Raleigh, NC - Wednesday, September 15th 2004 - "Do people feel OK?" It's well past midnight on a Monday night at Lillie's in

downtown Raleigh, and--after three beers, a washout band practice and an

hour spent explaining the origin and direction of this Infantry--Nathan Asher

really doesn't have the answers, but the questions come quick and cutting. He

doesn't know why so many people need antidepressants just to feign

happiness. He doesn't know why teenagers are frightened into a mold of

beauty. Frankly, he doesn't know if the kids are all right. "Really, do people

feel OK?" he asks again, rubbing his closely shaven head. "I don't think so.

Somehow, we're the richest people in the world, and people don't feel fine."

Welcome to Nathan Asher's world, a place

where questions constantly get asked and

nothing is ever finished, a place where being in

a rock band isn't about making a scene or

inking a deal. It's about airing the troubles in his head, no matter how

confrontational, controversial or contradictory they may be.

As such, Asher is an utter perfectionist. Tonight, lounging at a bar-side booth

with three of his bandmates, no one is sure which master tape they mailed to

the factory last week, just 15 days before their CD release show two floors

above in Martin Street Music Hall.

Drummer Daniel Abbate, a hulk-ish sort whose triceps are rivaled only by the

snare-splitting solos he sometimes hammers out mid-set during one of the

band's marathon shows, claims it was the most compressed of the three test

discs. Asher and keyboardist Lawson Bennett are only moderately confident that it was the master with medium compression that went to press. Chris

Serino, ensconced in the opposite corner with a cool rock-star laxity, just takes

another drink, admitting that none of them could really tell a difference at all.

Everyone agrees, but it's obvious that Asher is worried.

Mixes and masters aren't the only thing on his mind, though. Eleven hours

from now, the band will meet on Hillsborough Street directly across from

N.C. State to hoist two massive billboards totaling some 300 square feet as

invitations for the upcoming party. Two business owners have agreed to it, but

Asher is worried that something will go wrong, that the city will take them

down, that the property owners will object to advertisement for such an

upfront, brash band in their storefronts.

Two days ago, he had a litany of questions and concerns for the Kinko's

employee responsible for printing the signs' pieces. He gave the employee his

phone number no less than three times, and he wanted to know which printer

would do the job. Cost wasn't a factor.

Perhaps it's fulsome self-promotion, a local band's take on publicity,

gimmicks and over-indulgence gone too far. Or, more likely, it's six guys

living an E-Street Band dream, guys with enough will and audacity to stand

by the claim that they really do believe in the music they're making.

"We do a lot of promotion for this band, and that can burn you out really

quickly. But it would burn me out a lot faster if I didn't believe in this and

what we have to sell," Asher says, entering one of his characteristically

tangent explanations. "We've got no intentions of turning it into a cash cow,

but we hope that this band and this music is useful and somehow meaningful

to people."

That belief is the tie that not only holds the band together 10 months into its

existence, but it's also what led them to one another in the first place. Asher

and Bennett have been playing together since Asher--a classroom delinquent--

jumped from his seat one day in sixth grade at Ligon Middle School to

impress his classmates with a bold rendition of Lee Greenwood's "God Bless

the USA."

"From the time that Nathan did that in school, I knew...Well, I don't know

what I knew," laughs Bennett, explaining the bond the two have had in music

for nearly a decade. "When Nathan first started writing stuff, I could tell he

didn't know what he was doing, and I would hear the painful process of him

trying to write his first songs. It was awful."

Bennett, who was on course to become a classical pianist, took to Asher,

teaching him the fundamentals of music theory. The two eventually landed in

Phantom FM, which came crashing to an end shortly after college. The duo's

long-standing musical dreams seemed to die with the band, but they kept busy

writing, practicing and planning.

"I was very frustrated with the world when this started, and these songs were a

way to express this frustration with pop culture, politics, getting older and

watching people around me change," Asher remembers of The Infantry's

inception. "I felt myself changing, and I needed these songs to remind me of

what I was and what I didn't like and didn't want to be."

Looking for a team of musicians to hire for the recording of those personal

numbers, Asher hit the clubs, hunting for a backing band. He quickly noticed

Nova Cancy drummer Daniel Abbate, and--after scouting the band for three

more shows--he approached Abbate, who agreed to record the songs. NovaCancy guitarist Chris Serino joined on bass, but he shifted to his familiar role

behind lead guitar after Abbate's older brother, Nick, joined. Eyes to Space

frontman Jay Cartwright also signed on for the sessions with Bennett, Asher

and the core of Nova Cancy.

"Nathan recorded the very first session we did in his basement, and when I

went back and listened to it, I realized that everyone in that room was a really

great player, and that we had connected," the younger Abbate recalls. "That

just impressed the hell out of me."

Following a subsequent tour in New York full of bad experiences and busted

gigs, Serino and the Abbates disbanded Nova Cancy and joined Asher's

Infantry. The move from full-on, radio-ready pop band to the politically

spirited, intellectually fueled bent of Asher was a bit awkward, but Serino

knew there was real potential in "this next level of songwriting."

"It's really empowering for me, and I feel and understand what he's expressing

in his lyrics," Serino says. "To be able to stand up and have the balls and the

means to sing songs that need to be sung--it's very empowering, and it's

important to be a part of that."

Asher's songwriting isn't simply empowering, though. It's empowered,

emotionally charged stuff built on bedrock hope and full of an earnest, deadfaced

devotion to his political pulls and lofty social aspirations. "The Last

Election"--the band's banner and the title track of the heavily anticipated

debut--is a five-minute, barn-burning philippic that finds Asher denouncing

"His peons, adoring morons worshipping the Koran / Misinterpreting the

verses to avoid feeling human" after pointing out that "The president is

driving air force one / His daddy gave him the keys and he's drunk," in a

scathing Stipe growl set above Springsteen-styled rock heroics and Turner

Brandon's harmonica licks.

Sincere, earnest and charged, Asher and The Infantry is a band that realizes it

comes as an anathema to an area known for its wealth of ironic, indie

detachment or guttural, emasculated rock chops.

"For me, this music is not ironic. I'm tired of rock 'n' roll having to be ironic,

because it seems to say that, 'Oh, we don't take this seriously'," Asher says,

digging into the argument. "I'm fucking scared...we're 24 or 25, and--right

now--this is it in our lives."

Nathan Asher and The Infantry host their record release party at Martin Street

Music Hall Friday, Sept. 17. The show starts around midnight.

Raleigh, NC - Wednesday, November 17th 2004 - Nathan Asher & The Infantry

( Local Honey Music)



It's taken a while, but after exhaustive study, the indie-rock underground has

discovered there were other bands before 1980 than Big Star, The Velvet

Underground, The New York Dolls, Cheap Trick, The Stooges and Black

Sabbath. While with this knowledge some bands obsess over the carcass of

Sticky Fingers, Nathan Asher & The Infantry are busy resurrecting the sounds

of Bruce Springsteen and Robbie Robertson. Certainly, the prominent role of

bluesy piano and organ in his numbers strengthens the Boss comparison, and

nowhere is it as undeniable as on the stunning title track. Raging like

Springsteen's "Lost In The Flood," Asher expertly tackles the feeling of

helplessness many rediscovered Nov. 2, his words a torrential storm of

frustration over rising Hammond fills and a mournful harmonica line. Asher's

voice is a bit of an acquired taste--not unlike John Darnielle--but (similarly)

the incisive lyricism redeems a great deal. Musically, Asher thrives in a midtempo

rock groove with a steady blues undercurrent keyed to the piano and

organ, though the guitar has the jagged pop crunch of The Wedding Present

(used more for flavor than to forward the melodic line). While political in

bent, Asher gives the songs an Everyman voice that echoes the rootsy sound

it's built upon.

Raleigh, NC - Friday, January 28th 2005 - Duos and armies, loud and quiet bands, guitarists and

turntablists, country crooners and rappers - our latest

"Great Eight" local acts ranges all over. Some of these

acts are almost brand new, others have been around but

are making breakthroughs. And they're all great.



NATHAN ASHER & THE INFANTRY



Hometown: Raleigh.



Sound: Arena rock with a cause.



On-record: "Nathan Asher & the Infantry" (Local Honey

Music, 2004).



Web site: www.nathanasher.com.



Upcoming shows: Saturday at Local 506, Chapel Hill;

Jan. 29 at Nightlight, Chapel Hill; Feb. 12 at Martin Street

Music Hall, Raleigh.



When it comes to musical agitation, Nathan Asher has

found that there's strength in numbers. If you're going to

play anti-war songs in a red state, that's safer with a seven-piece band than going solo.

"Now that I have a drummer in a tank top behind me, there are a lot less threats," he says laughing.

"But I thrive on that, in a way, as long as I'm not feeling like I'm about to get hit."

Fittingly, Nathan Asher & the Infantry come on like an army, playing anthemic rock just made for

righteous fist-waving. Although the last election supposedly made left-of-center politics obsolete, the

unashamedly liberal Asher vows to fight on.

"We lost this election and it was a good focal point, but I think the underlying issues are a lot deeper

than that," he says. "Like why aren't people in this country as happy as they should be? What is a

meaningful life in the face of technology? That's the stuff I'm writing about more now."

Fun fact: Asher's day job is writing text books and children's books with titles such as "What Are

Robots?"

Raleigh, NC - - With a fist to the face courtesy of a longtime bandmate, Nathan Asher knew

Phantom FM was through. But, following the band-breaking fisticuffs, Asher

still had plenty of songs and ideas, and he knew better than to waste them.

What he needed was the same as most any other unestablished songwriter: a

band to follow him somewhere into a basement, rehearse for a few days and

then record a five or six track demo.

Asher had been impressed with the

pounding of Nova Cancy's Daniel Abbate

when they had shared a bill earlier in the

summer, so he recruited Abbate and his

bandmate Chris Serino to man the session's rhythm section. FM's Lawson

Bennett would return to the fold on keys, along with Jay Cartwright III from

Chapel Hill's Eyes to Space on organ.

"I had all of these songs I needed to record, so I found these guys and told

them I'd pay them to play," remembers Asher. "We got together and went

through a few songs, and it was a really, really great feeling playing with these

guys in a room. Pretty soon, I didn't have to pay them anymore."

Serino soon moved to his customary position behind the electric guitar,

opening a spot for Abbate's older brother, Nick, on the bass. The sextet--a hybrid of two upstart, trans-Interstate 40 rock bands and a second ivory man--

exploded, somehow reworking and conquering some 15 Asher sitting-in-thebasement-

with-an-acoustic musings in just over a month.

And the product--Nathan Asher & The Infantry--is better than the work any of

the players have done in their previous bands. Asher is a first-rate social

satirist, commenting on life, politics and entertainment in a vintage Michael

Stipe plea that somehow manages to strike a balance between being

necessarily nervous and irritatingly paranoid.

"MC Big Money looks funny as he's accepting his Grammy / Stammering

thanks to God and family for a song called 'Drugs and Pussy,'" he sings in the

band's first finished cut, "The Last Election," a smart, organ-washed affair that

calls Americans to thought and international malcontents to self-respect with

the help of Turner Brandon's riotous harmonica work.

Abbate's drumming roars in the mix, turning Asher's analytical refrains into

intensely perfect hooks and giving his work teeth just at the points where the

words of similar writers backed by lesser bands begins to fizzle. The

keyboard/organ work plays out much like Jay Bennett's ideas for Wilco's

Summer Teeth, dancing with countermelodies and a few perfectly placed notes

as organ sustains bolster the soaring, cracked vocals of Asher--more a

Darkness on the Edge of Town Springsteen than a Jeff Tweedy.

These guys know they have something special. Asher plans to have an EP

finished and packaged before the band's big debut at The Lincoln Theatre on

January 2, and he hopes to record a few more numbers with The Infantry in

the next four weeks as part of developing a proper LP by February. These

guys need Steve Lillywhite's phone number. Judging from "The Last

Election" and a set of six more impressive demos, this band and the right

producer (Lillywhite or Mitch Easter) could make one of the best first-take,

power-pop albums you will ever hear.

Raleigh, NC - Wednesday, January 28th 2004 - Three bands appearing on the forthcoming compilation of emerging Chapel

Hill acts (due out on Go*Machine's Bu Hanan records next month) will be

performing together in Raleigh days after the first of three release parties

slated for the disc. Alli With An I will join Nathan Asher & The Infantry and

local funk-rock outfit, Saunter, for a Friday night triune at The Lincoln

Theatre on Feb. 27.

The Infantry--a potent six-piece rock outfit ripped piecemeal from Raleigh's

Nova Cancy and Chapel Hill's Phantom FM and Eyes to Space--finished the

recording for their full-length debut last weekend at Durham's Overdub Lane

with Mark Williams behind the boards. The band put down five tracks for the

second half of the album in a marathon two-day session much like the

previous one in which the band recorded the album's first six songs.

Asher, who many may remember as the triumphantly bald frontman of

Phantom FM, says the recording sessions have been energetic and determined

thus far. Much of that, of course, probably owes to the age of those involved:

Chris Serino, Dan Abbate and Nick Abbate played for years in the defunct

jam band, Moonride, before forming Nova Cancy, and Asher admits that the

amount of time he endured in bands that eventually called it quits has

certainly contributed to the immediacy of this latest project. But what about

the results of those workhorse sessions?

"You know that Springsteen album, Darkness on the Edge of Town, right?"

Asher says. "It reminds me of that in a way. I think it sounds great."

Asher, interviewed while still somewhat numbed by the previous evening's

defeat and Hulk Hogan holler of Dr. Howard Dean (his favorite Democrat),

said the band has also re-recorded the potent, R.E.M.-geared title track from

their self-manufactured EP, The Last Election. Asher's uncle, the Grammywinning

David Holt/Doc Watson producer Stephen Heller, recorded the initial

version, but Williams will be recording a final album take.