The Griffon News

With today’s music industry, it’s becoming harder and harder to find a band that can both play good music and maintain character through their growing popularity. St. Joseph post-hardcore band Skeffington is one of those bands, retaining talent and class as their fan base grows.

Skeffington has six members, Jesse Conn on vocals, Jeff Brooks and Zane Calister on guitar, Derek Bloxom adds keyboard and synthesizer beats, Ryan Beck plays drums and Sheldon Thompson plays bass.

“I knew Jesse from church,” said guitarist Jeff Brooks. “And then he was friends with all the other guys that went to Lafayette and we just hooked up.” The band will be celebrating its first anniversary together in November.

They have also released a self-titled EP that has five original tracks, most of which the band derives from their own life experiences.

“As far as lyrics go,” vocalist Jesse Conn said. “Yeah, life experiences, but as far as music, just listening to bands and listening to other stuff and being creative.”

Brooks and Conn also said that they get inspiration and influence from bands like Underoath and Thursday.

Even though three of the members attend Missouri Western, the band says that most of their fans fall into an age range of juniors or seniors in high school and up.

“No one in college really knows us yet,” Conn said.

One of their college fans is Kane Glidewell, a sophomore at Missouri Western, who has attended several of their shows and described their music as, “Underoath/ Taking Back Sunday on crack.” Glidewell is friends with both Brooks and Conn. He attended elementary school with Conn and also attended high school at Benton with Brooks.

“They just devote themselves,” Glidewell said. “They rock out, from the beginning of the show to the end no matter what.”

To add to their commitment of making a memorable experience of their sets, Skeffington has managed to keep their egos in check and contribute to causes around their community. On October 28, 2006 the band held a concert with Script, Mr. Sinister, Echo the Sky and Josephine to help the Invisible Children Foundation.

Two things have made it especially hard for Skeffington to play the shows that they want as often as they want. One is the location of some of their band mates, their keyboardist, Derek Bloxom is in California and guitarist Zane Calister is attending Iowa State. The second is the lack of a stable venue, they have played at Groundworks and the Applehouse, but an all ages venue that is open every day of the week is still MIA.

As of now the band intends on picking up shows whenever they are available and have talked to a few out-of-town bands, like Springfield based A Day Away, in hopes of setting up some shows locally.

There is a show planned on December 15 at Groundworks, and when their other members return they hope to play sometime in November.

“We’re going to try and get some around Thanksgiving break time,” Brooks said. “When we’ve got all of our band members back in town from college.”

For more information, go to MySpace at www.myspace.com/skeffingtonmusic.