GARAGE is the latest project from Charlie Travis who, after taking an extended hiatus from music, returns with his latest EP From the Edge of America. While starting off as a project with his son, the Ohio rock artist is currently on a mission to develop GARAGE into a full-fledged live outfit. With an obvious knack for crafting high-octane, electrifying tunes, the stage and GARAGE seems like an ideal match.

Speaking with Travis over zoom, he reflects on how the inspiration for GARAGE came about.

“A couple years ago, my son, who is 12 now, started banging around on his sister’s toy piano and we saw something there,” Travis reflects. “So we bought him a keyboard and he became something of a keyboard prodigy”.

Seeing his son develop a love for playing music and performing reactivated something in Travis as well who, after leaving music to pursue academia years ago, decided he’d get back into it.

“It was like watching myself again when I was a teenager, except he’s much more advanced at 12 than I ever was,” he remarks. “I played music for years around Toledo [Ohio] in jazz, country and pub-rock bands. Then I eventually played in my own garage bands for a while. I also spent some time in Charlestown, South Carolina, playing around the scene there”.

He got a bit of attention from labels including an offer to join a songwriting mill, which Travis declined because compulsive writing just didn’t seem rock ‘n’ roll, and perhaps more so, not suitable to his style. He decided to pursue academia instead, receiving his PhD in Geography from Trinity and working as a researcher.

“And so when I saw my son getting into music,” he continues, “it sort of blossomed and again, I thought, if I don't do it now, I'm never going to do it again. I've been meaning to do it for a long time and now I sort of have the time and inclination. So we sort of formed this band to have father and son time, and it's sort of blossomed in this project that I have that he plays on occasionally”.

The idea to start a band is almost always step one, the next step is picking a name, which for many can be as strenuous as picking the name of your child. After all, the name’s gotta stick. To land on one means thoughtful consideration, and, for Travis, it meant going back to the skeletal undercarriage of his music journey, that is, back to the beginning.

“So when I was thinking about this,” Travis says, chewing over the name, “I thought, well, what are the roots of what I do? Well, I started playing rock in my parents' garage in Toledo, Ohio. So I thought GARAGE. It's garage rock. The EP From the Edge of America is going to sound like garage rock because I've done all the recording up in my attic studio here using GarageBand”.

The following step is getting some demos together. Travis, who hadn’t recorded since the era of analogue tapes, found himself up against the advancement of technology, something he would have to teach himself. In the end, the challenge proved fruitful.

“I'm sort of like Rip Van Winkle,” he chimes. “I've woken up and there's this whole new digital ecosystem that is really great. I also learned a lot from sort of the analog techniques, things that you do to play live. A few years back, I made a little loop on GarageBand and forgot about it. Then I rediscovered it about a year ago. I do computer mapping as part of my job, so there were transferable skills at play there. In the end, I started laying down tracks as I would if I was using analog techniques.

“The great thing about digital tools is that you can put them all in one platform and then you can go in and add to it. Back then, you would have to mix and cut tape and all this sort of stuff. I just went down this rabbit hole and made all sorts of different things. The big takeaway was realising that I don’t need to get signed, I can do it all right here”.

The end result is From the Edge of America, an EP that wrestles with the current state of affairs with a frontier bent. Across 10 tracks recorded at Travis’ Attic Studios in Artane, the Ohio native explores, from afar, the maelstrom of the American political and cultural landscape. On ‘Don’t Ask Why’, the singer explains the government’s failure to protect women’s reproductive health to a dyed-in-the-wool redneck in a Texas bar. Meanwhile, the nationwide struggle against rampant gun violence comes to a head on ‘One Nation Under a Gun’. Deeper into the record, Travis relives growing up in the Midwest on ‘The Ghost of Bancroft Avenue (A Tale of Toledo, Ohio)’, setting a Romeo-and-Juliet tragedy to highway rock propulsions.

Despite their obvious relevance today, the tracks of From the Edge of America were not written in one fell swoop, with many dating back decades. Speaking on how the songs came together, Travis largely credits serendipity. Yet, their continued importance speaks not only to the sad reality of history repeating itself, but also to Travis’ sharp-sightedness and the power of art to stand the test of time.

“I’ve been here two years straight after living between Arlington, Texas and Dublin since 1994,” Travis reflects. “Because I was going back and forth between those places, I was able to get some clarity of thinking about America. I wrote the album as someone who loves America, but is concerned. From the Edge of America talks about the zeitgeist of the nation, and with GARAGE, I wanted it to be this idea that you can go into your garage and make your own thing. So I’m trying to bring in different American idioms, like country and blues, while also making it my own. There’s a real punk spirit at play here”.

From the Edge of America is out now