BRATTLEBORO — Steve West tells a somewhat anticlimactic story of next week's reunion concert of a band that never really had a reason for disbanding and, for that matter, never really intended to get together in the first place.
Relative Strangers, which will reunite for the first time in years for two performances on Dec. 22 and 23, came about sometime around 2000, when West got to know two young people who both worked at a bakery in Putney.
As it happened, the two recent Brattleboro Union High School graduates, Rose Gerber and Clayton Sabine, were also singers and songwriters with formidable talent who had their eyes on musical careers.
West, a singer/songwriter himself who had traded a career on the road as a professional indie musician for the responsibilities of parenthood years before, distinctly remembers his reaction (“Holy s-t!”) when he heard Gerber and Sabine perform.
The three would bump into one another at an open mic session, and they “very quickly clicked,” West says, describing the resulting vocal harmony as “almost instantaneous, alchemical,” in the spirit of Simon and Garfunkel or the Beach Boys.
The three began harmonizing the songs that each of them wrote individually.
“We're very dear friends with voices that naturally blend together,” West says.
He observes that he, Sabine, and Gerber bring very different sensibilities to songwriting. “My songs are humorous,” he says. (“If you ever meet your baker/Make sure she has egg on her face,” the three sing in West's song, “Bake Baker Baked.”)
He characterizes Sabine's style as “alt-country” and “Americana” and Gerber's as having more of a “folk-ish” flavor.
Without any fanfare or much intention, West, Sabine, and Gerber began performing as Relative Strangers. And “very quickly, people came to see us,” West says, recalling three or four concerts filled to near-capacity or sold out at the Iron Horse in Northampton, Mass.
“We played a lot of shows,” he says, noting that Relative Strangers opened for some big-name acts like Shawn Colvin and Chris Smither.
West says that the repartee among him and his bandmates was just as much a part of their shows as the music itself. He and Sabine would each play the role of “smart ass,” he says, while “Rose would be the straight man,” - so to speak.
In October 2001, the trio took the 13 songs on their playlist into Soundesign, Billy Shaw's Brattleboro-based recording studio, and they created their first CD with the help of local musical powerhouses Alan Stockwell, Derrik Jordan, and the late Tom “T-Bone” Wolk.
By 2003, things had petered out, though West, Sabine, and Gerber would periodically reunite for parties or for impromptu jam sessions when they'd run into one another. And when that's happened, West says, “we immediately fall into place like we've never stopped.”
But Relative Strangers, as a band, was pretty much done. “We're not exactly sure why,” West says.
There was no smoking gun of a reason, but a few obvious factors did come into play.
For one thing, Sabine's own musical ambitions were moving in a different direction.
Sabine, who now works as a registered nurse in New Hampshire and is planning his second solo album, assembled his own band, Clayton Sabine and the Blackout Lottery, which has since developed a solid, established regional following.
“He wanted to do his own band and his own music,” West says. “That's perfectly reasonable.”
And Gerber, a Smith College graduate, moved to Oregon to go to graduate school at Portland State University. Gerber, who has released three solo CDs and who has performed extensively in the U.S. and Ireland, is planning to relocate to North Carolina, where she will become a high school social studies teacher, in addition to continuing her solo music career.
West says that Gerber, who often returns to the region for the holidays, suggested a reunion concert.
“I didn't hesitate,” he says. “And Clayton was totally into it.”
'No pretense'
West expresses some concern that the Hooker-Dunham Theater, which seats only 99 people, won't accommodate the audience. He then turns 180 degrees, wondering if anyone will show up to see a regional band whose popularity crested almost a decade ago.
“Even if next to nobody shows up and it's just us getting together to play tunes, it's always a good time,” West says philosophically.
He describes the intimate venue as “no pretense, stripped down, no wall between the audience and performers.”
By day, West hosts the “Live and Local” radio talk show on WKVT, and does computer consulting as Fearless Computing. “My first and principal identity is as a musician and songwriter, but most people I know never heard me play a song,” he says.
West says that at the concerts the band will sell access to download the original self-titled CD. “And we'll be videotaping and probably be making a DVD” out of the live performances, he says.
The trio will be joined on stage by some of the band's previous contributors, including Phil Bloch on fiddle and mandolin, Sabine Rhyne on cello, Duke Johnson on doghouse bass, and Scott Griswold on electric guitar.
West describes his sorrow about the fact that one special person won't be able to join in at the reunion performances.
His bandmate's mother, Mary Pat Sabine, died suddenly this year.
“There was never a more devoted fan,” he says.