100 Monkey interview

100 Monkeys performs tonight at Manship Theatre

The Los Angeles-based rock band 100 Monkeys wrote “The Fair” long before band member and actor Jackson Rathbone came to Baton Rouge to film The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn: Part 1, the upcoming entry in the Twilight series of vampire movies.

But when Breaking Dawn production overlapped the Greater Baton Rouge State Fair in October, Jackson’s 100 Monkeys band mates joined him at the fair to shoot a music video for “The Fair.” The group also performed at the fair in costume on Halloween night.

“Yeah, it’s been amazing here,” Rathbone said just before the band’s show. “There’s all the rides and the festivities and we get to play a rock show, which we always love doing.”

“We’re having a really good time and we’re getting a lot of work done at the same time,” fellow Monkey Ben Graupner confirmed during a group interview in a trailer borrowed from a fair official.

100 Monkeys’ fair audience — as well as audiences that attended the band’s frequent performances at downtown’s Boudreaux and Thibodeaux club — witnessed first-hand the multi-talented musicians’ habit of switching instruments mid-show. Rathbone, for instance, plays guitar, keyboard and drums.

“Sometimes we are fairly conscious of the amount switches that we make,” he said. “But if there’s a big transition, if we change the drummer and the bass and the guitars all at once, we tell jokes. Most of our jokes are terrible puns. We belong in the vaudeville era, really, when it comes to jokes.”

Despite Rathbone’s television and film credits, including the Twilight series and The Last Airbender, he relishes performing in 100 Monkeys with fellow performers he considers brothers in music.

“It’s one of the greatest experiences of my life,” he said.

Rathbone and Monkeys Graupner and Ben Johnson met while attending Interlochen Arts Academy, an arts high school in Michigan. Jared Anderson and Lawrence Abrams, a singer-multi-instrumentalist affectionately known as Uncle Larry, complete the lineup.

The band’s former Interlochen students are united, too, in their friendship with Spencer Bell, the musician, poet and artist who died in December 2006 from adrenal cancer. 100 Monkeys performs Bells’ composition, “The Monkey Song,” and promotes his music through the Spencer Bell Legacy Foundation. The organization raises awareness of adrenal cancer and funds for medical research.

Abrams, the sharp-dressed senior member of 100 Monkeys, has decades of music experience, including Ike and Tina Tuner and the USO.

“When we came together, it was just so extraordinary that we could not ignore it,” he said of the band’s multi-generational membership.

“It takes all of us,” Ben Johnson added. “We couldn’t do without Uncle Larry or Jared or Jackson or Ben. Something happens when everybody puts their chips in the pile.”

While all of the Monkeys are actors, their artistic vision goes beyond the thespian world, Graupner said.

“We’re entertainers in every facet,” he said. “Whether it’s writing a poem, a song, making a movie, a painting, producing plays or facilitating another artist’s work, all of those things are part of being an artist.”

The 100 Monkeys band residency and filming of Breaking Dawn in Louisiana brought Rathbone back to a city he knows. His father, Monroe Jackson Rathbone IV, is a native of Baton Rouge and son of a prominent local doctor. Rathbone’s mother, Randee, is from New Orleans.

“Because we traveled all over the world for my dad’s job, Louisiana was one of the few homes I’ve ever really known,” Rathbone said. “We’d always come back to Baton Rouge for the holidays.

“And my grandparents were a big part of the community, so it’s lovely to be here and have people right here at the fair say, ‘Oh, we knew your grandparents. They were amazing people.’ So being here now, living in the shadow of their legacy, it’s exciting for me.”

100 Monkeys and Rock Rewind, featuring Runnels School students, perform tonight at the Manship Theatre. Proceeds from the sold-out concert will benefit the Runnels School’s performing arts program.

2theadvocate
xoxo
Carrie