Factory: working it at Tusks-N-Horns

Factory
Factory

Progressive funk and blues purveyors Factory will work their music magic at Tusks-N-Horns Saturday night, marking a return home for a trio now based in Fort Smith, Ark.

With Jeremy Tennant on bass and vocals, Seth Roberts wielding the guitar and Michael Robertson hitting the drums, Factory has only been playing live for a little more than a year, but they've quickly left a mark on the ever-evolving homegrown rock music scene here in Texarkana.

Here in Texarkana is where they first generated that buzz and fan support. "We owe a lot of people from Texarkana a lot of gratitude," Roberts says. The band promises to share new songs that the local audience has likely not yet heard.

The trio's genesis came when Roberts and Tennant met and became friends, and then Tennant just happened to learn Roberts played guitar.

"I've been playing guitar since high school, since I was 16," said Roberts, the son of longtime local musician Jimmy Roberts, who's been in a number of solid local bands. He also has a cousin who was in Pilotdrift, perhaps the most successful indie rock band to come out of Texarkana in recent memory.

"They were awesome, an incredible band, one of our big influences on our writing process and everything," Roberts said.

Indeed, Factory can be viewed as part of a string of talented, local, indie acts who've performed original music, bands like Grey Sky Campaign, Mid-Winter, Sylo, Canaan, Oh My Blue Sky, Old Flames and more. In addition to a talented core of cover bands, Texarkana has a steady tradition of locals writing their own material.

Tennant said he and Roberts hit it off real well as friends, and then he later found out Roberts could really play guitar. They started playing music together but didn't want to be like anybody else.

"We wanted to be able to pay homage to our heroes," Tennant said. But to make music that can't be pigeonholed-that's the aim. Even if their current obsessions influence them somehow, the guys in Factory work to do their own thing. They had a Grand Funk Railroad phase recently, they say, and one with Tears for Fears.

"Week by week it's really different," Roberts said. Clearly, they welcome all sorts of music into their consciousness, but they'll name bands like Pink Floyd and Jimi Hendrix as influences. It's a big mix.

"We want to be our own guys with our own sound," Tennant said.

One aspect of getting it right so they could take music beyond just playing at home and go live at a venue was finding the right drummer, Robertson, who just fell into their laps, said Tennant.

Once they worked with him and wrote enough material, Factory established a few different sets of music to perform live. Then local music promoter Leslie Chisum hooked them up with an October 2017 show at Stages, and from there they took off.

"Apparently, at the time, we created enough buzz," Roberts recalls, praising the local scene and fantastic people here in Texarkana. "Texarkana is home for me and always will be," he said.

Since September, they've called Fort Smith home, a move that brought them closer to a more central location for plentiful live music like Fayetteville, a place where their sort of music might find a wider audience.

"We just felt like there was more of a scene for that style of music," Tennant said. But they're both stoked to return to Texarkana and play Tusks-N-Horns at its new location (4270 St. Michael Drive in Texarkana, Texas). Show time is 9 p.m.

(More info: Check out the event page or Factory's page on Facebook.)

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