Rexburg is no stranger to musical arts. Several local bands call the city home. Downbeat is one of those bands, comprised of Rexburg locals working together to create tunes.
Ryan Dransfield, the founder of the band and lead guitarist, collaborated with bassist Max Warden — playing together for fun, not taking their music seriously.
“We got asked to play a show and like, dude, I didn’t think we were good enough,” Dransfield said. “And then we played our show and we’re like, dude that was awesome. Let’s do this again.”
Dransfield and Warden thought it would be cool to create a band, so they invited drummer Caleb Mawlan and their guitarist and singer, Gabe Christensen, to join.
“We were just like, ‘dude, being in a band would be sick,’ so we all started playing together, just learning,” Dransfield said. “We just started playing around with each other. Then we got Caleb because he knew the drums and that’s when Gabe was like ‘dude, I’ll complete it’”.
Originally formed in late 2021, the band has since grown together by writing songs, playing shows and coming up with a name.
“We literally spent weeks — We thought of literally a whole list of names and they were awful,” Dransfield said.
The band talked about various attempts to create a name that would describe the members, their music and their style.
“We had Market Fantasy, Tom Foolery, Judy’s Bloomers, Untamed, Paranormal Punk,” Christensen said.
The band decided on the name Downbeat, as it goes with some of the music they play together — reggae downplayed music on the downbeat.
Downbeat works together as a band to create and rehearse songs for their shows. Mawlan’s favorites are I Belong by the Fear Fighters and originals I Feel the Pain and Scattered.
“Play some crappy riff and then once you kind of get the formation of the song down, you start adding words,” Christensen said. “All the songs that I write for us, they’re kind of just weird songs that are fast and punk rock, because it’s easier to play and people like it because it’s meant to be dumb.”
Downbeat’s fast, weird punk rock songs won the Battle of the Bands competition which saw themparticipate against other high school-aged bands. Downbeat has performed in venues including The Basement and the Rexburg Skatepark.
“We are stressed out before the show, and then as soon as we get up we kill it, literally as soon as we get up on stage,” Christensen said.
Downbeat doesn’t let their stress or fears hold them back. They plan for growth in the future.
“We wanted to go down to Utah, play down there in Kilby Court, something like that,” Dransfield said. “Traveling and recording.”
The members Warden, Dransfield and Mawlan are incoming college freshmen with Christensen heading into his junior year of high school. With little experience, they all joined together to create music as Downbeat.
“You do not have to be good to start a band,” Christensen said. “Anyone can do this. If we can do this, literally anyone can if they have somewhat of a brain and some musical skill.”
Downbeat hopes to inspire others to reach out of their comfort zones and try new things.
“Even if you have no musical skill, when I first started, like the only thing I ever played was piano and I’d never practice,” Warden said. “I’ve never played a guitar in my life. I just picked it up.”
For more information and showtimes for the band, visit Downbeat’s Instagram.
