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The Tufts Daily
Where you read it first | Thursday, March 28, 2024

‘Not So Gentleman’ enters Tufts music scene

After a year of playing together, sophomore blues trio “Not So Gentleman” performed for its first audience in the Crane Room in a Tufts AppleJam concert last Saturday. It was a night they had been anticipating for quite some time.

Music has been a part of two of the band members’ lives since childhood. Both Henry Butler, the band’s drummer, and Avram Ellner, the band’s guitarist, have played their instruments since the fourth grade.

“I just took lessons, I didn’t really play by myself much,” Butler said. “Then in high school, I played in jazz band.”

But the sophomores said they kept their music to themselves until college, when they found other people who not only enjoyed playing, but also enjoyed the experience of playing together.

“I came from a very technical playing [background] because my guitar teacher was in a band in the ‘80s ... like an ‘80s pop metal band,” Ellner said.

At Tufts, they found each other through a mutual friend, band bassist Max Leonhardt. The trio soon began jamming together, even though Leonhardt had not played previously played the bass.

“I knew Avram [played guitar] ... and I knew Henry played drums because he was trying to find someone to play drums with, and I was like, ‘Oh, I know this dude who shreds and I know this dude who play the drums,’ and then, those two met up, and I was like, ‘This is stupid, I want to play with my friends,’” Leonhardt said. “So one night the three of us just went into Boston and bought a bass.”

Leonhardt started taking lessons through Tufts, improved bit by bit, and quickly started playing the blues with Butler and Ellner. Since then, the trio has learned to better their musical talents together.

“We slowly weaned Avram off the metal and into the blues,” Leonhardt said. “I came into it very ... metal. Then one day [Henry] actually gave me like 500 blues songs — it was like Gary Clark, Jr. and Jimi Hendrix’ Blues album, like The Black Keys, stuff like that — and I was hooked, and I knew a little bit about the blues and then we started jamming some blues stuff.”

The simple construction that forms the basis of the blues, six notes, made learning to play with his two more experienced bandmates that much easier, Leonhardt added.

“You just play those six notes in different patterns ... and that was easy for me, so I just picked that up,” he said.

Although they play the blues, the bandmates’ different music tastes and experiences as musicians, give them a sound of their own.

“I’ve been telling people [that we’re] blues, rock, funk with a sprinkle of shred,” Ellner said. “The good thing is we all came into it with different musical backgrounds and you can definitely hear everything combine, sort of mish mosh together into this very unique sound.”

Sam Worthington, a sophomore and president of AppleJam, the student collective which organized the show in which the band debuted, agreed with Ellner’s description of Not So Gentlemen. He also hailed the band’s first show, which headlined Shark Saddle and included Like Wolves, Dirty Lou and Thaddeus Strauss, as a success.

“[Not So Gentleman was] interesting. They’re definitely a jam band with some rock-like influences ... they definitely have some jam elements ... Also a lot of shredding — [they are] pretty virtuous,” he said. “We were pretty much at capacity of the Crane Room for the entire show but people were cycling in and out. We had probably around 200 students attend.”

Part of Not So Gentlemen’s unique sound originates in their song selection: they make their own music.

“We don’t formally write a song, we’ll just be jamming and we’ll listen to it, because usually we record every session, so we’ll listen back and find something cool,” Butler said.

“We were messing around with this one riff, and then I said to Max, ‘Well, what do you think the bass line should be?’ and he was like, ‘Oh I don’t know,’ and then sings this thing, and I was like, ‘Sing it again, sing it again,’” Ellner added. “I figured it out on guitar and gave it to him on bass and that was the bass line. Sometimes it’s just messing around and you stumble across something that you just pick up and see where you can take it.”

The bandmates have become so tuned into their own music that it’s begun to permeate their friendship — even when they’re not rehearsing.

“The other day we were hanging out, we had a guitar, and we just started jamming on the guitar and singing to it and making beats to it,” Leonhardt said. “It’s just become a large part of our life, music and making music together.”12