Three dudes sporting coveralls are playing a song called “Stop Making Trash” at the parking lot of the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall in Sarasota.
But their instruments may surprise you.
Jack Berry, 30, plays a one-string guitar made from a Cheerios box with a yardstick for the neck. The sound is amplified through pickups and electromagnets found in debris after a fire.
Berry’s singing into a 1992 fax machine receiver attached to a broken lamp fashioned into a microphone stand.
He’s accompanied by his younger brother, Trent, on the one-string Frosted Flakes bass with a paint stirring stick for the neck, singing backup on a 1972 push-button telephone attached to a mannequin.
And their childhood friend Wesley Backer is on traps, banging on a 55-gallon rain barrel for a bass drum, buckets for the snare and toms, and sheet metal for cymbals.
The Sarasota musicians playing 1960s-era experimental sounds are core members of The Garbage-men, established in 2010.
They’ve performed across the country: in Times Square and Atlanta’s Fox Theater for “America’s Got Talent.” They’ve also been featured in Time, Wired, and on NPR’s “Science Friday.”
“When I was in middle school, I wanted to make myself an instrument. We didn’t go about starting to think we would make everything out of garbage, but that’s what we had lying around,” said Jack Berry.
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When he brought the idea to his school friends, they decided to start a band.
“At one point, we’ve had a seven-piece lineup with glass-bottle marimba and Fisher-Price corn popper toy for a saxophone, bunch of other fun stuff over the years,” he said.
The Garbage-men have released three albums with another on the way.
For years, Backer watched his friends jam from afar.
“My first involvement with the band was fixing the instruments, because growing up we did a lot of home repair if something was broken. You never threw it away. You had to find a way to fix it,” he said.
But a few years ago, Jack Berry threw him on the drums.
“The only thing he told me was to play it like you mean it. So, I hit them really hard, and I watched a bunch of videos of Ringo (Starr), and that’s pretty much my drum training,” Backer said.
Trent Berry officially joined around the same time as Backer.
“I like doing things with my brother and promoting sustainability and ecological thinking,” Trent Berry said.
Sustainability has become the core message of the group.
“I love what we do musically, but when we’re not playing the gigs, I … enjoy living the same way, for food, for transportation,” said Jack Berry.
He rides a bus or bike, and shops at Sunflower Market, where he can buy dented or out- of-season food, which would get tossed at other stores.
But Berry wants to show – not tell – people why sustainability is important.
“It’s so much fun to find things and give them a second life,” he said. “We’ve had people come up to us – not only kids, but adults too – and say … ‘You guys inspired me to make my own instrument or to reuse this thing in this creative way.’ “
Outside of their ideological philosophies, musically, they’re minimalists. Even the smallest rock ‘n’ roll power trio uses at least six strings on a guitar and four strings on a bass.
“We have two total strings in the band and no chordal instruments,” said Jack Berry.
“It really, instead of inhibiting us, really frees us to play automatically, harmonically. And that was inspired a lot by a jazz composer named Ornette Coleman from the ’50s and ’60s.”
They’re also inspired by the experimental and avant garde sounds of Frank Zappa and the tape loop experiments of Yoko Ono and Paul McCartney.
The Garbage-men earned some new fans recently when they played at the Van Wezel parking lot for Shred Stock, Sarasota’s biannual paper and electronics recycling event.
Jill Sensi was taking a walk around the Bay park with a friend when she heard what she called “sweet noise.”
“The band totally drew us in. And I was shocked when I rounded the corner and saw the microphones they were using, which are phone receivers, and the whole getup. It’s fantastic,” she said.
Ramon Lopez was also enjoying the music and taking photos of the band on his smartphone. He’s a longtime journalist who first met Jack Berry when the musician was a teenager.
“They’re just an integral, unique part of the art scene in Sarasota,” he said.
Nick Dazio coordinates Shred Stock as part of his job with the city. He said the guys are very famous in Sarasota and “everybody loves them.”
“Honestly, they’re a huge draw for probably at least half of the people that show up here,” said Dazio. “For our ’60s-themed event, the way they look, the way they sound, everything is just perfect.”
Jack Berry agrees Shred Stock is a good fit for the band, both musically and with the word play.
“The word shredding has two meanings: not only to cut things into small slices, but also on the guitar, it’s a style of playing where you play, like, fast with distortion and stuff, which is a style that we enjoy playing sometimes,” he said.
He was bummed he didn’t get a chance to raid the tech garbage for parts, but there’s always the next trash night.
“People throw away amazing things every day,” he said.
If you want to catch The Garbage-men, they often play at Owens Fish Camp restaurant.
And with Earth Day coming up April 22, they, of course, have some gigs lined up that week.