Heavy-blues stoner rockers Birdo play loud. So loud, in fact, that they provide ear plugs at their shows for the audience.
This ear plug generosity isn’t just a show of mind-bending volume intensity; the band cares about the audience’s health and well-being.
“We like to play loud, but we’re not Sunn O))). We’re not trying to split your ear drums. We want people to be protected,” says bassist Ben Carter. “We go to a lot of metal shows, and wear ear plugs all the time. I want to be very cognizant. I see people at concerts not protecting their ears. They should be.”
The group might have been even louder (and thus needed more ear plugs), had it stuck to an initial vision of being a no-holds-barred death metal band. When Carter and guitarist Stephen Foster first started jamming in late 2015, that was the idea. But the songs came out more like dynamic doom-metal jams, with more nuance and melody than expected. The following year, the duo enlisted drummer Jon Auman, who worships at the altar of Led Zeppelin. That sort of sealed the deal. They would forgo their death-metal fantasies.
“We wanted to be more on the extreme side,” says Carter. “John is absolutely not a metalhead. He grounded us and brought us back to reality.”
The group has one EP on Bandcamp called Admittance. They currently have enough material for a full length, and hope to get that recorded this fall.
9 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 18, Blue Lagoon, 923 Pacific Ave., Santa Cruz. $5. 423-7117.
