Sync

It’s a Saturday night at Juanita’s, and the River Market restaurant is hopping with a weekend crowd. One of the tables is occupied by the five, young members of Sherwood band Boom the Wheel. The quintet needs protein right now. In two hours, Boom the Wheel will be upstairs, opening a show for touring acts Me Talk Pretty and Hawthorne Heights. But first comes a quick meal before the show. Mostly burgers.

The night’s show is one of the band’s first since the release of their six-track, self-titled EP. It’s a show that will attract a large crowd so it serves two purposes: selling copies of the EP and winning new fans among the crowd who will converge for the night’s headliners. Thirty minutes. That’s what the band gets on stage. But there is no nervousness. Just a sense of excitement.

“We have an absolute blast [playing live],” says Natalia Ludwig, the 21-year-old lead singer of the band. “We are so excited about any shows that come up. We just want to do our best at any show whether there are big bands there or two people who come to the show. We don’t care.”

The band — Ludwig along with Jance Walker and Ryan Hart on guitars, Avery Snyder on bass and Jeremy Martin on drums — has experience with opening spots. Its first gig was a Red Jumpsuit Apparatus show at the old South Main Street location of Juanita’s back in May 2011. The key is simple: Have fun on stage and the crowd will have fun, too.

“I guess the most you can do is do what you do and hope people like it,” Hart says.

And the music of Boom the Wheel is fun. High-energy rock is what the band calls it. It’s peppy and energetic alternative rock with traces of progressive. The tunes, such as “Heart Like a Kingdom” and “No Addiction of Mine” possess tight drum rolls and jabbing guitar riffs; after all, one of the band’s influences is Between The Buried And Me, minus the death metal growls. No, Ludwig relies on powerhouse vocals instead of growls. Though sometimes her lyrics do the growling for her, such as “Who are you to judge a life so beautifully made?” on “High Horse.”

But what Boom the Wheel really sounds like is five musicians between the ages of 18 and 21 having a good time. The four guys of Boom the Wheel knew each other either through church or growing up in Sherwood, and some had played in bands together. Ludwig came from Maine. Following her high school graduation, she started traveling, landing in Nashville, Tenn. About once a month, she’d take a road trip and one such trip landed her in Arkansas two years ago

“[The guys] were in previous bands and just kind of ready to move on, and we went to a friend’s birthday party and met [Natalia] there,” Walker says. “I was just playing acoustic guitar, and she just started singing. We just hit it off as friends, and I kept texting her about how I wanted her to be the singer for this new band we were starting. She ended up moving here and it started from there. She kind of left everything to come down here and join what we were doing, which is cool.”

Snyder says the band minus Ludwig had written some tunes but her addition was the final piece. Hart and Walker usually begin a Boom the Wheel tune with guitar parts, and Snyder and Martin add the rhythmic foundation. Ludwig will hear a rough version of the tune before adding lyrics, drawing upon either lyrics she has typed into her cell phone when they strike her or written in a book.

“Sometimes she hears the song,” Walker says, “and comes out with lyrics just like that. She writes so fast.”

The tracks of the band’s EP, its debut, were recorded in two sessions in 2011 at Blue Chair Studio, working with Darian Stribling. Boom the Wheel’s plan is heading back this March and starting on a full-length recording, fleshing out some of the band’s 20 to 30 tunes that are in various stages of completion. The band members are also readying for their first touring stint outside of Arkansas with some Texas and Louisiana dates planned for March. The band is thinking of turning toward Kickstarter for the funds, Martin says. “We have it all planned out,” he says.

Oh, and the name Boom The Wheel? There’s no story there. Walker talks about how the band’s van had a blow out one time while they were discussing a band name, but then quickly adds it’s just a story. There is no van. Not yet. That’s what Kickstarter is for.

But it’s a catchy band name. Much like the band’s infectious blend of rock.