Local Prog Trio Maps Need Reading Fights Adversity to Release Its Epic Debut Album

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Maps Need Reading’s debut album is cursed. What other explanation could there be? In January, halfway through writing a quirky concept album about household appliances brought to life, guitarist/songwriter David Webb quit the band. It was a huge creative blow to the emerging indie/prog band.

Seven months later, with an album-release show already booked, the band members scrambled to complete an entirely new record, the epic Mapsynapse. Staring down the deadline, a series of blows ensued. Less than two weeks before the show, with Paul Seguna, of fellow Knox prog band Lines Taking Shape, on hand to master the files, a technical glitch erased a bass guitar arrangement. Then, soon after he moved to Nashville, drummer D.J. Young’s car broke down. Without Internet at home, he lurked around a local Panera to meet production deadlines for the new album.

“It’s been a hell of a week,” Young says.

But Mapsynapse exists, and it was worth the strain. Across six dynamic tracks, the trio—Young, guitarist/keyboardist/vocalist Chris Burgess, and bassist/vocalist Nathan Patterson—veers from jazzy math-rock grooves (“Layers”) to ornate folk/prog fingerpicking (“Secrets”) to atmospheric, Pink Floyd-style psychedelia (the three-part suite “Altar Ego”). Last year’s Hopes for Chemistry EP found the band revamping their caffeinated punk prog with a jazz-fusion edge, thanks in part to Webb’s music studies at the University of Tennessee. Mapsynapse is another, more symphonic rebirth, built on walls of keyboards and vocal harmonies.

It’s been a seamless sonic shift, and Webb’s departure actually made it easier. On Hopes for Chemistry, the band members occasionally clashed on the direction of the music, with the guitarist steering most of the songwriting. In retrospect, the album title feels prescient.

“It just felt like we were butting heads a lot,” Webb says. “We wanted different things out of the band. So I just decided to quit because I felt like the band wasn’t going to survive as it was, and I also felt like our relationships were deteriorating from it.”

With Webb’s departure, the tension has dissipated—Young, Burgess, and Webb all moonlight in the local throwback cover band Viet Jam, and Webb even contributed some guitar parts to Mapsynapse. But at the time, the loss of its main songwriter seemed to threaten the band’s existence.

“It was a big as a shock to me and the guys as it was to anyone else,” Young says. “It kind of came out of the blue. We’d just released a single, ‘The Aftermath’ and a cover of [The Beatles’] ‘Let It Be,’ and that was going to be a part of an EP we were doing. We were getting together for rehearsal one day, and he dropped that on us. There were no talks beforehand or anything—it was just like, ‘This is what’s happening.’”

Young, Burgess, and Patterson absorbed the blow like professionals. Instead of scrapping everything they’d done over the previous five years, they embraced the creative freedom of this smaller, tighter-knit unit.

“After David left the band, we were like, we’re not going to let this tear the band apart or slow us down,” Young says.

Young and his bandmates briefly considered recruiting another guitarist—or even a trumpet player, saxophonist, auxiliary percussionist, or female vocalist—to explore a “different timber.” But they decided didn’t have time for experimentation.

In March, less than two months after their sudden scale-back, they opened for progressive metal band Consider the Source at the International. Then, in late June, the band started recording new songs at Burgess’ home studio, dubbed the Electric Peach Pit. Working together on a new level, they wrote the foundation of “Layers,” one of the tracks on Mapsynapse, in their first songwriting and practice session as a trio.

The group ended up with three totally new songs, including their most ambitious one to date, the 12-minute “Altar Ego.” (“I always liked the idea of how progressive bands do these suites, like Rush did on Hemispheres,” Young says.) They also completed work on a “reimagined” version of the 2011 track “Secrets,” which features an Allman Brothers-meets-Zappa guitar solo from Webb.

Maps Need Reading could have collapsed, as many local bands do after losing a key member. Instead, with Mapsynapse, they’ve regrouped and found new focus. Not even a curse could break their stride.

“At this point, I don’t see us bringing on anybody new in the near future,” Young says. “Things haven’t been better for the band, in terms of the material we’re writing, the feedback we’ve gotten on that material, and the overall vibe in the practice room. It’s a lot more positive. We’re all on the same page with a lot of things.”

Maps Need Reading will celebrate the release of Mapsynapse with a release show at Pilot Light (106 E. Jackson Ave.) on Saturday, Sept. 3, at 9:30 p.m. Spades Cooley and Unaka Prong will open. Admission is $5. 18 and up.

Ryan Reed is a freelance music/culture writer-editor. In addition to Knoxville Mercury, he contributes to publications like Rolling Stone, Billboard Magazine, Paste, Relix Magazine, Stereogum, Ultimate Classic Rock, Esquire, and Rhapsody. On the increasingly rare occasion he isn't slumped behind a laptop, he's probably teaching adjunct college classes, record shopping, or unsuccessfully attempting to master "The Purdie Shuffle."

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