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It takes all kinds of bands to make a city's music scene-and sometimes it takes all kinds of people to make a band. Anyone who's seen the Atlanta quintet Soup do its thing around town knows that anything goes when the show begins, musically and otherwise. The upcoming release of a new live album is the latest in a five-year string of events that have kept the band jumping.

Soup's history is nearly as spread-out and loopy as its shows. If you were to flash back to New York, circa 1986, you might find Andrew Margolius (harmonica, accordion, vocals) and Erik Rowen (vocals, guitar) goofing around together on various noisemakers in middle school. Jump forward about five years and you could see Rowen and Bram Bessoff (drums) starting to get serious about group playing at Syracuse University.

After graduating in 1995, the two moved down to Atlanta, while Margolius headed north to enroll in law school at Syracuse. Some six months later, Kevin Crow (lead guitar, vocals) met Rowen and Bessoff through an ad they put up at the Art Institute of Atlanta, and the three began to play open mic nights around town. Harmonica/accordion player Mike Macon sat in at a few shows and soon found himself in the band, bringing along bassist Mark Jones as a frequent guest.

The quintet put out their 1995 debut album, Laughing at the Fables, using money and studio time won during a local band competition (at the Fox Theatre, of all places, and as part of a Violent Femmes show!). After Macon and Jones left in the following months, Crow brought in Lee Adkins, one of his fellow students at Texas Tech, to play bass; when Margolius returned to Atlanta at the end of 1996, the current lineup was complete.

Since then, Soup has put out one other studio disc, 1998's Breakdown, and recorded a live two-CD set, A Tour of Two Cities. This latter album, to be released in Atlanta next Friday, features one batch of cuts recorded at the Cotton Club and another from a show at Wetlands in New York, with a couple of encore tracks from Athens' 40 Watt Club included.

"We almost consider them [Atlanta and New York] our two home bases," explained Margolius. "Erik and I grew up in upstate New York, and probably even Bram, who's from Massachusetts; we have tons of friends and family there...It's kind of like our second home, so it seemed appropriate to do both cities."

All three albums neatly capture the genuine fun they have while running musical styles through a high-speed blender. Think of Phish, James Taylor, Charlie Christian, the Allman Brothers, and the Marx Brothers mixed together in varying proportions, with a pinch of Cajun spice thrown in for good measure, and you start to get an idea of how much ground Soup can cover when they play live.

Each player has a distinctly different approach to performing and presenting himself. Margolius, for example, loves to take his act all the way to the edge of the stage (literally within arm's reach of the crowd), while Adkins projects a more reserved air. Putting the pieces together is easier than it sounds, though.

Margolius commented, "We try to kind of play off each other; we're just having fun up there. If I'm doing something goofy and Erik sees me having a good time, he'll look over and laugh and I'll try to get him into it. Or he'll try to get me into some new things he's trying to do-same deal with Kevin... Once in a while we step up onto the drum riser and get Bram involved; it's hard, with our backs turned to him, to get him into the actual fun of it."

The singing and playing styles, the dance steps, the goofy hats that show up on various heads (usually Margolius'), the costumes, and the band's other tricks make "Soup" a perfect name. "Part of why the name means something is that you can take five distinctly different things, add them together, and actually make something that's pretty tasty," Bessoff said.

Rowen and Crow, the two main songwriters, reflect that diversity of styles in their work. "[Their songs] can come from anywhere. They've come from times when we've been broken down, from nightmares and dreams. It kind of depends on what mood you're in, what just went by you," noted Margolius.

Crow's songs lean toward the poetic and philosophical, revealing strong jazz and blues influences, while Rowen favors a storyteller's approach and a more folk-based style. Still, anything can happen when one of them brings something new to the band, as it did with the new fan favorite "Salley's Sister."

"Kevin came in with a riff and we started playing; then Erik added a part and we arranged it all together," Bessoff recalled. "Then we sat down and thought of a concept for the song and wrote it all together. We've got this third style that's starting to show up in songs like 'Eweh' [on A Tour of Two Cities]." This cut blends Celtic and African rhythms and provides an intriguing counterpoint to the bluegrass-meets-Benny-Hill feel of "Marvin Wright," the opening track on the second disc.

Another new element that recently found its way into the kettle is Crow's use of an electric guitar. Until the end of last year, the band stuck entirely to acoustic instruments, with the exception of Adkins' bass. Turning up the juice has opened new avenues in performing and writing, explained Margolius. "We don't want to abuse it; we want to stay true to our sound...but the purpose of any band is to develop also. That could be part of the development, and we'll use it on a few songs."

For now, Crow and company have been earning their share of attention. First came the honor of being selected as Best Local Roots/Folk Band in the 1999 Creative Loafing "Best of Atlanta" readers' poll. Then came the Atlanta finals of the Fresh Tracks Band to Band Combat series, in which Soup took top honors over the Pleasantdales and Another Man Down. To end the year, they staged their second annual Soup Can Jam benefit show for the Atlanta Community Food Bank in December.

From Band to Band Combat, Soup snagged $2,500 cash, a spot on a national compilation CD with the other 14 city winners, and a three-city engagement in May with the Miami and New Orleans victors (13 and Thousand $ Car, respectively). The money and the CD are nice, but going to the Big Easy is what the band is looking forward to the most-not to mention their fans.

The association comes up because of Margolius' squeezebox. "Even though it's not a zydeco sound, really, the accordion is in the mix, so a lot of people will immediately associate it with New Orleans," he reflected.

On the home front, Soup Can Jam took in nearly 2,000 pounds of canned food-not bad, according to Bessoff, but there's plenty of room for improvement. "I think we still haven't figured out the way to throw a benefit show, what motivates people to come out...It'll keep progressing and start turning, hopefully, more into a festival where we can showcase other bands in town, or bands from out of town that we've played with."

The 1998 and 1999 Atlantis Music Conferences provided the group with a little showcase exposure of their own, and they hope to be accepted for this year's South by Southwest conference in Austin. Events such as SXSW have come under fire for being too bloated and overhyped to be of use to unsigned bands, but the view from underneath is a little different.

Bessoff pointed out, "I think the best thing you get from Atlantis is just making contacts, and that's pretty much what we used it as a vehicle for...If you go to them saying, 'We got accepted; let's go and somebody just might sign us,' then nothing's going to happen. But if you've sent out your press kit and your management is calling people saying, 'You've got to come see these people at this time,' and you get people that say yes-then it does become a great vehicle to try to get signed."

He continued, "The clock's always ticking against us, and we have to get over certain humps in order to ensure that it can continue. We're not looking for the overnight success route with the band; we're looking to be the 'longevity' type of Grateful Dead or Phish, those kinds of bands. That always takes longer to do, but it lasts longer in the end."

Margolius took a rather simpler view of the future: "I'm just going for the parties," he joked. "But we'd love to be able to be doing this for the rest of our lives." Only time will tell if there will be any dancing graybeards in the audience around 2040. For now, leave the walker at home and help yourself to an oversized bowl of a very strange and entertaining brew.

Soup will be performing at Smith's Olde Bar on February 11 to celebrate the release of A Tour of Two Cities. Call (404) 875-1522 for more details. To order the album, visit the Soup web site: www.soupkitchen.com.

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 - From http://nique.net/issues/2000-02-04/entertainment/1.

Soup disbanded in early 2003.  Their CD's are still available at various sources on the Internet.