A nationally-touring rock band that combines barbershop harmonies and electric guitar operas plays its first-ever Iowa show tonight (Thursday) in Ames. Tally Hall’s first gig was a frat party at the University of Michigan. The five members found fast success with their quirky sound, somewhere between the Barenaked Ladies and the Beatles.
Twenty-three-year-old keyboardist and singer Andrew Horowitz says the uniforms help. “We wear colored ties and white shirts and black pants which is a little gimicky but it’s really helped define our image and a lot of people who otherwise wouldn’t recognize us, do, and they remember the ties.”
Horowitz says the live show sounds a bit different from their debut album, “Marvin’s Marvelous Mechanical Museum,” as it features 45 different musicians.
Horowitz says “We like to play music in a bunch of different genres. We don’t really have one sound that we try, we’re not like an ’emo’ band or a punk rock band or anything like that. It’s basically very eclectic rock music.” He says the tunes range from jazz to country to power-pop. Horowitz says the five members were all attending Michigan when they started the band.
Horowitz says “Three out of the five of us graduated and two are taking some time off. It got really intense towards the end of our college careers and we all decided to give it a go because it was worth it and we were all having a good time. There’s a lot of momentum. We’ve been doing it about a year now fulltime and it’s been going really well.” Horowitz is among the grads, with a double-major in music composition and English. He says another band member deferred a full-ride scholarship to medical school to go on tour.
The band’s video for “Good Day” is expected to be released next week on the website “You-Tube.” Horowitz says they shot it in dozens of locations over four months for the fast-paced production. More information is at “www.tallyhall.com”.
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