Porch Kat: Local band with big dreams

By Lauren Owens

When the neighbor’s cat began showing up to band practice, Porch Kat named themselves after the tabby. The cat has since moved away, but his legacy lives on in the band’s name.

The writing process for songs varies from artist to artist and band to band. For Porch Kat, a local band made up of Ball State students, the process is collaborative.

Beginning with a melody, the members of Porch Kat come together and build the song musically before the lyrics are written.

“It’s really rewarding because at the end you have a thing,” Matthew Keyser, a guitar player in Porch Kat, said. “It started as ideas in your head and then take it and make it ideas in sound or on paper or on a disc or somewhere where you can share it to people.”

Comprised of Alex Kilmer on bass and lead vocals, Brandon Gick on drums and Tyler Padgett and Keyser on guitar, Porch Kat describes themselves as a rock, jazz and psychedelic jam band.

However, they don’t like to categorize their sound.

“It’s hard to classify the music you hear in your head as one thing,” Keyser said. “One of our songs is half country shuffle half trippy spaced out jam.”

Porch Kat also improvises a lot of their music, playing off of one another’s sound.

“Sometimes the drummer doesn’t want to end the song yet, so you just have to figure it out from there,” Keyser said.

Porch Kat currently has a single on Sound Cloud, and has two recording dates set up in October to create their first EP. Keyser said that they plan on naming the EP “With a K” in reference to the band name, as there is a band named “Porch Cat” based in Washington.

“We’re trying to get bigger than them, so we changed it to a K,” Keyser explained. “K is better.”

Porch Kat opened for Afroman as their fourth show as a band.

“Our first show was a Free Music Monday at Be Here Now and like 40 or 50 people showed up, and that doesn’t happen at Free Music Monday,” Keyser said. “That’s how we got the Afroman show.”

Having only begun the band in March this year, Keyser said that performing as one of Afroman’s opening bands at Be Here Now was a proud moment, but he wants to keep moving up from there.

“I certainly hope we do more in the near future, Keyser said. “I don’t want that to be the top of the list of things I’ve done in my life. For right now, I’m fine with that. That’s a really big show in Muncie.”

However, the Afroman show introduced Porch Kat to a lot of new people who hadn’t heard them before.

“Since then [the Afroman show], it’s been kinda weird because people I don’t know are like, ‘hey, you opened for Afroman, how was that?’”

In the future, the band plans on turning the band into a living. Currently, any money that Porch Kat makes from their shows goes into a fund for merchandise and future shows. Keyser said that their goal is to be able to sustain themselves with the band.

“We want to travel around and play music for as many people as we can,” Keyser said.

“We’re all on the same page with where we want to go, what we want to do and what we have to do to get there.”

Porch Kat’s next performance in Muncie will be Oct. 19 at Be Here Now.