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| About fabulousbird |
| ...And Your Bird Can Sing Peter Alvanos' Ever-Evolving Fabulous Bird. read what flagpole had to say.......... Peter Alvanos clearly remembers the moment he realized he wanted to become a musician. "I was stopped at a traffic light, and there were these four girls in a car next to me," he says, "singing along with that Superdrag song 'Sucked out the Feeling.' They were just screaming at the top of their lungs like no one was listening. I wanted to get that kind of reaction so badly that I felt like going and turning in my resignation so I could put together a rock and roll band." Alvanos got into the game at the relatively late age of 23. Always the entertainer, he first tried his hand at acting, and has had near encounters with both Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes. "I had Tom Cruise's old job as a super of the building on the Upper West Side," says Alvanos. "He'd left this letter from his mother to the landlord letting him know that Tom had left for L.A. for his screen test. Then many years later, I worked as the prop man on 'Dawson's Creek' in Wilmington." With the amount of hours in the workday running well into the double digits, days in the movie business took too much time away from his music, and in 2000, Alvanos moved to Athens. "I was a big music fan and dreamed of playing full time," he says. "I couldn't ignore it anymore so I moved to Athens. I knew the move here was valid soon after I moved when I went to Borders because I was burning up and needed some AC. I was flipping through Mojo and they had a big write-up about Olivia Tremor Control. I knew then that if a British publication was writing about a band from Athens, then it was a good decision to move here." Though much of his rock-and-roll career has been behind the drum kit, over the past year, Alvanos has been singing and playing guitar as frontman in his band Fabulous Bird, a somewhat psychedelic rock band composed of a revolving cast of characters. "Going on tour with the Sunshine Fix [filling Kevin Sweeney's guitar slot] really boosted my confidence as a frontman," says Alvanos. "I got the bug to do my own thing." He named his band Fabulous Bird after a painting by his uncle, Hermon di Giovanno, an artist who received some acclaim in the Boston art scene of the 1960s. Alvanos has always considered his uncle as a great inspiration, in part because he too took up art later in life: "He started drawing pencil sketches when he was 40 years old. He didn't let anyone tell him that he was too old to pursue his art." As a musician, Alvanos is living out a childhood dream shared with his closest childhood buddy Jamie Lorenz, who recently passed away in a car accident. "We used to spend all our time in the tree house," says Alvanos, "listening to records his sister would send us from college: Led Zeppelin, The Beatles. We dreamed of being Elton John and David Bowie with platform shoes in the mid-'70s. We were rock and roll." Alvanos began his musical career as a drummer, playing in Good Sam, a band heavily influenced by Pylon and Let's Active, with former Athenian Ballard Lesemann (ex-Hayride) on bass. This was back when they both still lived in their hometown of Charleston, SC. Alvanos played in other South Carolina bands like the Ferns and Honeywagon, opening for Pavement, Cake and the Velvet Crush. Since moving to Athens, he has played with Casper & the Cookies, Plastic Bird, the Sunshine Fix and the Modfathers. However, he never was in the Brian Jonestown Massacre, a rumor traveling the Caledonia one recent night he and Fabulous Bird were performing there. Alvanos recalls his BJM encounter with a grin. "I met them when I was touring with the Modfathers, who were opening for them. One night, the guitar player pulled us aside, put his arm over my shoulder and gave us 'the talk.' He was like, 'Hey man, you're in a rock band, you've got a record deal. You're touring, you'll be meeting lots of women. You're still young. Don't get tied down. Don't have a steady girlfriend." Alvanos managed to keep a straight face, and said, "Hey man, how old are you?" "I'm 34," responded the Massacre guitarist. "I had a hard time not laughing at him," recalls Peter, "because at the time, I was 39." Fabulous Bird released one EP in late 2004, A Tribute to You. "It's a swatch of every type of song I write," says Alvanos. "Happy, sappy, melancholy, indie and '60s folkie. When I put it out, my principal goal was to get something out before Christmas." Recording often gets put aside because Alvanos wants to play live shows, because "I want that reaction from people, the Superdrag reaction." This month, however, he will begin recording with Bill Doss (Sunshine Fix, Olivia Tremor Control), hopefully capturing the spirit of his live shows. "[They Might Be Giants collaborator] Danny Weinkauf wants to mix some tracks, and I'm hoping I can get Mike Viola, the voice of the title track from That Thing You Do to sing backup, since he and Danny have played together in Mike Viola's band the Candy Butchers." The current lineup of Fabulous Bird includes Bill Doss on guitar, Brian Smith (Ordinary Germans Like Yourselves, USSR) on bass, Trey McManus (The Drag, Ordinary Germans Like Yourselves) on guitar, Taylor Coggin (Annie & Her Guns) on drums, Dan Geller (I Am the World Trade Center) on tambourine, and J.S. Dillard on shakers. Alvanos, ever the music trivia buff, reminds me the date the band will be playing Lunch Paper - Feb. 9, 2006 - is precisely 42 years after The Beatles premiered on "The Ed Sullivan Show." You can see where his mind is, and it's a good indication of where you'll find his music as well. Deirdre Sayre | |
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