Last month, I totally geeked out over the band Perkasie, the hayseed Arcade Fire of Central PA. So naturally, when I discovered that Perkasie’s Régine Chassagne, Kate Foust, had done a stint playing keys with Lancaster-based band Ripe, I had to check it out.
As it turns out, Foust is about all the two bands have in common, apart from a sort of campfire, gang-mentality approach to their music. Ripe is more like Perkasie’s second-cousin, a more jam-tastic, gruff, rock and roll version, but still in the same family tree.
With a name like Ripe, it isn’t all that surprising that the band would have a jammy persuasion – it’s so organic-sounding that you’d almost expect their logo to include a bunch of vegetables or tofu or a little plastic baggy full of diggity nugs. And you’d be right – the band’s name is spelled out by a cluster of cartoon-y tomatoes on a vine. But the jaminess isn’t the self-indulgent, 14-minute-song kind. It’s more in the band’s vibe, a barefoot, smoking-a-pipe-on-the-back-porch aesthetic that gives even Ripe’s rocking-est tunes a breezy shuffle.
“We don’t really consider ourselves a jam band, more like a group of people who think you can write a good five-minute song that has some depth both instrumentally and vocally,” explains drummer Dave Donahue. “We also have songs that are short, sweet and straight to the point.”
Ripe’s sound is unusual, at least for our area. It’s like Shooter Jennings tried to ghostwrite a new Sublime album, but was kidnapped halfway through tracking by all 83 members of Rusted Root.
The band cites influences as disparate as Jack Johnson, Kings of Leon, Incubus and The Magic Numbers, which, on paper at least, reads like a lost scene from “Saw.” But that’s what happens when you have six members. In actuality, though, this diversity is Ripe’s biggest strength, turning what might otherwise be a batch of perfectly fine, middle-of-the-road rock tunes into something artful. The mid-tempo rocker “Darwin’s Dream,” for example, gains its sparkle from Chelsea Killian’s keyboards and Jen Powell’s melodica, which add counter-melodies that, rather than clog up the musical drain, wash over the song gracefully and unobtrusively.
“I feel that adding these nontraditional rock band instruments makes our music that much more unique and likeable,” Powell says.
“I love playing with these guys and gals,” adds frontman Adam Mentzer, whose reedy, bluesy growl makes that Kings of Leon reference applicable. “Sometimes I sit back at practice or a show and think, ‘Damn, these guys ... are so good,’ and just kind of chuckle to myself about how lucky I am.”
While Ripe originally started as a solo acoustic project for Mentzer, it gained a life of its own after the current lineup (rounded out by guitarist Sam Kornhauser and bassist/violinist Osman Chaudhary) solidified and the members started writing collectively. This month, the band releases its self-titled debut album, a labor of love that members have been cultivating over the past several months.
 “I hope that people enjoy listening to the album, plain and simple,” says Kornhauser. “And if we can attract a larger audience and make a few bucks here and there from this material, all the better!”