In Oakley, unfamiliar tunes bleed through the red bricks of the lone building at the end of Cow Alley. The electric symphony of Robin Mary’s band rehearsal sounds foreign coming from the historic structure’s façade and wafting over the adjacent pastures.
Built in 1910 and expanded in 1945 by the Brooklawn Creamery company, the building was first used to collect milk from droves of cattle that once walked along the street, and its exterior remains intact, though its various parts are in need of a little repair.
But as far as Clifford Sundberg, the visionary of the band, is concerned, the building is his childhood home and his place of work. One side contains the sanding machines and 10-foot-long mahogany boards of the Sundberg family’s Walrus Woodworking shop; the other shelters a living room, kitchen and bathroom, and a loft which serves as Robin Mary’s studio. The senior members of the family, John and Ruth Sundberg, now live in Francis.
At a Tuesday night practice, the four members of the band don masks and wigs, and Sundberg a top hat and cane, in preparation for a May 2nd concert at the Kamas Theatre. The show will be the theatre’s second musical show since it opened in 1945, and Robin Mary’s first performance after nearly a year’s hiatus. It will also be the band’s most theatrical: Entitled “Music for the End of the World,” the rock opera will feature dialogue as well as song, video and costumes.
The self-imposed retreat in Oakley came sometime after Sundberg saw the musical “The Phantom of the Opera” in New York City last spring. “I was explosive about the ‘Phantom of the Opera,'” he recalls. “It was so damned extravagant, so overwhelmingly talented.”
He began writing and composing on two guitars with Justin Borden, 21, Robin Mary’s guitarist. Then, Sundberg built his own version of a Wall of Sound a la Phil Spector, using computers and a synthesizer, featuring samples of wildlife noises and pre-recorded drum beats which, together, have the effect of a controlled kind of chaos.
The lyrics and the drama surround the antics of a sinister circus that Edgar Allan Poe might have dreamt up. Sundberg portrays the ringleader, Borden is the snake charmer, vocalist Katie Delewski, 19, is the hidden shadow and muse of the ringleader, and bassist Sasha Melishowskitz, 25, plays a dreadlocked hobo muscleman.
The narrative centers around Sundberg’s persona, the authoritarian of the group, telling them it’s time to perform a show, utilizing fear as his weapon.
“My character is stealing souls, trying to produce an image,” Sundberg explains. “It’s about keeping people in this isolated world by strange and manipulating means.”
Sundberg says off-stage he’s quite unlike the ringleader. “I’m a vegetarian and I don’t kill bugs,” he reveals. “I’m not really all that scary of a guy, so maybe I’m not going to be all that successful at making people afraid.”
In part, it was inspired by the band’s history, Sundberg says, but the intention, he says, is to provoke independent thought.
“I’m not trying to convince anyone to drink poison wine, I’m mainly just trying to show that stuff like that happens,” he explains. “In America, we’ve had a strange environment of extreme people who’ve been treated in really extreme ways (by the government).
“I feel like I’m a product of that system, and even to this day I find myself fighting my indoctrination, trying to think for myself,” Sundberg continues. “I find myself actually believing what I’m told a lot of the time and not utilizing thought. When I do think for myself, I tend to come up with different conclusions.”
To play in the loft, the band must clear a path through items like a mirror painted with the ABC’s and old boxes, and secure sheets over the windows. Sundberg stands at the center of the room beside a Roland MC 909 sampling station with buttons that light up and flash like a Star Trek computer. He sings into two microphones, one standard, and another that alters his voice into a what sounds like a buggy old recording from the 1920s or 1930s – an effect also employed by groups like Interpol and The Strokes. Sundberg likes the versatility. In the course of a song, sweet melody composed of samples of chirping birds and electronic strings oscillates with bursts of raging guitars and loud vocals.
“I think our music is raw,” says Delewski, a Park City resident who joined Robin Mary three months ago. “There are so many layers of so many instruments in the background. We explore so many more instruments than just rock. There are a lot of fluid transitions through a lot of sequences. I’m using three or four different melodies within a song.
“It’s not your classic music – girlfriend talk and girlfriend singing. This is more on a darker undertone, like propaganda, really finding your own in the environment and the social structure It’s a piece of work – the whole concept of it.”
The band is called “Robin Mary,” after Sundberg’s older sister who died in a car accident in 1996. Sundberg feels a great responsibility because of the choice, and says that when he writes, he attempts to honor her memory by tempering some of his darker impulses.
“It was always a good name. It was a good pick. It’s kind of strange having a name like that,” Sundberg says. “I actually feel a certain amount of pressure to be somewhat wholesome. Have some respect. Attitude-wise, I’m not trying to step on toes or be outwardly insulting. I feel some sort of an intense responsibility. It’s extremely personal.”
Sundberg says that aside from his mother, who plays piano at her Baptist church, he had few musical influences, and took no music lessons while growing up in Oakley. He recalls spending most of his young life dreaming of moving to Salt Lake. Once he got his wish, however, he realized he needed to return: He missed the wide open landscape of Summit County. Sundberg, now 24, says being home at the creamery, living with his older brother, Josh, 33, who is also Robin Mary’s manager, the material comes a little more readily then it has anywhere else. The brothers have found, over the years, more interest in music here and credit a hip hop group, Broken Silence, for making a significant contribution to the budding underground culture. Fourty-five tickets have already sold for Robin Mary’s performance next Friday. The theater seats about 265.
“Kamas, there aren’t many opportunities to play music,” concedes Josh. “But there are kids who play and appreciate music here, and Clifford’s relationship with a lot of other bands have really shown him that it’s possible to do it here and I think it’s great for the community too.”
Still, there is talk of moving on. Though the Oakley creamery seemed to be a good place to start, the members of the band are ready to part ways with their hometown, if only for a while. Among their summer ambitions is to play a gig at the radical Nevada desert festival, Burning Man.
“I certainly want to move out, get playing, get on the road,” Clifford Sundberg says. “We want to tour – take this (show) across the globe We’re in it for the long haul.”
To hear a live recording of a rehearsal of Robin Mary’s “Music for the End of the World,” click here: