Dead Cat Bounce's first show in State College came together almost accidentally, when plans to start its Home Speaks to the Wandering tour in Syracuse fell through. The group will spend the next eight nights performing in the Midwest before heading back to Boston for a CD release party on Feb. 24.
Playing a different city every night and traveling during the day is like a vacation, drummer Bill Carbone said.
"I find it amazingly almost relaxing," he said. "You get to the point where you're not even really thinking too much anymore, so it's like the music just happens and exciting other things happen because you're not focused on the mechanical aspects of things."
The "mechanical aspects" are handled by Matt Steckler, Dead Cat Bounce's saxophonist and flutist, who writes all of the band's music. Steckler started the jazz ensemble while he was in graduate school when he wanted to see how many compositions he could create for one group.
Dead Cat Bounce put out its first record almost immediately, and now, about eight years later, a small jazz label is releasing the band's third album (for which this tour is named).
"The music is very strange," Carbone said. "There are so many things in it. [Steckler] likes Jethro Tull just as much as he likes John Coltrane, which is sometimes unfortunate. There are so many different things happening. It's really defined and really free."
While the band mainly calls its music jazz, Steckler said it is hard to pin down because of the varying styles and influences.
"We're probably more jazz than anything else, but we're not just that," he said. "There are a lot of world rhythm moments, some classical tradition, some Detroit-Motown funk rhythms, a whole bunch of different types of stuff."
Most of Dead Cat Bounce's music is instrumental, but Steckler said the vocals on one of the band's songs are not really lyrical.
"I sort of screech and holler on one tune," Steckler said. "Some might mistake it for singing, but that's not what it is."
Dead Cat Bounce spends most of its time performing in jazz-saturated cities like Boston and New York, but playing college towns like State College offers a different experience, Carbone said.
"We really like playing at colleges, because we find that people in college are more open to trying new things," Carbone said. "College kids are more willing to take a chance on trying a kind of music they don't have on CD yet. They're way happier to give something strange a chance than people just at a random bar."
