Body men

The New Bodies have, in some form or another, been playing together since high school.

“We started a band called Stuck With Arthur when we were students together,” said New Bodies front man Adam Bartelt. “That band actually stayed together until about 2009, when we all decided we wanted to take a break.

The New Bodies play Gas Lamp, 1501 Grand Ave., on Friday, Aug. 7 at 9 p.m. $5 at the door.

“It wasn’t so much a break from playing together, but more a break from the style we were playing. We had been incrementally changing the band’s sound from album to album, so 2009 seemed like a good time to make a clean break, and that was when The New Bodies officially started. Same lineup, different songs.”

Musically speaking, the transition from Stuck With Arthur to The New Bodies has seen the act move from pop punk into what Bartelt describes as “a blues-based Americana sound.”

“Just like anything, it was a slow evolution,” he said. “Changing the name was just a way of showing where we are now.”

One advantage to keeping the same members through a change in styles, is that each member knows how the other ones work, which reduces the amount of time necessary for practices and learning songs.

“Me, (drummer Chris Ford) and (guitarist Tommy Logan) have been playing together so long, that we’re really locked in,” Bartelt concurred. “Really, we can go into a show and play as The New Bodies without any prep at all.”

It also streamlines the act’s songwriting process, which Bartelt says always begins with himself working out basics on an acoustic guitar. He writes with such a close knowledge of how Ford, Logan and bassist Danny Wolf play, that there is little tweaking to the actual melody necessary once the others begin adding their parts.

Bartelt says there are enough songs on tap for a double album, if they really wanted to make one. But, for now, those age-old enemies called time and money have kept the band out of the studio. But while they wait, songs are always being workshopped.

“It goes pretty quickly, once we start writing a new song, “ Bartelt said. “We might run through a song four or five times before we take it out for a test drive. But all our songs really stay in flux until we record them. Because you might come up with something great live that you hadn’t thought of the first time around.” CV