Fresh fruit

Easy Fruit, a straight rock four-piece, is one of the newer editions to the capital city’s music landscape. That’s not to say its component members lack experience with playing music in town, however. All four of them — Brad Turk, Thomas Oldham, Cory Wendel and Chris Marshall — have played for various bands around Des Moines for years. But Easy Fruit marks something different for all of them.

Easy Fruit plays DG’s Taphouse, 125 Main, Ames, on Friday, Feb. 20.

“We wanted to make loud rock and roll,” Turk explained plainly. “I’ve been in a lot of pop bands, playing synthesizers and stuff like that, and we just wanted to start a rock band. That’s what the EP is. The EP is kind of balls out.”

“Yeah,” Oldham concurred. “It’s about 19 minutes of in-your-face.”

“The EP” is the band’s self-titled debut, which, true to their word, is a half-dozen tracks of some of the loudest, fuzziest rock you’ll hear around town.

Produced by soundboard genius Phil Young, the album was put together last summer, but the band sat on it for nearly six months, tinkering. The EP was finally released to the world this past December in a joint release party with Volcano Boys. Now, Easy Fruit is taking its talents north of the city.

“I’m excited to get up to Ames and put it in some people’s hands who aren’t a part of the Des Moines music scene,” Oldham said. “Our local scene is amazing, but Ames is a little bit of undocumented territory for us. So it’s exciting.”

The EP is a good look at the birth of a band. Easy Fruit came together in January 2014, then settled into the studio to start recording. Five months isn’t a lot of time to put together a bunch of songs, so most of the material is stuff that Oldham brought with him to the project. Still, everyone involved agrees that it is a good example of what to expect from Easy Fruit in the coming months: they’re going to rock. And they’re going to do it hard, they’re going to do it fast, and it is going to be best served loud.

“All the songs on that EP are the very beginning of Easy Fruit,” Oldham said. “The EP was really just a culmination of all of us coming together and wanting to make some rock and roll.” CV