Reading-based psychedelic jammers Flux Capacitor hit the summer festival circuit hard this year, making appearances at five festivals across three states. They wrapped up with a performance at the Stir Fry Music Revival at Snipes Farm in Morrisville on September third.
Brothers Pete, Jason and Mike Specht, who have performed and recorded as Flux Capacitor for the past four years, are no strangers to the highs and lows of life on the road. "I love touring," says Pete, who plays guitar and sings lead vocals for the band. "I might have some little panicky moment right before we leave, but once I'm on the road it's like: 'This is it; there ain't no turning back.'"
Last September, Flux embarked on its first tour outside the Philly region. "We're kind of spiraling out from this area," says Mike, who plays keyboards/bass for the group and contributes backup vocals. Traveling west to Chicago, the brothers lined up nightly gigs by word of mouth. "We played every night of the week on that tour," says drummer/vocalist, Jason. "There were people who had heard of us all the way out there."
Flux followed up the success of its Midwest tour with another, "mini-tour" to Florida last February. "We were treated really nice and were invited back at a bunch of places," says Pete. After playing a show in Reading this month, the band will travel 13 hours south for a one-night stand with fans in Kennesaw, GA.
After a dogged, eight-year run as the "songwriting and performing core" of an underperforming act called Odyssey, the Specht brothers decided to make a change and reorganized as Flux Capacitor. "As soon as we came together as Flux Capacitor, everything started happening really fast," says Jason. "Now we rehearse like crazy."
Named for the spaceage whatchamacallit Back to the Future mad scientist, Doc Brown, uses to power his suped-up DeLorean backwards and forwards in time, Flux Capacitor makes music to transport listeners to distant temporal zones. "The idea of time traveling is behind a lot of what we do," says Pete. "Sometimes [during shows] it freaks out and time stands still."
Last year, the band released its debut album, They Know We Know-recorded with the help of Grammy-nominated, local producer, David Ivory. The album's sleeper hit, "Moth," established Flux as a real presence on iTunes and YouTube. "The symbolism of that song relates to people on a lot of metaphorical levels," says Pete, who based the song's lyrical content on bouts of sleepwalking and night terrors he struggled with in his early teens. "I think some of the energy from those experiences transfers to listeners," he says.
Flux draws most of its inspiration from what Pete calls the "people power" music of the 1960s. "It was a time when young people in America and England were waking up for the first time," he explains.
Right now, the band is blitzing ahead with a series of single releases, one of which, "Dome," riffs on the theme of shattering the ceiling of psychic self-constraint imposed by commercial culture and the mass media. "To me it's like breaking open this dome of certain illusions to reach higher steps of consciousness," says Pete, essentializing the sophisticated, 14-minute opus. "It's a structured song, not mindless improvisation," he continues. "As far as the grooves go, it could go from Zeppelin to Queen to The Doors to Elton John, all in six minutes."
A responsive fan base of diehard 'Fluxheads' helps elevate the band to a higher psychic plateau during live performances. "A lot of times the chemistry we end up generating translates to the audience," says Jason. "We have awesome friends and fans. We love 'em!"
