Oxford will be in for a musically psychedelic, experimental night Wednesday, April 11, when Shane Prewitt, also known as Shazmatic, takes the stage at Proud Larry’s to debut his solo project, which is based on iPhone voice memo samples and automated synth backing tracks that he constructed.
The show represents a homecoming of sorts for Prewitt, who worked at Proud Larry’s while playing in several bands around town after he graduated college.
“I got a job at Proud Larry’s waiting tables and soon found myself playing drums with four to five bands at a time, such as TUTM, Dent May, Dead Gaze, Game Control, Reels and Bass Drum of Death,” Prewitt said. “Over the first three years I stayed in Oxford after graduating, I got to tour across the U.S., Canada, Europe and even played “Born Too Late” at the Huading International Music Awards with Dent.”
A Clinton native, Prewitt grew up doing the “standard bored-in-the-suburbs kind of stuff,” including skateboarding, exploring creeks and Nintendo 64 before pursuing a serious interest in music.
“I loved making weird hip-hop beats and film score-esque compositions on Fruity Loops and Logic Pro, which I still use now,” he said, remembering his high school days.
He defines his current music as a mix of “funky disco-esque drums with parts that are more theatrical, jazzy or minimalist.” He said there’s even a punk sounding song that’s entirely drum-based but hopes it overall represents a “sentiment of bittersweet brainstorming.”
Prewitt said he didn’t plan on pursuing music as a career until his senior year of college. He studied psychology and philosophy and wrote his honors thesis on “Social Anxiety and Disgust.”
While he was awarded multiple academic awards and was focusing on preparing for clinical psychology Ph.D. programs, he kept getting offers to play music and even began touring some with the band, The Unwed Teenage Mothers (TUTM). Ultimately, he decided to take a year off his academic pursuits and began diving into music.
“What began as an interim pre-grad school explorative and creative ‘year off’ developed into a lifestyle and a career,” Prewitt said. “When pretty much every person I was playing with moved out of Oxford, I moved into the Cats Purring Dude Ranch, but we were eventually forced out, and I knew it was time for me to move on to my favorite city to play on the road – Chicago.”
Turns out the bleak Chicago winter was good for Prewitt’s musical process. He spent most of last winter holed up producing and recording for his new project.
“This April 11 show will represent the four months of introspection, meditation, anxiety/depression and sonic discovery that came with that process,” Prewitt said. “It wasn’t all dark, but there were definitely stretches of malaise with me adjusting to constantly below-freezing temps and lack of vitamin D after living in the South my whole life.”
Prewitt said he’s excited about playing the show Wednesday because it represents a number of firsts for him.
“It’s my first time performing as a vocalist, my first time performing as a solo artist and also the first time anyone will have ever heard this set of songs live,” Prewitt said. “I can think of no better audience to reveal it to than the place where it all started to come together for me, way down south in Mississippi.”
Also playing is Ben Ricketts, a history and English student at the university, who will be graduating in May. He wrote his first song the summer before he started seventh grade.
“It was bad,” Ricketts said of that first composition. “At any rate, I always knew I wanted to do something related to public presentation. When I was a really young child, I wanted to be an actor or a singer or something. When I was in elementary and early middle school, I went through an embarrassingly bad phase of attempting athletics. Around my ninth grade year, I started playing around my hometown, and it never really stopped.”
Ricketts currently works in the University’s IT department, while also playing between 50-100 shows per year. He’s also working on creating a new album.
“Other music inspires me,” Ricketts said. “I’m constantly seeking new things that make me feel certain ways, and I’m always trying to chase a way to duplicate those feelings in my own work. Even at its slowest, Oxford’s music and art community has always been supportive and positive. I love being able to play music in a town with folks like Andrew Bryant, Nadir Bliss, E Meters and so many other amazing acts.”
Bree Starnes, a fan of Ben Ricketts’ music and a senior at the university, said she was looking forward to the show for several reasons.
“The first time I heard Ben Ricketts play, he engaged with the audience asking us to sing parts of the chorus with him, having us shout out ‘Peppermints in the lobby, and I don’t mind’ at him,” Starnes said. “It was awesome and made me like his laid-back style immediately. He made an instant connection with his crowd.”
The doors will open at 8 p.m., and the show will start at 9 p.m. at Proud Larry’s.
By Lucy Burnam
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