Hamming it up James Brown-style, he asks rhetorically, “With a plunger? Should I try it with a plunger?”

Spurred on by some approving yelps from his bandmates, he does just that: switches voices, taking a new solo that sounds eerily like the wop-wa-wop of a trumpet with a plunger mute. Finally, he launches into a dead-on impression of Miles Davis playing through a Harmon mute.

“Oh, man, that hurts the throat!” he groans at the solo's end.

The musician in question is 23-year-old guitarist/vocalist Ryan Haile, aka Cons (“It's a shortened version of ‘conscious,'” he explains, reasoning that “one syllable is really easy to rhyme with”). The band is Nobody's Own, and the sound is hip-hop ... sort of. More accurately, it's hip-hop/R&B/soul/blues/jazz/Zydeco—and then some. Think Outkast, Tom Waits and Aretha Franklin partying with a bunch of circus performers in an old saloon.

Now the weird part: It works. As a matter of fact, it's a concoction so utterly irresistible that even a confirmed hip-hop hater might just find himself taking some pleasure in it. But ... what is it?

“Oh, man,” Haile laughs after a weighty pause. “This is a tough one. I've had people recently ask me this question, and every single time, I just kind of get this deadpan look on my face: ‘Uhhh ...I don't know what to tell you, man!'” he laughs. “I could say predominantly hip-hop, but we try to be more melodic with it, and we try to create layers of

different singing and vocal tracks. I'd have to say a basis in hip-hop with many outside musical influences.”

The core of Nobody's Own is comprised of Haile and 25-year-old vocalist Natalie Singley: brown-maned, kind-eyed, sporting a powerful, soulful singing voice that belies her slightly shy demeanor. She and Haile began collaborating in 2000 as members of Duce Company, a talented Santa Cruz hip-hop trio that also featured local rapper Proe (then known as Prolific). During its four-and-a-half-year run, Duce Company amassed a sizeable following, more than once headlining The Catalyst.

“We were all too young to stay in the places that we were playing,” Natalie recalls.

Cons, ever the optimistic one, shoots back, “But the air's a lot fresher outside.”

In 2004, Haile and Singley's shared desire to explore new genres of music led them to amicably part ways with Proe, who is now a well-respected solo artist in the Santa Cruz hip-hop scene. Proe appears as a guest musician on Freak Show, going so far as to contribute lyrics to the song “Night Falls.”

Now, on Nobody's Own's new debut CD, Freak Show, Haile and Singley more than make good on their wishes to branch out musically, marrying the style they honed in Duce Company with everything from Sanford and Son soul/funk to a kind of fractured carnival music that goes hand-in-hand with the album's title.

Upcoming Nobody's Own gigs include a Jan. 27 date at Margaritaville, a Feb. 3 Catalyst show and a concert at the Crow's Nest on Feb. 15. Not too surprisingly, the band's broad array of styles tends to attract a diverse crowd.

“At one of the shows, I saw this guy who kind of looked like a Billy Idol rip-off, you know?” Haile recalls. “And he was standin' right next to this, you know, sideways-cap, backpack breakdancer, and then next to him was this woman who looked like she worked out of a library. And all of 'em were together, rocking out to the same music!”

Playing the Odds

Like its fan base, Nobody's Own is an unlikely combination of characters that somehow seems to gel. Along with Haile and Singley, there's 21-year-old guitarist Andrew Coonrad: tall, wiry, prone to dressing in kitschy, New York Dolls-ish rock getup, his scalp hosting an atomic cloud of wild blond coils. The affable 22-year-old drummer, David Bortnick, looks a bit like a longhaired David Faustino, who played the son from the '80s/'90s shit-com Married with Children. Small, dark-haired and unbelievably skilled, keyboardist Daniel Goldsmith bears a slight resemblance to Ralph Macchio of Karate Kid fame. Bassist Isaac Conway, 26, is soft-spoken and polite in spite of his hard-ass appearance: On the night of our interview, the brawny musician is sporting a freshly shaven head and a black T-shirt with the logo of the death metal band Autopsy, nicely complementing the tattoo of the number 13 on his neck.

Oddly, the number 13 seems to be significant for this band—not only does it figure into the address of their rehearsal space, but Haile, who says he's always been fond of the number (“It's just an odd number, you know?”), mentions that the band is shooting for 13 songs on its next album. At interview time, Freak Show also happens to be the 13th best-selling CD at Streetlight Records, outselling most major-label releases.

Yep, there's an audible buzz surrounding this band—through word of mouth and MySpace (www.myspace.com/nobodysown), news about the group has traveled across the country, with messages rolling in from fans in regions like Colorado and Philadelphia to let the band members know that their music is being played on college radio and passed around between friends.

The key to the group's success is undoubtedly its accessibility—thanks to a keen sense of melody and an organic, live performance-oriented approach to instrumentation, Nobody's Own is packing some serious crossover appeal. Like Outkast, Spearhead and Crown City Rockers, this band is an example of an increasing tendency in hip-hop toward tunefulness, live instrumentation and an expanding musical palette.

“I like the way [hip-hop] is going right now, because it's becoming more challenging to a listener,” Haile states. “Instead of a song just being your cut-and-dry chorus-verse-chorus or whatever, now they actually have bridges, or they have little breakdown sections, or they're using the influences of other bands and incorporating that into their music or in their instrumentals.”

“You can only play [the] 1-4-5 [chord progression] so many times,” Isaac adds. “You start mixin' it up, and all of a sudden, it's still rock & roll, it's still whatever, but you've got a bigger palette.”

Word

Along with having a wider musical scope than most groups in their class, Nobody's Own keep their lyrics ... well, Conscious, avoiding all the Glock talk and ho-slap booty rap that dominates so much mainstream hip-hop.

“I didn't even like rap anymore until I met [Haile and Proe],” Singley says. “They weren't gangsta rap; they actually had something smart to say.”

Hip-hop performers are some of the only artists who can get away with writing lyrics about how awesome the lyrics are. As a result, many a boastful rapper's work becomes a tribute to itself, reflecting the artist's narcissism in a mind-bending, M.C. Escher-like tapestry of infinitely repeating patterns. (No, make that Emcee Escher.) Haile and Singley certainly aren't above writing songs about how fiercely their songs are scorching your brain (“Conscious got a spinning metaphor to leave you nauseous/Keeping your ears stocked with lyrical nonsense/Listen to the chatter pitter patter upon your eardrums/Bass plus the treble got you dancing fearsome”), but when they say how well they say what they say, they say it well. And with topics ranging from everything from breakups to the tribulations of trying to make it in the music business, they definitely don't spend the entirety of Freak Show gettin' all self-referential like that.

“Anybody can write a verse about how much better they are [than the next guy] at writing some punchline or something,” Cons offers. “It's funny, because people are very turned off to the stereotype of hip-hop and the stereotype of rap, and it's understandable, because I listen to a lot of it, and I'm turned off to a lot of it. Even though I started making it and listening to it, of course, I'm very particular in what I listen to.”

Haile, whose drawings appear on Freak Show's front and back covers and throughout the album's liner notes, says he takes a similar approach to writing lyrics as to drawing: Without a full picture in his head, he starts with a single point and doodles until an image begins to take shape.

The musician adds that other human beings are the main inspiration for his songs. “I'm a big people-watcher, so if I'm going downtown, whether it's a boyfriend and girlfriend fighting over something, or a little kid says something goofy, or somebody does some kind of cool trick or whatever it is, it's all based off of other people's personalities as well as mine.”

Nowhere is this more in evidence on “Midnight Zydeco,” musically and lyrically one of Freak Show's most compelling tracks. Each of the three verses of “Midnight Zydeco” depicts a different bar patron, the first of whom is a heartbroken woman drinking her sorrows away.

“You can find many of those people around here in the bars, that's for sure,” Cons says. “And then you've got the sleazeball tycoon that's real slick—he's got the super shine in his hair, and he's over at the jukebox playing ... who knows, like, Marvin Gaye's ‘Let's Get It On' or something. You're like, ‘Oh, he's gonna start winkin' and pointin' at people pretty soon here!'”

The song's third character is a performer at The Midnight Zydeco: a haggard, perpetually drunk old man who's been playing the blues in the streets, but who goes unnoticed by self-absorbed passersby. A potent chorus ties the narratives together: “Welcome to the Midnight Zydeco, where people runnin' from their worries and their ghosts/Now you can stare into that glass/A crystal ball for erasing pasts.”

Haile says he spent about six months crafting the lyrics to “Zydeco,” leaving a trail of crumpled papers in his wake. The song's title, he explains, came from a conversation he had with a friend about opening a hypothetical Creole restaurant of the same name. As the conversation evolved, the songwriter began to imagine The Midnight Zydeco not as a restaurant, but as a run-down bar that one might find in Felton or Ben Lomond.

Haile also mentions “Last Call” as one of his favorite tracks on the album, adding that it's as true and revealing as anything he's ever heard from Singley, the tune's singer and lyricist.

Featuring just Singley's voice and Cons' guitar, sounding instrumentally barren in comparison to the tracks that sandwich it, “Last Call” is a musical cry for help: “I'm feeling too old, dried up and withered away/I'm in a lost city that don't feel like home no more ... I'm calling all who can hear me/Show me some guidance/I need a helping hand on the way.”

Given their desperate tone, it's a little surprising to learn of the circumstances under which Singley wrote the lyrics to “Last Call”: She was, it seems, doing her laundry. The vocalist explains that as she did her housework, Cons played guitar and encouraged her to write about whatever she was feeling at the moment.

“Every time I'd come in the door, I'd have a new line,” she recalls. “He said, ‘See how easy it is? Just keep flowing, keep going.'” After a little more prodding, Natalie explains that the help she was crying out for was, at least in part, financial. “That's what every single song is about: We need to get paid soon!”

Shot in the Dark

While Natalie's statement might be an exaggeration, the theme of “making it” in the music business does surface pretty frequently with this group, both in lyrics (most notably in “Shot in the Dark”) and in conversation. David, who is a dancer as well as the group's drummer, has a lot to say on the subject.

“I know somebody who calls it the Super Lotto,” he says. “[With] anything that has to do with Hollywood, it's like, you have to be in the right place at the right time; the right person has to see you; you have to have the right expression on your face ... and someone wins every day, [just like] someone wins the lottery, but with so many people going for it, you have to do it 'cause you love it.”

One challenge the members of Nobody's Own face as they enter the music biz sweepstakes is the fact that rather than giving listeners a familiar sound, they're offering something new, which doesn't always rhyme with “salable.”

“A lot of people aren't music listeners—they're music consumers,” Andrew notes. “They buy a CD and throw it in the CD player, leave it in there for two weeks, and then their sister borrows it, and they're over it, you know? Americans in particular consume music—they go out and get drunk and then buy the shirt ...”

“[The] music [business] is like the fast food industry: take a patty out, put it on the grill,” Daniel says. “We're servin' up fine cuisine.”

“We're the Santa Cruz Diner menu,” David offers. “We've got lasagna and burritos, you know?”

Denser readers take note: David is speaking in metaphor. But are the members of the group concerned that the challenging nature of their music will keep it from being mass consumed? Ryan, for one, isn't. He seems to speak for his bandmates when he says his main motivations stem not from dreams of striking it rich, but from a real love of playing music—but where that might sound like a cliché coming from many musicians, it sounds wholly sincere here.

“I eat, drink, sleep, shower music,” he says. “Anything I do is involving music. If I'm not around music, I'm humming it. If I'm not even paying attention, I'm tapping my fingers on a table somewhere. But I find that in the world, you gotta make it by having a job that supports you to—I'm not talkin' about huge houses or multiple amounts of cars and all these other things you see that really aren't real—I'm just talkin' about a homebody: somebody is just down-to-earth, still humble with the rest of the world, puttin' in his time. If that can be music that helps me get that lifestyle, I'm gonna be so grateful for that.”

Damon Orion - GT Weekly