With wildfires currently raging in several hotspots across the Los Angeles area carrying death and destruction, many in the music community are naturally thinking about bands and performers based in the city.
So, when Mike Clark, guitarist for the L.A.-based prog rockers Final Gravity appears onscreen for a Zoom interview, we ask him about it.
Clark notes that while he and the three other members, Charles Mumford (bass), John Chominsky (drums), and Melissa Jane Lightning (vocals) have emerged unscathed, the same could sadly not be said for Rich Mouser, who produced last year’s EP Stormchaser.
“I live in Santa Monica, and my place was about three blocks from one of the evacuation zones. The fires didn’t hit us, but they were pretty close,” he says. “But Rich’s house and studio were up in the hills in Altadena, and they were completely destroyed. It’s pretty rough out here.”
That makes Mouser’s work on Stormchaser all the more poignant. It features five of the band’s originals—mostly older tunes that they’ve reworked—and a cover of Rush’s “Entre Nous.” Clark says it’s the first time they’ve really worked with an outside producer and were impressed with Mouser’s resume working with other groups they admire like Lobate Scarp.
“Once we looked into him, I realized that he had mixed a lot of my favorite prog rock side projects like the supergroup Transatlantic,” Clark adds. “Rich is very much in that orbit.”
Thematically, the songs unfold in true prog multi-layered musical style, while embracing themes of life, emptiness, disaster, relationships, and even mental stability. Clark says that most of the band’s original material now are written more collaboratively than in the past.
The Rush cover came about because Final Gravity—like so many bands during COVID—still recorded music and released videos together via the wonders of technology. They had done a cover of Rush’s “Limelight” in early 2020 as a tribute to drummer Neil Peart, who had then recently died. “Entre Nous” is their second Rush effort.
“I think I had the idea to do that one. It’s a fairly short Rush track and not too technical,” Clark says. “And there’s not a billion covers of that out there already!” The video became popular on YouTube.
Final Gravity was formed in 2007 after Clark and Mumford met while attending Musicians Institute. Chominsky and original vocalist Bill Moore had attended Penn State together, with Chominsky also attending the Berklee School of Music. Clark met the pair on a trip, and they decided to join forces. Two years later, they released a self-titled indie record.
Moore left in after his post-doctoral research at UCLA landed him a professorship in Planetary Geology. In 2010, the band had an opportunity to open for national prog rockers Fates Warning…if they could find a vocalist. The remaining trio were familiar with Lightning, who was and still is in an all-female Led Zeppelin cover band that Final Gravity had shared a bill with.
“She was home on vacation in Australia when we called her and asked if she wanted to come out and rehearse with little notice,” Clark says. “We did some remote rehearsals and then three days in person. Next thing, we’re playing for 1,000 people at the concert.”
With Lightning, Final Gravity has released the EP Four Pack and the full-length Surviving Humanity (2021).
Clark says the band is proud to fly the flag for prog rock, whose fans and adherents tend to be somewhat brainier and more musically deep than the “average” mainstream rock fan. Clark said he recently went to see BEAT, sort of a King Crimson tribute band with actual former ‘80s members Adrian Belew and Tony Levin (The Houston Press’ own Tom Richards spoke with Belew prior to a BEAT show last year).
“Like almost every other prog show in L.A., I bumped into all these people I knew. And you almost have this instant connection because it’s a niche type of music. I don’t feel the same way at [mainstream] rock shows,” Clark offers.
However, he does know that prog fans tend to skew a bit older and maybe don’t get out to live shows as much as they used to. So, he says that Final Gravity looks at every and any way to get their music out there be it Bandcamp, YouTube, or anything else.
“It’s a challenge, and we’re looking at how to get heard by more people,” he says. Currently, they are looking to book more gigs in the L.A. area, as well as possible short tours in other prog-friendly U.S. cities.
“L.A. is a good prog town, but there are other cities that like this music,” he says. “And we’re actively writing new material and hope to have it out there later this year.”
For more on Final Gravity, visit FinalGravitytheBand.com
