MSU rockers Flatfoot are ready to jam one last time before drummer Joe Irvin departs.
Irvin will play his last show with the group Friday night at the Temple Club, 500 E. Grand River Ave. in Lansing. Flatfoot is set to play with several other bands and half the money raised from the event will go to Friends of Ingham County Animal Shelter.
But come Monday, Irvin, a 2003 MSU alumnus, will leave to explore and work in England.
Flatfoot members said that not only will the band lose its original drummer but some interesting stage antics as well.
"I like to be a showman," Irvin said. "I just really get into it. My role-model drummer is Keith Moon, so I like to go nuts. I spin my sticks and do crazy tricks because the music -although I love it - is easy on the drummer. It's basic beats - I like to play around with it."
While in the heat of the moment, Irvin has even tossed his tom-tom at a fellow band member's bass amplifier, resulting in a huge hole in the amp's side.
But Irvin didn't always want to play drums. When he was 12, his friends wanted to start a band. One friend picked guitar and another picked bass. That only left a vacancy at drums.
"Eventually I just crumbled," he said. "Alrighty, I wanted to be in a band, so I just did it. I don't regret it."
The group also consists of theater senior Tom McCartan and brothers Aaron Bales, an education graduate student, and Jason Bales, a music education senior. Members have already found a replacement drummer in fellow Spartan Erik Miller.
Miller knew the band members from a jam session a few years ago, he said. He got the gig because Flatfoot members still remembered him.
"Any time you replace an original member, it's intimidating," said Miller, an interdisciplinary studies in social science senior. "I bring a very versatile style of drumming. From twangy bluegrass to hard rock, I can accommodate all kinds of music."
Which is what Bales said Flatfoot is all about. Aaron Bales is the band's vocalist, also playing harmonica and several guitars. Jason Bales sings and jams on the guitar and banjo, McCartan sings and plays guitar and Irvin is on drums.
Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings and The Rolling Stones are some of the group's musical idols.
The group officially formed more than three years ago, but can trace its roots to a year before that when McCartan and Aaron Bales met at a glee club.
"I asked him if he knew the slide guitar part to 'Love In Vein' by The Rolling Stones and he said 'Yeah,'" McCartan said. "It was a friendship from the start."
Jason Bales came to MSU the following year as a freshman and joined the group. Later that year, Irvin lifted the group from an acoustic act to an electronic band. At the time, Irvin was McCartan's roommate.
"We had a very slow build as far as coming out from doing coffeehouse shows and my friend's dorm," Jason Bales said. "It's still a lot of our friends that show up, but now we're getting more recognition, I think, because we didn't have drums at first. I think it's hard to get popular fast as an acoustic band."
Flatfoot only plays one or two gigs a month, because many of the members have demanding schedules.
Meanwhile, as the band prepares for the final show with Irvin, it has no plans on slowing down; members even want to release another CD.
"I think we're just going to keep playing the music until it stops being fun," Aaron Bales said.
