YOU
The Many Faces of You

By Harold Zimm

Photos by Skylar Reeves

They infiltrated the Atlanta music scene six years ago from humble Midwestern bar band roots, but Y O U has already left an indelible mark on both this city and a nation of unsuspecting listeners. It’s a mark some folks don’t even realize is being left on them, with the band’s tentacles reaching quietly into national Coca-Cola ad campaigns and a spot on Guitar Hero. But it’s there.

Through eclectic live shows, unique music videos, internet promotion and good old technical skill, the band takes advantage of every opportunity to further itself.

The former Bloomington, Indiana residents are known just as much for their tongue-in-cheek delivery as they are for their actual songs, and the band’s many different ventures have made them staples in the Atlanta music scene.

Members Mark Cobb, Peter Olson, Nick Niespodziani, and recent addition Mark Bencuya (also from Bloomington) approach it all with open minds and a deep arsenal of creative talents that only begins with musical ability. There mission to incorporate conceptual and visual arts into everything they do is no better exemplified than their new residency at Atlanta venue The 10 High. The band will set up shop every Thursday and put on a new show every week.

The ambitious project — known as The Surprise Party — will go on indefinitely. “Probably forever, as long as people buy a lot of liquor on those Thursdays,” says Bencuya. Coming up with new, interesting material every week is a daunting task, but Y O U has a secret weapon in their years’ experience as a cover band in Indiana.

“Back in Bloomington,” says Olson, “the only way to do it is to be a cover band. I mean, if you want to be an original band you have to be half cover band, still.” But upon moving to Atlanta, Cobb, Olson and Niespodziani found audiences to be much more open-minded about up-and-coming bands. After a short while, they realized that they could do original material as Y O U and secretly play cover shows under a different name, in different neighborhoods, on the side. Thus, The Tupperware Party.

Initially worried that it would damage their credibility as true artists, Y O U kept The Tupperware Party a secret from their new peers. Says Olson, “It was definitely hush-hush for a while.” After many well-paying cover gigs, however, they realized that Y O U and The Tupperware Party appealed to very different audiences and could coexist peacefully and publicly.

“The Tupperware Party started getting fans,” says Cobb. “It became apparent that people who liked The Tupperware Party were not interested [in Y O U].” Once they had shed their shame, The Tupperware Party even began selling T-shirts at their shows. “If they go there and they have an extra 20 bucks and they’re drunk, and they’re like, ‘Wow, you guys are our favorite cover band,’ why not throw them some T-shirts?” asks Cobb. “There’s no other way to make money as a cover band as far as merch goes, unless we start doing hats and belt buckles.”

“Which, I still have those blueprints for.”

Adds Niespodziani, “We give you our original music for free, but we’ll also play your wedding — for thousands and thousands of dollars.”

“I don’t think this Thursday thing would be possible,” says Cobb, “we wouldn’t be able to execute the amount of stuff that we’re doing, if we didn’t have this ability. Most of the bands around town say, ‘We can’t play covers,’ or ‘We won’t play covers,’ or they’re not versatile enough, so by default we sort of became that niche. It’s not like we’re just one thing to one person, I think it’s been good to be whores in a certain way, that we can kind of flip the switch and change what we do, without losing the integrity of Y O U.”

One of the many ways that Y O U has held onto its integrity is by experimenting with what the public wants to hear and what other musicians will respect. Nearly every Halloween for many years now, for example, the band has dressed up as cultural icons and played unique tribute sets. The tradition began in Indiana, when the band played an entire Michael Jackson album on synthesizers with no other accompaniment.

“We played the Thriller album, in its entirety, on a full moon, Friday, the 13th of October. We sold out this club,” says Cobb, proudly.

“We sold out a restaurant,” Olson interjects.

After moving south, the band carried on its new Halloween ritual.

“Once the whole band was here,” says Cobb, “it took us maybe three or four months to even get a real gig, and then I think it was that following Halloween we played [Atlanta’s] Limerick Junction, and we did the same thing, played the whole Thriller album.” This time, however, the band was dressed as characters from the Wes Anderson film The Royal Tenenbaums. Following years have included ‘80s movie soundtrack songs (while dressed as the cops from the Police Academy movies), Led Zeppelin (on synthesizers, dressed as the cast of Napoleon Dynamite), and most of the Greatest Hits album by The Steve Miller Band (as the cast of Will Ferrell’s film Anchorman).

In addition to Y O U, The Tupperware Party, and their annual Halloween spectacles, the band has also launched another series of unique shows: The Rock Fight. The Rock Fight entails two bands playing tribute sets, pitted against one another by way of audience votes. Noteworthy Rock Fights have included Hall & Oates vs. Bob Seger and Led Zeppelin vs. The Who. A plethora of local musicians (such as Mark Dannells of The Warm Guns, Rob Henson of Telegram, Greg Lee of South 70 and Greg Partridge of The Drexlers) have performed in these bouts, many of whom now take part in the Surprise Party shows.

Making connections with other musicians is how Y O U so quickly adapted to Atlanta, and they recommend that any up-and-comers do the same. Before his tenure in Y O U began, Bencuya attended blues jam sessions; during his very first Atlanta open mic, the Indiana transplant was offered a gig with a local band. Stressing the importance of getting out to the clubs and bars to make face-to-face impressions, Bencuya says “There’s no substitute for that, you can never get that over the telephone or email.”

Recalling their early days in Atlanta, says Cobb, “We went to every open mic, and we did something different. When you were only supposed to have one or two people with acoustic guitars, we would show up with five and be like, ‘We’re gonna play with all keyboards right now, and you’re gonna give us the inputs to do it.’”

“Looking back, we were kind of assholes,” quips Niespodziani.

“Looking forward,” he adds, “we’re kind of assholes.”

The other regulars of all the nights the band was going through began to inspire another side project — 3 Dog Stevens, a character played by Cobb.

“We saw so much horrible, horrible music,” he says. “They’re up there playing shitty songs, so we’re like, rather than be Y O U and blast these people, we’ll form 3 Dog Stevens and go out and just do a lot of the stuff we’ve seen other people do. But they did it seriously, and we do it as a way of poking fun.”

Y O U has also backed up Strong Bad from Homestar Runner on 2007’s Strong Bad Sings. Eventually, two songs from that album ended up in the Guitar Hero game series: one featuring Homestar Runner character Trogdor (on Guitar Hero II), and the other featuring a fictional ‘80s band from Homestar Runner, Limozeen (Guitar Hero Encore: Rock the 80s).

“Through Homestar Runner, [creators] the Brothers Chaps got approached by the guys who make the game,” says Olson. “And then they got the [audio] files from us. All the other [music in the game] is either the real tracks or stuff that was recorded in a studio out in L.A. to re-make all those songs, and all the tracks we did were recorded at my house. On the ‘80s edition, the Limozeen song is the only song on the game that’s not actually from the ‘80s, which is pretty cool.”

“And it’s us playing all the instruments,” reiterates Niespodziani.

Though they are comfortable and accomplished in these settings, cartoons and games aren’t the only audio-visual medium in which Y O U can be heard; for five years their independently-produced music videos have garnered a cult following, and constantly redefine the limits (or lack thereof) of the band’s creativity. Along with his sister Gina, Niespodziani recently completed a video for “Moviekiss” comprised completely of stop-motion animation on a Lite-Brite toy. The mesmerizing clip has been shown at film festivals in Washington D.C. and Montreal, but it is just one of many impressive videos. Others have involved jump-rope teams (utilizing Niespodziani’s jump-rope tournament experience), sign language, and animated photographs of the band performing through stop-motion.

Despite how good Atlanta has been to Y O U, they maintain that relying on a scene or city itself is not enough. Olson claims that rather than landing in New York or Los Angeles, the ultimate destination for Y O U is one they have already reached: the internet.

“No city will just launch a band’s career anymore,” says Cobb. “They could be from anywhere, it’s really the touring and internet, like Pete said, to launch what they do. I think if you chase any city, you’re always going to get there after the scene is already diluted.”

Concludes Niespodziani, “ What dictates your success ultimately is, first and foremost, your own ideas and creativity and skill-and second, lucky breaks that could happen if you live in Indiana, or Atlanta, or New York, or wherever you live. Those are the types of things you can’t control and can’t plan for.”

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