Famous Mammoth roars back from near extinction with a debut EP

Famous Mammoth practices about three times a week in a sparse, tidy room in a house off Southwest Boulevard. Bed sheets, not blinds, cover the windows. The space lacks what you’d call character, but it’s a vast improvement over the band’s previous rehearsal spot, a StorageMart a few neighborhoods away.

“Oh, that was rough,” Colby Bates says, wincing at the memory. He and the other two members of the band are sharing what he refers to as a “grandma sofa” in the living room next to the practice area.

Bates, 25, is the band’s frontman, guitarist and keyboardist. He co-founded Famous Mammoth in 2011 with drummer Kyle Heslop, 23 (the owner of the couch and the renter of the house). The band remained a two-piece until July 2014, when the men decided that what their sound really needed was a bass player. Enter Eddie Mitchell, 31.

“We made a Craiglist ad, which is how a lot of sketchy things start out, and Eddie was one of two guys who hit us back,” Bates says. “At the time, we were still practicing at StorageMart, so basically we lured him into the band.”

“They didn’t say where they were practicing,” Mitchell adds. He laughs.

“We told him to bring an empty bottle if he wanted to pee,” Heslop says.

Rough indeed, but Mitchell was impressed with the tracks he had heard from Famous Mammoth — a few home-recorded songs on a SoundCloud page. He felt an easy connection with Bates and Heslop. So, with all the elements properly in place, the now three-piece band began the process of writing and recording its debut.

Well, sort of.

The self-titled EP that’s being celebrated Tuesday, April 28, at RecordBar, has been in the making for the past three years. The oldest song, “Recycled Friends,” dates back to 2011.

The road to this release, Bates says, has been fraught with bumps and hiccups: flaky producers, financial setbacks, multiple breaks. The last such hiatus came in the summer of 2013, when Bates moved to San Diego with permanent intentions.

“I was out there and looking for jobs, and I found a few, but I kept turning them down because nothing really felt right,” Bates says. “And all that time, we [Heslop and I] were writing, sending files back and forth. And also, my wife, Jessica — well, she’s my wife now — ” Bates pauses and shifts in his seat, giving the impression that there’s a romantic-comedy subplot to the Famous Mammoth story. “She ended up coming out there and kind of brought me back,” Bates finally explains. “So, our romance brought me back, but it was also kind of our bromance, too.” Whatever the reasons, he moved back to Kansas City in September 2014, and the band commenced again, resolving to do things differently.

Bates gestures across the couch to Heslop. “I don’t think either of us really ever lost the motivation for this band, but all of these things kept getting in our way. We could never really afford to get this EP out before. All these things kept happening, and time kept passing, and it was just discouraging.

“We always had people that were really supportive in coming out to shows,” Bates says. “We weren’t worried about what we could do and we felt the potential there, but it was the recording process that always held us up before.”

He goes on: “So this time, we just went with what we could do. I recorded and produced a couple of the songs on my own equipment. We did two with Joel Nanos at Element Studios, another two with a friend at Kimura Recordings [in Independence]. It’s a patchwork quilt, but we have it, and that feels good.”

As the band resumes its afternoon practice, I hear that Famous Mammoth sticks mostly to a midtempo rock structure, with the guitar providing a pop hook here and there. The sound is rounded and clean, built on Bates’ voice — an instrument that he bends to a whispery falsetto in “A Little Bit Extra,” then hitches up several aggressive notches in “The Architect.”

Not one note is out of place, but more impressive than the skillful playing is the interaction among the three players. They trade glances between verses, but there’s no conversation between songs — just small smiles, thoughtful nods. It sounds and looks like a band finally at ease with itself.