The Flagstaff group Le Trebuchet calls its music “cage-free rock ‘n’ roll.”
Each member brings his own influences and styles, leading to its varied sound. Le Trebuchet will perform at Club Congress — along with Ultraviolet Communication, Lady Captain and Rolling Dusk — on Friday, Feb. 3.
Established in 2012, the group features guitarists Jeff Nickell and Jay Meyer, bass player Alec Tippett and drummer Alec Mayes. All four serve as singers. Nickell and Meyer, a Bisbee-based biologist, met through a mutual friend while busking in Flagstaff. Mayes and Tippett — who live in Durango, Colorado, and Flagstaff, respectively — joined in 2015.
“We all do bring different things to the table. That makes us unique and able to keep going. It’s the sum of all of our parts is greater than us individually,” said Nickell, a Flagstaff resident who works as a river guide.
The Club Congress performance is part of a release tour supporting the group’s new EP “Without Warning,” which hits stores in April. It was recorded following a tour right before the height of COVID-19.
“We had honed those songs on that tour in a lot of ways and recorded them at the end,” Meyer said.
A week after the show in Tucson, the group is going to Jerome, where they will record six to eight songs.
Prior to the EP release, the group has been putting out singles. In January, they released the song “Highway,” which was written about one of Meyer’s former bands.
“Things got pretty rough, and I decided to leave, which was a hard decision to make and a hard decision to settle with afterward,” he said.
“It was a big time in my life. I put a lot of energy into making that tour happen, and it just didn’t go that well. It was just realizing how fragile and how difficult it is, why it’s so rare that good bands stay together.”
Live, the song “Highway” is generally paired with “Proper Home” and “Out to the Country.”
“They are all in the same key, and they just fit together well,” Nickell said.
Nickell and Meyer share songwriting duties, although the whole band collaborates on the arrangements.
“It will usually be one of us who writes the songs,” Nickell said.
“When we get together, we will present it to the band. It will be in a real basic form, and once we start playing, everyone has different ideas for it.”
As a songwriter, Meyer tends to write about women and his experiences on the road, while Nickell’s songs focus on traveling, women and psychedelic subject matter.
Sometimes Nickell will write while he is out on the river. Meyer said the songs he and Nickell write often have varying sounds.
“His and my writing styles are fairly different,” Meyer said. “Mine is more mellow and has big dynamic contrasts a lot of the time, and Jeff will write really chordy songs with lots of different parts, whereas mine are simpler.”
With its music, the group spans rock genres. Meyer describes the song “Stonehouse,” which is on their new EP, as having a George Thorogood vibe.
Their new song “Little White Collared Crimes,” which will be recorded in Jerome, is reminiscent of The Who and Huey Lewis and the News.
During the upcoming Tucson performance, the group will perform a variety of songs from the “Without Warning” and the batch they’ll record in Jerome.
For one song called “Damn Ass,” which has a Weezer-inspired sound, Nickell improvises the lyrics based on audience suggestions. The name of the song was inspired by a video of two skater kids.
Meyer said that this song highlights the band’s approach of being more light-hearted during performances.
“We definitely don’t take ourselves too seriously, and I think that’s become one of our strong points as a band,” Meyer said.
“I think people are relaxed because we’re pretty laidback. We’re goofing around a lot of the time and making jokes with each other and the audience.”
The group has performed throughout Arizona at events such as the Sidepony Express Music Festival and Flagstaff Hullabaloo.
On several occasions, they have participated in NPR’s Tiny Desk Contest, which tasks artists with creating a video behind a desk of their choosing.
Their 2016 Tiny Desk Contest video “Sage-Filled Cigarette” was made at the Hotel Monte Vista in Flagstaff.
In 2020, the group submitted the vid. eo “Whackadoodle,” which was recorded in a border town in Sonora, Mexico.
“We spent three days down in this little border town called Naco,” Meyer said. “We ended up playing two shows in the middle of the day…We met a local dude that helped us to get to know the town and navigate it. It was a really cool experience.”
The song comments on the American political structure of the time.
Although the band isn’t politically charged, they do respond to world events.
This year, the group plans to do a video for the social/political song “Little White Collared Crimes” for the Tiny Desk Contest.
“There’s a lot of wild stuff going on out there. We have opinions about it. It feels good to have something to say and to take a stand on some of that stuff,” Meyer said.
The group took a hiatus from 2017 to 2019, when everyone was busy with their jobs. For a while, they weren’t sure if they were just pausing or ending the band.
When they got together to do shows in 2020, they were also uncertain of whether it was a one-off thing or a restart of the band.
“We had a group call about doing a tour,” Nickell said.
“It seemed like we were in places in life where if it didn’t happen soon, it would never happen, so it was more of a reunion for us to have fun, and then we had a good enough time on that tour that we decided to keep pursuing it.
“At the very end of that tour is when COVID lockdown started to happen. It actually worked out really well for us because with COVID lockdown, it meant we couldn’t play, but there also wasn’t a whole lot to do, so there were times where Jay was able to come into town, and Alec M. would come into Flagstaff, and we could just set up in one of our houses for a few days and play. There wasn’t a pressure to make money, tour or release stuff. We were getting together more often than we had in a long time and making content or writing songs. It’s great to get out and be able to play, but we were able to go back to basics and reset our foundation.”
The group tends to take breaks in the summer because they’re busy with their jobs.
Nickell said with Le Trebuchet, he and his bandmates can really just enjoy playing and making music together.
“It’s mostly about getting to hang out with some close friends that we are still able to play with and hopefully get as many people as we can to listen to what we’ve made over time,” Nickell said.
“No one is getting rich off of Spotify or YouTube algorithms, so at this point we do it for the love of the art and the friendships we have made over the years.”
Le Trebuchet with Ultraviolet Communication, Lady Captain and Rolling Dusk
WHEN: 8 p.m. Friday, Feb. 3
WHERE: Club Congress, 311 E. Congress Street, Tucson
COST: $10 in advance and day of show; 21 and older
INFO: 520-622-8848, hotelcongress.com
