Each one of us is a portion of a whole; a fraction of an ongoing story and a conjunction to the various chapters which make up our lives. The way we live, the choices we make and the way we inspire ourselves and other people are what defines which part of the puzzle we will be. This column is about sharing stories and having conversations about music, life and the occasional nerd-out. No math skills required.

Beau Kuther watches “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”, wears a lot of hats and works at a Portland Brewery. Like most people from Oregon, he’s got it bad for Mother Nature. Beau is also a drummer. For ten years, Beau has played music with his brother and closest friends in a band born as KADDISFLY (Hopeless Records) which has since matured into WATER AND BODIES. He has been flat broke, broken down, robbed blind and sent home with little more than dirty laundry and a broken padlock. He has teetered on the edge of fame before having his heart crushed in an instant decision. He has been shattered, frustrated and angry. But Beau has also been inspired. He has seen the world from the window of a van and shared countless stages with his brother and his best friends. He has not given up. He will not give up; this is the fight of his life. This is his portion of a whole.

More after the jump…

The first drummer Beau ever knew was his father.  “My dad had this old 80s white Pearl drum kit in our shed,” he says. “He was my first drum idol. I’d sit on his lap and hold the sticks and it just felt right. One day I vividly remember someone coming over and packing up the drums into their car. I was confused. The drums were gone. My dad loved playing. I didn’t get it. My parents fell on hard times and had to sell the drums to make ends meet. I get it now as an adult, but then I didn’t understand why.”

Ten years later, beau’s parents were able to buy him his own drum kit. He learned how to play by recording Police songs off the radio onto a cassette tape (remember those?) and playing along. It was inevitably his love for early 90s Pearl Jam that would lead him from the classroom to the sweaty basement show and eventually to busting out of rural Oregon. “I was planning tour routing in my atlas at home when I was in high school.”

Beau met Aaron Tollefon, Christopher Ruff and Kile Brewer in Eugene OR while he was playing for a band called MARQUE. “It was my first time playing outside of Bend [Oregon],” he says. “It was amazing. I watched Kaddisfly and was so envious of their performance. Kile hit me up a month later and said they were all collectively moving to Portland and their drummer quit. That was my way out. We all had shitty jobs but we didn’t care because we would all come home and music was the only thing that mattered. I had found the guys with the passion I was looking to play with.” Beau’s brother Kelsey soon joined the band as well.

In the early 2000s, Kaddisfly was growing rapidly on the west coast. Their powerful experimental rock rooted with transcendental poetry was starting to catch on. They released their first album, “Did You Know People Can Fly” and in 2003 packed up everything they could carry and headed for the east coast for the first time in their lives as a band.  “That was the best trip of our lives! It felt so right to be out on that open road. We were doing it on our own coin. No one could tell us anything.” A local entertainment lawyer came across a Kaddisfly demo promising it would make it into the hands of a record label. This seemed like a long shot, but not long after, Kaddisfly was signed to Hopeless Records. In 2005, they recorded and released “Buy our intention: We’ll buy you a Unicorn.” It was all tour, tour, tour from there on out until 2006 when the unthinkable happened.

On a day off somewhere in Pensacola, Florida, Beau and company walked into a movie theatre having left their van and trailer parked in a mall parking lot. By the time the movie had ended, the trailer was gone along with everything they had worked for so many years to achieve. Shards of metal from a broken padlock lay strewn across the pavement. It was crushing. There was no other choice but to return home to their “shitty jobs” and find a way to fill-in the hole that was left. Beaten down, the guys returned to Oregon. “That took the wind right out of our sails,” Beau remembers.

Alas, from what could have been the end for anyone with a short-fuse and a dearth of patience, the Trailer Theft of 2006 was just the opposite. “Nothing but great things came for that happening. It made us all even closer. It was us against the world and we were going to win no matter how big of a battle it would be. We borrowed gear from our friends and started writing music.” The result: the bands’ most acclaimed and widely recognized release, “Set Sail The Prairie” which debuted in 2007. A few major tours drew the attention of a major label A&R rep in the summer of 2008 and the chance of a lifetime became imminent. On the cusp of fame, Kaddisfly was turned down in the end and a deflated Kile Brewer made the decision to leave the band for Denver with his wife.

“When Kile left the band we felt that we had come as far as Kaddisfly could go at that point. Kaddisfly is five people. It’s not four. It was a perfect opportunity to create something new and exciting called Water and Bodies. The first batch of songs was pretty somber in mood but that was how we felt. There was a spark missing still.”  Beau could sense that his younger brother Kelsey was not happy. Being in the band was all Kelsey had known since he was seventeen. Kelsey finally confronted Beau and admitted he needed to leave the band. At that point, Kile had returned from Denver and took Kelsey’s place. The band was back to where they were when they threw it all away and moved to Portland on a whim. Only now they knew what was out there, who they were and who they did not want to become.  They still all have jobs they don’t care too much about and they still go home and write music because it is still the only thing that matters.

“We aren’t done yet. We still have to write. We just love playing music together. It doesn’t matter what we call ourselves, the message is the same.” Of his new project, he says, “We are all made of water. Our bodies are all made of water. It’s the most essential part of life. Without it we all die. We are all the same.”

You can check out Water and Bodies at:
www.waterandbodies.com
www.twitter.com/waterandbodies
www.facebook.com/waterandbodies

If you’re interested in being featured in an upcoming “Portion of a Whole” please e-mail Katie.Ellsweig@gmail.com. Boring losers need not apply.