Room 220 in Escalante Dormitory at Fort Lewis College used to moonlight as a jam room. It was 2019, the year Connor “Minky” Klimenko and Hamo Thorneycroft met and started jamming in their tight living quarters. They’re not the first band to form in a dormitory at FLC, the last decade seeing bands like Liver Down the River and Noodle come together in a housing space on campus, and they also won’t likely be the last.
However, the number of people setting up full band spaces in a dorm room may be small. Those were the early and formative beginnings of Desiderata, a local funk and soul outfit slowly climbing the ladder in the indie-music realm, a band ripe and ready for club and festival stages nationwide.
If you go
WHAT: Desiderata and Yope play rock, soul, funk and jam.
WHEN: 8 p.m. Friday.
WHERE: Animas City Theatre, 128 E. College Drive.
TICKETS: $18/$20.
MORE INFORMATION: Visit www.animascitytheatre.com.
Desiderata, who in addition to bass player Klimenko and guitar player Thorneycroft, are vocalist Autumn Ford, keyboard player Jake Ostrowski and drummer Will Roberts, will perform Friday with local jam-band Yope at the Animas City Theatre.
The dorm room eventually gave way to a jam house.
“We decided to bring a whole band set up into our dorm room and would play all the time, and yeah, we got yelled at a little bit. Yeah, they were kind of over it at the end of the year,” Klimenko said. “So, we went over to our friends’ house for about two years, and that’s when we started playing with Jake, started forming things together. Then we said, ‘hey, we should do this band thing.’ We started doing small house parties and whatnot, then we found Autumn. She came over, we jammed, and it was like ‘OK, you are in, let’s do this thing. Then Will joined us, and its been amazing ever since.”
Theirs is a sound that’s part mellow funk and part indie R&B, all wrapped up in a soulful, laid-back package. Influences are bands like Daft Punk, Parcels and even Nile Rogers’ Chic, whose 1978 hit “Le Freak” dropped about 20 years or more before band members were even born.
“I feel like we’re all over the place,” Klimenko said. “We have this vibe that we go for, but I don’t think we even know exactly. But we’re having fun and doing what sounds good and just trying to captivate whatever is going on in all of our brains.”
Songwriting remains a group effort; little parts become bigger parts, and those bigger parts get added words; it’s an all organic, start with small pieces that build up to one larger piece process.
“It starts a lot with Hamo having some type of riff. But it’s kind of all over, sometimes I’ll come up with a little riff and me and Will work on it, or Jake has a little something,” Klimenko said. “Autumn will have some type of lyrics or little singing piece, and then it kind of comes together when we all step in.”
“It rattles around in the practice room for a long time before it becomes anything,” Thorneycroft said.
Earlier this year, they dropped their self-titled release, an eight-song EP they recorded outside Telluride with the former high school music teacher of Thorneycroft’s and Roberts’. The plan now is to focus on perhaps getting on the festival circuit, along with recording more music.
“We’re hoping we can get a couple singles out and keep things exciting and get people more music,” Klimenko said.
They’re also stoked to be part of the young and growing local music scene.
“We’re fortunate with the scene here in Durango; it’s a great music scene, there’s a bunch of young bands doing all sorts of stuff,” Roberts said.
Klimenko agrees.
“It’s a hidden gem for sure,” he said.
Bryant Liggett is a freelance writer and KDUR station manager. Reach him at liggett_b@fortlewis.edu.
