Gault emerged from the early years of the Covid pandemic, initially taking shape around a stack of songs keyboardist Caleb Miller had written amid isolation and fueled by a shared desire to reconnect in a room with other people.
“I’ve known most of the other musicians from various bands for about 10 years, honestly, maybe eight with some of them,” said Miller, who is joined in the jazz-adjacent collective by saxophonist Alex Burgoyne, guitarist Abhilasha Chebolu, drummer Seth Daly and bassist Trent Sampson. “But I had this though during the pandemic where it was like, well, if I could start a band at some point after this, this would be the band.”
Released in November 2023, the group’s debut record, Mirth, includes instrumentals that appear to nod both the heaviness of those Covid years (“Grief Share”) as well as to the lightness surfaced as connections were gradually reestablished (“More Fully”). Though written entirely amid stay-at-home regulations, the bulk of the songs are musically busy, chaotic turns such as “Sighy / A Gall” playing like a means for Miller and Co. to counter the stillness of that time. The pandemic also impacted the musician in other ways, forcing Miller to reconsider his relationship to certain routines, including the act of making music, which remained consistent even as other aspects of his life were upended.
“Historically, I looked at rituals and practices and habits as a bit of a crutch,” he said. “But during the pandemic, whether it was exercise, meditation, music, or just being with friends, it became the opposite. And it became like food, you know? It became the nourishing component rather than something I looked at as reductive.”
With the just-released If the Heavens Came Down, which Gault will celebrate in concert at Dick’s Den on Thursday, May 22, the musicians have finally started to place some distance between themselves and these earliest Covid days, landing on an eclectic collection of songs that flit between more composed, atmospheric turns (“Gault”) and improvisational instrumentals such as “You’re Fickle, I Dwell,” a comparatively skittish track that abruptly collapses upon itself before being rebuilt by the players into something far more grand.
Thematically, the album runs the gamut, with each band member contributing tracks rooted in their own experiences. Miller, for instance, said his songs tended to reflect those things he encountered moving through his day-to-day routine, including the stop-start pulse of “(stammering),’ which he said emerged from “basically freezing in certain moments of living.” Daly, in turn, contributed a trio of songs informed by family, including the title track, which Miller said the drummer wrote years back following the deaths of his mother and sister; “When in France,” an atmospheric number shaped by the sense of solitude the musician experienced when his wife was traveled for a time overseas; and “Thanks, Dad,” which bookends the album and has a title inspired by the drummer’s son, Graham.
“I almost say that Seth saved this record. Not that it was doomed or anything,” Miller said, and laughed. “But those songs are just a good testament to how things come together in this band. … We all kind of know what these songs are about, in some ways, and I think that informs how we play them.”
Prior to helping form Gault, Miller said he often spread himself too thin at times, saying yes to every possible potential musical partnership out of fear that any lost opportunity would leave him perpetually on the outside looking in. “It was like, oh, I gotta say yes or someone else will do it,” he said. Emerging from the pandemic, however, Miller said he has been more intentional in his efforts to ramp back up, content to dedicate his time and energy to those projects that he believes can draw out the best in him and vice versa.
“When you admire people so much, there’s this thing that happens where it’s like, ‘Oh, my God. I love what you’re doing.’ And then you lock in with them, and I think that becomes the most fruitful scenario,” Miller said of the symbiotic musical dynamic he continually sees at play within Gault. “And not to repeat myself, but they feel to me to be such strong, self-assured people. And I think that pulls different things out of me, and it makes me feel bigger.”
Andy is the former editor of Columbus Alive and has written for The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, Stereogum, Spin and more.
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