Gang(er) Activity

It's a rainy summer evening and new york trio Doppelganger has convened after hours at Ludlow Guitars on the Lower East Side, where guitarist Robert Stewart picks up a paycheck. Though Stewart and his bandmates, singer and drummer Ryan Hines and bassist Joey Hamm, now live in Brooklyn, the Lower East Side is still home. It’s where Hines and Stewart, while working around the corner at the now defunct Ini Ani coffee shop, decided to form a band, choosing the name Doppelganger because customers so often got them confused.

It’s also the vicinity of many of the band’s shows, and even on this dreary night, the draw of the neighborhood, full of chatter and music wafting out of bars, is clear. Ludlow Guitars also happens to have a convenient practice space in its basement. During the interview, another band’s rehearsal pulses up through the floors.

Doppelganger makes garage rock with all the best elements of pop: memorable melodies, major keys, fast tempos. Hines, who goes by the stage name Ryan Oh-no, speed skater pun intended, has only been playing drums for a couple years, and describes the kind of happy terror in trying to sing while keeping rhythm when the band first started out in 2008. There was some talk of just using a drum machine, but the idea was quickly rejected as not very rock ‘n’ roll. On stage, it’s hard to tell Hines hasn’t been drumming all his life, and the singer-drummer tension only adds to the band’s charisma, as if the drums and voice are pacing each other in a race. It doesn’t hurt that he’s the joker in the band, putting on voices and finding charming things to say about beer both at a recent show and during our interview.

The live set pulls from the band’s just-released first EP, Get It Over With Already, which was self-released on iTunes. Written by Hines and stewart before bassist Hamm joined the band, it’s a chaotic, fun, emotional six-song collection featuring a standout potential single, “Breaks My Head,” which drove a recent crowd at Williamsburg’s Glasslands to dizzy moshing. The band’s newer material features input from all three members, though some early tracks will carry over to the full-length album. As of yet, the band is unsigned, but looking. “You can kind of make it happen without a label to a certain point now,” Stewart, who goes by the stage name R. Francis, says. But “at some point you need external help from people who know what they’re doing,” Hamm adds.

Regardless of where the band ends up, touring will no doubt be a top priority. Few bands seem to mind that touring is where the money comes from now, and Doppelganger is no exception. Frequent gigs in new york plus years in other bands have prepared the three well. They’ll start with an East Coast tour in the fall and work from there. “If I could make the same amount of money touring 200 days a year, I mean, why not?” says Hines, who freelances in the film industry. “That’s what we love to do, that’s what we’re good at doing.” Hines admires the approaches of Fugazi and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. “I really look at bands like Fugazi, who have done it themselves since the beginning, and they just do it and they don’t complain about it and it’s just like, that’s their job.” In the meantime, the band members will hold down their day jobs.

New York may be home, but Doppelganger is looking forward to playing out of state and abroad, if only to experience different audiences. The guys don’t see themselves relocating, but admit that coming back to new york after a tour will reinvigorate them and their New York fans. While only in their late twenties, the band members are, as they point out, older than many local bands just starting out. Age has brought some maturity and wisdom to the equation. Hines and Hamm, who also plays in Dead Sparrows and used to play with Solid Gold, knew each other back in Madison, Wis., but being in New York—away from Madison’s insular music scene—turned a friendly musical rivalry into a friendship and now, a front-and-center collaboration. The bond between all three of the members is strong.

While they can easily get in “huge fights” while discussing their own very different music tastes, something clicks when they start to write and record. Hamm says it’s a “healthy, no-nonsense” operation with equal input. Stewart backs him up: “The three of us are definitely more interested in the final outcome of the song than any of our respective egos. As a guitar player, I’m way more interested in writing good songs than showing off any sort of technical skill that I may or may not possess.”

>> Doppelganger

July 24, Bushwick Starr, 207 Starr St. (betw. Irving & Wyckoff Aves.), Brooklyn, [www.bushwickstarr.org](http://www.bushwickstarr.org/); 8, $10.