Suddenly draped in a seemingly irrelevant gown, Chris Ford switched between thrusting on the ground while playing the trumpet and getting up to walk through the crowd singing a capella and hugging one member of the audience.

At this point in the show, they’ve seen him kick his drummer’s cymbals, shake tambourines while falling over on the ground and assert between songs that God’s plan for him may be to kill somebody.

It was the last song of his set at the Ames Progressive, 118 Hayward Ave. Suite 3, during a DVD release show and one day before taking off on a national tour to open for fellow local Ames group Leslie & The LYs.

Ford is the lead singer and songwriter for Christopher the Conquered, a band that grew out of a solo project he started in 2006 while still the drummer for Stuck With Arthur, a local pop-punk band he started with high school friends in Dallas Center.

During his final year at Iowa State, where he studied electrical engineering, he began writing and recording songs.

“Basically I was just writing songs out of boredom,” Ford said. “I had a new keyboard I was playing around with.”

Christopher the Conquered’s first LP, “I Guess This is What We’re Dying For,” was self-released in 2007, as Ford began playing shows in Ames at Blink’s and in Des Moines at the Vaudeville Mews.

“Basically I would just take whatever was offered,” Ford said. “Even now I never really seek shows, I wait for people to come to me and I try to play every chance I get.”

Ford performed all of the instruments on his 2007 album, save for a couple guitar tracks.

“I was learning how to play instruments based on what I wanted on the CD,” Ford said.

He elaborates he was only trained in drums and trumpet, but credits his musicianship courses and experience in jazz band for helping him make the transition from different instruments with greater ease.

Live shows in 2007 meant either gathering friends to join as a backing band or using an iPod for backing tracks as Ford switched between playing the keyboard, trumpet, accordion or walking out into the crowd.

“It was something I started to experiment with early on,” Ford said.

He has been known to walk into the crowd playing various instruments and nearly forcing onlookers to join him.

Ford believes in creating an experience for audience members rather than simply watching a show.

He often engages the crowd, crawling on the floor and slithering his way between their legs or standing on a table belting out songs.

He credited Ames band Poison Control Center with showing him how to break the stage line when Stuck With Arthur played shows with them in the early days.

Today he’s not the only one who breaks the stage in his band as Nate Logsdon — a trumpet player with long hair, a long beard and glasses — breaks out during their set several times playing his horn and shaking a tambourine.

Logsdon joined the band after Christopher the Conquered played a show at the Ames Progressive. Ford and Logsdon got along well and eventually Logsdon was asked to try playing.

“Whenever someone has joined it’s never been, ‘Will you be in the band?’ ‘You are now in this band.’ It’s much more casual,” Ford said.

He said not all members make it to every show and a couple alternate members are being used for the tour, but that’s part of the way the group operates.

Ford now claims he hated using an iPod for a backing track and says he wouldn’t go back.

During the shows, Ford is undoubtedly the leader. The band is able to respond to tangents Ford goes off on and members pick up on his signals from his waving arms. Logsdon is able to act as Ford’s assistant by leading the horn section in synchronizations.

At times, Ford breaks things down until he gains both silence and the captive attention of the audience in a gospel-like way of singing.

He picks it up and tells stories as if he were Randy Newman, and still other times leads the group with rapid rhythm and blues piano riffs complimented by a bright horn section.

Some of the horn lines are reminiscent of the out-of-key approach by The Beatles on their “Yellow Submarine” album.

From this point, Ford hopes to consistently keep playing shows. He lives in Des Moines, but is spending a large amount of time with his band mates in Ames.

The group will remain on tour with Leslie & the LYs through March.