Four Southeastern music students have come together to do what they are passionate about: making music. However, having passion does not exactly make it easy, and the struggle to balance classes, school performances and rehearsal becomes more difficult as the semester goes on. Nevertheless, “The Telegraph Salesmen” band finds a way.
The line up of the band can be as high as ten musicians, but it started with four key members: Ben Livingston on drums, Max McClintock on guitar, Durand Jones on saxophone and Carter MacFarland stands as the group’s songwriter, second guitar and vocalist.
The band’s last performance on campus was the closing performance of “All Styles Night” during the 2012 Guitar Festival early this April. The band, at the time made up of eight musicians, played two original compositions: “And I Hope It Never Ends” written by MacFarland and “Back Burner” written by McClintock.
MacFarland is a junior music education major studying percussion, guitar and “a little” piano. He met his band mates about a year ago when he transferred to Southeastern from Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College in Asheville, N.C.
“I’m originally from Charlotte, and when I came down here I found the best musicians possible and started to get stuff together for a band,” said MacFarland.
MacFarland described the band’s sound as “folk with soul,” which was inspired heavily by artists like Curtis Mayfield and famed alumnus Bill Evans. MacFarland also draws inspiration from books, particularly writers such as Paulo Coelho, author of the international best seller “The Alchemist.”
However, working on a band and juggling classes is not easy.
“I have stuff going through my head all day,” said MacFarland. “I like to think that I never stop, but school is hard to balance, you know? Biology and then trying to go play at a bar. It’s a lot of stuff going on, and you’ve got to make sacrifices. I think my GPA is 2.8; I’m going for a 3.0. Getting everybody in the same room, having a rehearsal, that’s the hardest part. We usually almost never have a practice. We’ll usually get up and we’ll go through some stuff, and then we’ll go play.”
During his musical career, which started when he was three with a piano, MacFarland has played in punk, psychedelic, “spoken word” and metal bands. However, this kind of music just didn’t work out for him.
“Playing music up there, you don’t stand a chance in hell to do anything,” he said. “It’s all metal, and you can’t go anywhere with that. I think we’re trying to make something that’s unconventional. It’s like you’re organizing chaos. You can’t always rely on something that’s tonal or concrete. You have to do something out of the box if you want to go anywhere.”
“The Telegraph Salesmen” is currently working on an album but have yet to decide on a name for it.
“I think we’re going with ‘The Blundering Book’ or ‘The Lost Tapes,'” said MacFarland. “Most of the songs don’t have names yet either. It takes me longer to come up with a name than it does for me to write a song.”
One of the nine songs on this album is a personal favorite of MacFarland, called “The Saint Who Stole from the Jackal,” which is a very emotional piece for him to play.
“It’s about my ex-girlfriend that I dated in North Carolina. I was with her for about five months, and then she was murdered,” he said. “It’s very emotional for me to play and talk about. It’s about a guy who stole something good out of the world and that I can never bring it back. The sound of it has changed so many times. It used to be really fast in 4/4, and then I played it real slow in 6/8.”
According to MacFarland, the band plans to begin touring this summer and expects their album to be complete in July.
“We’ll mostly tour locally, and, if we can, we might make it as far as Florida,” said MacFarland. “We have about nine songs for the album, and my parts have already been finished. Ben just has to record his drums and Max has to do his bass parts.”
“The Telegraph Salesmen” have several songs posted on their Facebook page as well as YouTube. More information about the band and performances can be found on Facebook or by emailing the group at [email protected].