Listen Up: The Doorknobs

Photo by Michael Donahue // Buy this photo

The Doorknobs: Bobby Landman (from left), Nick Riley, Jesse Wilcox and Kenneth Piper.

Nobody could play their instruments and the singer didn’t know how to sing when they formed The Doorknobs two years ago.

“We started from the roots together, not alone,” said Jesse Wilcox, 15, lead singer/rhythm guitarist in the band that includes drummer/backup vocalist Nick Riley, 16; lead guitarist Kenneth Piper, 15; and bass player Bobby Landman, 16.

Their most popular song, “Push Me Down,” sums up the band. “It’s basically just saying that if we do get pushed down, we’re gonna get right back up,” Riley said. “We’re not the type of people that are gonna give up, really. It’s not our scene.”

“We’re a hard-working band and don’t let anything get to us,” Wilcox added.

They all have musical roots. Jim Dandy Mangrum from Black Oak Arkansas is Wilcox’s first cousin. Ross Johnson from The Panther Burns is Piper’s uncle, and Riley’s dad, William Riley, performed in bands and owned a small label, Paint Chip Records. “I had a great-uncle or something who played saxophone,” Landman said. “He turned out to be a millionaire.”

Explaining why they started the band, Wilcox said, “None of us are really like top athletes, and we were kind of bored.”

“We’d play for like half an hour tops,” Piper said. “Then we’d go outside and play basketball. Then we’d come inside and be like, ‘I don’t want to do this anymore,’ and go back outside. Eat some food.”

They chose Wilcox as singer because he was “the lesser of four evils,” Piper said.

Wilcox hadn’t done any singing except “maybe like Christmas songs.”

He was going through puberty, and his voice was changing, so that created some problems. “Out of all our talents, I think my vocals had the most work,” he said.

He tried to make his voice deeper. “I tried to rip off other singers from like the ’80s. I tried to sound different than I really was. And they had to tell me, ‘All right, don’t do that.’”

Later, he realized he just needed to sing like himself. “And finally got a stable voice, and then it went from there.”

Riley remembered when he approached Wilcox about joining the group. “I’m like, ‘Dude, can I be in the band?’ And Jesse was like, ‘Well, you don’t really know how to play anything.’ I’m like, ‘I’ll learn how to play drums.’ He’s like, ‘All right.’ I got some drums and I was absolutely terrible. The worst. We’re working on a documentary of our old days, and we got some great footage of me when I sucked.”

Their first original was “On and On.” They color coded the parts of the song each member had to play.

Their first show was playing a talent show before the entire Grace St. Luke’s student body, even those in kindergarten. “We were terrified,” Piper said. “Even if they were only 5 and 6.”

“I remember hauling the equipment in and being scared out of my mind,” Landman said.

They played their original, “Coming Over Me,” which is about a friend of theirs and his girlfriend. “In seventh and eighth grade you say you have a girlfriend, but you don’t even talk to her,” Piper said. “That’s kind of the way things were.”

Later, they played a gig at Spin Street Music. The microphones were pointed out instead of in. “Jesse couldn’t hear himself,” Riley said.

“Jesse dropped his guitar midway through,” Piper said.

“So, for one song he was standing there awkward,” Riley said.

“For the whole set I was doing that,” Wilcox said.

What did the audience do? “I really think they kind of just left,” Riley said.

They got serious about the band after winning the Memphis University School talent show last February. “The audience was pretty intimidating,” Wilcox said. “We were a freshman band, and they were seniors. My whole reputation was on the line. I was very shy. I was a new student at MUS, and I didn’t know what people thought of me up to then. But I was brave, and I did it.”

“I was really surprised,” Landman said. “We got a great feedback. Everyone got out of their seats.”

“We played one song and we nailed it,” Piper said.

“I don’t think anyone was expecting us to do what we did at all,” Landman said. “The seniors were like, ‘Oh, just let them have one song for three minutes of pain and then get them off.’”

They’ve played the Hard Rock Café and two shows at the Levitt Shell. After one Levitt show, some of the band members had to go straight to their lessons at Pitner Driving School.

They began recording their CD, Push Me Down, last February. “We have a theme of time on our album, sort of,” Riley said. “It’s all about either appreciating time or just thinking about time.”

“I think the main thing we avoided was love songs because we didn’t want to be like, ‘Yeah, you broke my heart and now I’m gonna go cry about it,’” Piper said. “’Cause none of us have experienced that.

“We try to avoid the Justin Bieber lyrics and don’t try to pretend like we know too much about what we’re talking about.”

Listen Up spotlights area performers. Michael Donahue can be reached at 529-2797.

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