The first thing to notice about “Out The Door,” the debut single by the Charleston quintet Congress The Band, is its groovy rhythm. The song is a breezy, bouncy mid-tempo tune that skirts the line between ballad and rocker with ease.
Drummer Jett Seawell and bassist Robert Farmer create a deceptively flexible rhythm behind Thomas “Thos” Spratt (pronounced “Toss”) and Daniel Guy’s in-the-pocket guitars, all of which allows vocalist William Bennett to dive deep and deliver a torn-up and surprisingly soulful tale of heartbreak.
And boy, does Bennett get specific about that heartbreak. As the band wails behind him, Bennett eschews poetry and metaphor and sings “She’s talking out that big ol’ mouth of hers/And that shit hurts” like a man who has seen some hard times.
One might think a breakup song this visceral and straightforward could be autobiographical.
“It’s about a real girl that I met in late-May,” Bennett said, “and the song was written probably about five days after we stopped talking.”
But what’s perhaps more interesting than the lyrics is how Bennett came to write them. By his own admission, he often suffers from writer’s block, and writing “Out The Door” was no different.
“It still is hard, every day, to come up with words to match the instrumentation,” Bennett said. “But there was one day when we were recording that we brought in one of (guitarist) Daniel’s buddies Nick Matthews to sit in on guitar.”
Williams played around with the song’s chord progression, which got the band started jamming, and then, while he and Bennett watched the band playing, inspiration struck.
“I heard the chord progression, and [the lyrics] immediately snapped in my head,” Bennett said. “Nick and I ran to a room that had a window over the studio so we could watch what and hear what they were doing. Nick just said, ‘Start writing,’ and the words just started flowing. It was a cool experience because I’d been waiting so long.”
Getting started
Bennett and Spratt form the nucleus of Congress The Band, having started out as an informal acoustic duo that was really just a couple of guys living on Congress Street (hence the name) and playing on their couch — one with a guitar and the other with a voice.
“William and I have been together since the beginning,” Spratt said, “so we’ve developed a lot of chemistry around that time that’s really carried on. And then when Daniel played with us for the first time, I immediately enjoyed playing guitar with him. I think we go well together and I compliment his playing style really well.”
The rhythm section soon followed suit, with one member even switching instruments to be involved.
“I’ve actually only been playing bass since about January,” Farmer said. “I play guitar. Thos reached out to me a couple times, asking if I could fill in on guitar for Daniel, and I said I wasn’t really comfortable doing that because Daniel’s a lot better at guitar than me. But I had gotten a bass for Christmas, so I told Thos I’d love to come mess around on the bass.”
Seawell gets credit for the tasty groove on “Out The Door.”
“Jett probably put more time into this song than anybody else,” Spratt said. “He worked for hours and hours trying to perfect the drumbeat. The song ended up way different from when it started out because Jett was always perfecting it.”
Congress The Band actually had a pretty decent following before “Out The Door” came out, thanks to a couple of videos of the band playing live in S.C. that were picked up and shared online.
“The first time we ever played with a drummer was a show at Wild Dunes in Charleston last summer,” Bennett said. “There was a video from that gig that went pretty viral. We didn’t really even know what we were doing, but we started getting hit up by different colleges to play. We played an Auburn sorority event in late-August.”
Now, with their debut single out, and another, “Modern Lady,” dropping Nov. 22, the members feel ready to take their music careers to the next level.
“The next step for us is to make more music, first of all,” Spratt said. “And we want to make the transition to playing at ticketed venues and eventually go on tour.”
Learn more at congresstheband.com and keep up to date on Instagram at @congresstheband.
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