PRINTBlues sister
The Megan Boyer Band adds a little rock to its blues
Sarah Flagg
Megan Boyer sings at the Tiger Zou Pub ‘n’ Grill on June 16. Boyer opened at 8 p.m. and sang for one hour before handing the mic over to different artists who had signed up to play.
June 24, 2009 | 10:00 a.m. CST
Megan Boyer isn’t fooling anyone. Rock ’n’ roll spills into every area of her life: In her beige MU office, Boyer’s mic has been replaced with a desk, but her colors bleed through. Her glasses are rebellious black frames streaked with bright yellow, and there’s a lime green shirt peeking from behind her Mizzou Tigers hoodie. But the real clues are on the walls.
The guitar calendar and signed concert flyer are the most obvious points at which the Honors College advisor and the blues frontwoman mix. The first job begins at 7:30 a.m. and the other about 12 hours later. After hours, Boyer and guitarist Jimmy Steffan make up one half of The Megan Boyer Band, an up-and-coming local blues outfit with shows booked for so much of the foreseeable future, they admit they’re ubiquitous in Como.
“Last night, we went to a jam at the lake, and I slept in the backseat of the car on the way home,” Boyer says. “In the beginning, it was a job and a hobby, but now it’s really two jobs. One of them is more fun because I do it in bars, but they’re both full-time.”
Steffan and Boyer found each other through ads on ComoMusic.com in October 2007 to form the foundation of The Megan Boyer Band. Boyer had the vocals and rhythm guitar, Steffan had lead guitar, and the rest “snowballed from there,” to hear them tell it.
“There are a lot of blues bands [in Columbia], but Megan’s voice and Jimmy’s guitar make them really stand out,” says Steve Gardner, local recording engineer. Boyer describes herself as a “young chick singer,” and her dirty, Janis Joplinesque vocals make The Megan Boyer Band stand out in a territory wealthy in good blues music. Live, the band takes on covers as if they were their own; originals are played as if they were established classics written for a more modern, gritty take on the genre — one that blends rock bass and drums with blues guitar and vocals to play like a big, beating heart. “You have some of the best musicians in Columbia together with a great vocalist, and people are going to want to listen,” Gardner says.
Two and a half years since its inception, the band is a month away from the release of its debut CD, That’s What My Baby Likes! and only four months removed from their greatest achievement to date. After winning a regional blues competition, the band was flown to Memphis to try its hand at the International Blues Challenge in February.
“For gamblers going to Las Vegas, this was like that for music addicts,” Steffan says. “It made us just a little crazy for a while, in some ways. It was like a trial by fire.”
Boyer and Steffan have found a good musical match, both with one another and in Columbia, combining their strengths and those of the drummer and bassist for a distinctly blues-rock sound with a unique bent: take School of Rock and subtract the ridiculous, and you’ve got something like Megan Boyer. During a spontaneous poll of her office, the other employees like what they’ve heard.
“I think it surprises them that I’m as good as I am,” Boyer says, and although she fronts a band named after her (not her idea), she’s humble. “That’s usually what people say. They see me in this role, so when they see me cut loose on stage, it’s a little bit different than what I look like at the office.” That understatement is paired with a laugh.
Even as she continues to surprise her peers — both academic and otherwise — Boyer says the band is at its best when its members surprise even themselves. “I live for the moments when we’re onstage and someone does something they’ve never done before,” she says, as Steffan nods heartily. “Everybody’s eyes just catch, and we’re like, ‘Hey, we’re kind of badasses.’”
Hey, she said it, not us.
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