While Duke seniors Bryan Rahija (guitar), Daniel Michalak (bass), and Stuart Robinson (keyboard) might not have had visions of Tolkien's murky forests, trickling brooks or a small fat mule named Fatty Lumpkin in mind when they decided to call their band Bombadil, they do acknowledge that The Lord of the Rings bears a certain ageless quality that resonates with their music.
"We were going for your 20-year-old great grandfather sort of look," said Rahija. True to his claim, their performing garb consists of suspenders, dusty brown trousers and rustic hats from Bolivia.
After a slew of performances including one at Durham's James Joyce Irish Pub and Restaurant, Bombadil has gained repute within and beyond the Duke community. It's their ability to cajole the charm out of well-worn genres and infuse them into entirely new forms altogether impossible to identify that makes distiguishes them. As senior Mark Connell put it, "It's hard to put a finger on their musical genre-to me, they've come up with something unique, not just a derivative of some current band or sound. The influences of pop, folk, bluegrass are there. There's also some dimension of time to the music, as it draws on something from our past."
Junior Rebecca Haber added, "They're kind of like the Soggy Bottom Boys with a twist. They've pretty much created an entirely new genre that's just plain fun to listen to. They've managed to write songs that are really catchy but completely unique and original, which is tough to do nowadays."
Rahija smiled as he related the genre that had been invented for Bombadil's type of sound. "Our fans call it 'stompgrass.' I believe we are the first band to dabble in stompgrass."
In addition to classical rock influences stemming from their experiences in a freshman band covering the likes of Creedence Clearwater Revival, their current sound has a lot to do with how the band first came about. "[Rahija and I] went to Bolivia together junior year, not knowing the other was going to be there," Michalak said. "I mean, we knew each other, like I knew what color of hair he had, but outside of the band it wasn't like we were great friends or anything."
"In Bolivia," Rahija continued, "we started practicing in a children's music school. They had a charango [a traditional stringed instrument], and we wanted to take lessons for it, so we would go to this children's school and practice really early in the morning until they threw us out. Music was just a part of our everyday household experience when we were there."
Upon returning to Durham, they recruited Michalak's brother John to play drums and Robinson to be their keyboardist. "We'd both heard of each other's piano skills," Robinson said, "And one night at Biddle we just happened to run into each other, so we decided to test the rumors." After adding Robinson's classical background to the repertoire they had accumulated in Bolivia, all they needed was a band name.
"We were sitting at a restaurant in Chapel Hill eating soup," explains Michalak, "and our manager just thought we sounded like this character from Lord of the Rings. I'd read the book and I think Stuart [Robinson] has it at home. He was a big fan of the name. It rolls off the tongue quite well."
Holding a T-shirt release party Nov. 30 in the Duke Coffeehouse and a Christmas show Dec. 9 at Joe and Jo's Cafe, where gifts will be given out to the audience, Bombadil appears to be the next Duke band to test the waters of the music industry. "I don't think any student goes into Duke with the intention of starting a band," Rahija said. "But we're serious about this and confident that we can succeed."
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