The Heavy Pets: Fort Lauderdale's Jam Band Goes Vocal

Local jam band The Heavy Pets resurfaced after time in California recording their new album — a more vocal-driven, tightly arranged evolution of their folk, progressive rock, reggae, and funk sound. Premier Guide Miami sat down to find out what that means — and what comes next.

Local jam band The Heavy Pets has resurfaced after spending time in California preparing the new sounds of the band. The five-piece — Jeff Lloyd and Mike Garulli on guitars, Jim Wuest on keyboards, Justin Carney on bass, and Jaime Newitt on drums — have been belting tunes since 2005. The focus of the band has changed since their last album: each member is more involved in the writing process, and there are more vocals than acoustics. Premier Guide Miami caught up with the Pets before their performance at the release party in Fort Lauderdale.

The Pets are known for their live performances of folk, progressive rock, reggae, and funk. For a band that's relatively new, they managed to gain a major collaboration — Blues Traveler's John Popper made a special guest appearance on their release. The band also recently announced their own festival, Pet Zoo, now in its third year.

PGM: How do you guys come up with your material?

Jeff: Depends. You have some tunes that are group tunes and some that are a bit more structured. They are then brought to the group where everyone fills in with their parts. We don't have any specific way that we go about the songwriting process. Sometimes it's improvised to the way that we play. Sometimes one of us writes the verse, the other writes the chorus or vice versa. One thing that's awesome now is that we have all five guys writing songs. We are very proud of the fact that when we perform, we play multiple songs by each member.

PGM: What kind of material will you be introducing to your fans?

Mike: We will be singing a lot more on this album as opposed to the past. That's the direction Scott Matthews decided to take, with more vocal stuff. We are trying to come up to the bar we set for ourselves.

PGM: So you are transitioning from a jam band...

The Heavy Pets: We still have that there, but as far as this album is concerned we stripped that down. Songs a little bit over five minutes.

PGM: What are some of your influences?

The Heavy Pets: A lot of things like classic rock, jazz, and contemporary. It was a real exercise for us in composition and arrangement. It gave us the opportunity — for a band that's been specifically non-specific with the way we play our songs for so long — to really focus on arrangement, and see how we can make the first verse different from the second verse and so forth. It gave us a very clear musical direction.

Jeff: Grizzly Bear, Dr. Dog, and Wilco. When it comes to older stuff, obviously Phish is a huge influence in terms of what they do with their arrangements, voices, and instruments — pretty amazing. Creedence and Frank Zappa also.

Mike: I love the old stuff like jazz and R&B from the past — Motown, definitely, like Stevie Wonder. As far as songwriting those are my influences. We have also been interested in a lot of electronic music, so look for that to be popping up in Heavy Pets.

PGM: Was there any special collaboration for this new album?

Mike: We actually have a very special guest on this release — John Popper. He plays on the second cut, rips up a harmonica solo with us. That's a really special thing for us. Another first for all of us to get someone of that caliber to contribute to your work — that's pretty amazing. It's humbling.

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