Allen and Luke Thomas are MRCO’s front men and primary vocalists and songwriters. Allen explained how he frequently brings the concepts and lyrics of a song to the band, which they all work on to make better. He brings Alliens songs and Luke Thomas brings songs that were featured on Spoon Fight’s 2015 CD that Thomas produced most of. Thomas wrote most of the Spoon Fight lyrics but the band wrote the songs together, he said. Now the MRCO bandmates are writing new songs. “It’s all dance music,” said Allen. “When we write music, we think about what makes you move.”
Music Road, a road off Beaver Creek, was named for a country music musician. Allen remembers coming to Floyd after graduating high school in Vermont to help his mother rebuild the Winter Sun stage after a fire. Sometime around 2012, he and his wife Lucy and young son Nyo were living in town and looking for the right place outside of town to buy. They saw a property in a real estate listing that was on Music Road. “We knew we had to check that out,” he said.
Music Road has become the band’s home base as well as their namesake. The CO in the band’s name doesn’t necessarily stand for “company,” Allen said, although they have been introduced that way. The CO is open-ended. Their website (musicroadco.com) reads, “Music Road CO, a cooperative of common creative companions conspiring to command your cognitive locomotion.”
Since buying the Music Road property, Allen has built a house, as has Jake Thomas and his wife Izzy Thomas. Luke and Abby Thomas live nearby but own land on Music Road and are planning to build a home there too. The renovated Music Road studio, where the band practices and records music, was at one time a fiddle shop. It gives the band the creative freedom to work from where they are.
In 2019, the band stepped up their act with a more stylized, yet still funky presentation. They started wearing all white and mixing in some group dance moves, reminding Allen of the salsa band traditions he grew up with in South America. A MRCO CD is soon to be in the works, but the band will be releasing singles on Spotify, iTunes etc. in the lead up to it, said Thomas, who mixes the band’s music. A video produced in-house has just been completed.
The three men agree that Michael Franti is a good model for what they’d like to create. Franti, who is world known, is an activist and family man, as well as being an independent musician with a dedicated following and a reputation for dynamic shows that spread positivity. “Being endlessly on tour and away from our families doesn’t really appeal to us. We’re family guys,” Allen said.
“That’s why we’re investing in our studio equipment and living together,” added Thomas. “We plan on building this band in a long term sustainable way. We’re not going to be ending relationships, quitting our jobs or over extending ourselves.”
Allen has a flooring business that Jake Thomas works for. Both Allen and Luke Thomas work for Omnibuild Construction Company in Floyd, and Allen is in three other bands, Wildlife, The Jordan Harman Band and The Ambassador. He does most of MRCO booking, noting that for the band’s next show (February 8) they’ll be opening for Lazy Man Dub at Martins Downtown in Roanoke for an all reggae show on Bob Marley’s birthday.
The band is also set to headline, what Allen calls “one of the best shows of the year,” Blue Mountain School’s annual Mardi Gras fundraiser on February 22nd at Dogtown. A long list of regional festivals, including a return to Floydfest, is on the schedule for 2020.
“The best of both worlds.” That’s how Thomas describes the best-case scenario of balancing the band’s continued success and recognition with community involvement, lifestyle freedoms and family life. “You have to truly believe in what you do for it to be something sustainable that you want to do for the rest of your life and be happy,” Allen added. – Colleen Redman
PHOTOS 1. Pictured left to right are Jake Thomas, Janiah Allen and Luke Thomas (seated) in the Music Road studio. 2. Music Road Co playing a New Year 2020 show at Dogtown Roadhouse. 4. MRCO with dancers at Yoga Jam 2019. 5. Performing at Floydfest 2019 6. Floydfest. 7. Floydfest dancers. 8. MRCO on stage at Cirque du Floyd 2019.9. With wigs on Hallween 2019. Left to right Janiah Allen (keyboard), Vladimir Espinoso (hand drums), Greenstreet (sax), Deb Tome (trumpet), Abby Thomas (percussion), Luke Thomas (lead guitar) and Janiah Allen (bass).
