For being so simple, it’s amazing how many different variations the Ames band Good Things have heard of their name.

“We’ve been called a lot of things,” guitarist Rob Merz said. “Good Cents, Great Things, Good Times …”

“Good Thangs with an ‘a’,” lead singer Maggie Kolbe added. “People always make puns on our name. It’s either there are Good Things left in Ames or when we go to Illinois, ‘there are Good Things in Iowa.’

“I guess it’s flattering,”she added, unconvincingly.

The quintet of Iowa State students and alum decided on Good Things last spring, just before their debut show at People’s Bar & Grill.

“Tom (Zmolek, People’s owner) said if we could think of a name by that Wednesday we could get it in the paper,” Merz explained. “We could not think of a name for ever.”

As the story turns out, Zmolek called guitarist Jim Brennen who happened to be sitting around listening to music. The song “Good Things” by the BoDeans came on and Brennen went with it.

“Then he called me and was like ‘It’s Good Things,'” Kolbe said.

“So it was finally in print,” Merz added. Which was a plus considering his band played under nearly 10 different names before joining forces with Kolbe.

The Good Things story begins a couple of years ago when the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity hosted a benefit concert for one of their members who had been in a motorcycle accident.

Needing an opening band for Lunchbox, Merz and fraternity brothers Chad Noyes and Jim Brennen jumped at the chance.

“We learned some quick covers and found a drummer and a lead singer and just played that show,” Merz said. “We stuck together and were playing around.”

A new plot developed last spring when Nada’s singer Mike Butterworth heard rumors about the hidden talent of Maggie Kolbe.

“He knew, somehow through the grape vine, that I sang in the shower,” Kolbe said. “He talked me into doing a vignette. At the time I had really bad stage fright and he helped me through that.”

Merz heard Kolbe at the Varieties show and hooked things up through Butterworth. “We got together with Maggie once and it clicked real fast,” he said.

“They didn’t want a female singer,” Kolbe added. “So they resisted at first. Then it worked out really well.”

With help from Butterworth and their friends in Lunchbox, another local band at the time, Kolbe and crew jumped into the Ames scene.

“We’re really lucky in the fact that we have a lot of connections,” Merz said. “Talking to Butterworth and he knows what he did wrong. Talking to Lunchbox and they know what they did wrong. We’ve been pretty much flying through all the grime.”

Merz said he felt some competitiveness at their first show, but that it has since vanished.

“The first show we played was at Lumpy’s,” he said. “And it was funny ’cause you look around and see the Nadas over here and Lunchbox over in the corner and the Great Big Freakers in the back. Everyone’s coming to check out the new kids in town.”

Merz’s musical background includes everything from classical jazz to heavy metal. He even admits to being in a glam band at one time, playing Poison covers.

“This kind of stuff is what I love, though,” Merz said. “This is my dream band.”

“We all come from pretty diverse listening histories,” Kolbe added. “I would say my background is more folk. Jim is a Dead head and Rob’s a Phish guy.”

Kolbe listed Joni Mitchell and Natalie Merchant as major influences.

“I usually describe us a mixture between The Why Store, Judybats and 10,000 Maniacs,” Merz said. “That’s a good mesh of what we are.”

The two joked about Cityview’s description of them as a not very genre specific band.

“Contemporary folk, pop alternative sound, with an … I don’t remember …,” Merz said as Kolbe attempted to provide assistance. “It’s cool though, that they can’t really pin us down.”

As Chicago natives, one of the first things Merz and Brennen wanted to do was head back and play that circuit. On their first trip, Good Things played mostly open mic shows and coffee shops but moved into larger clubs by the second.

“We played some pretty interesting places,” Merz said. “We walked into one and there were people with nose rings and purple hair. They asked us to do an encore so that was cool.

“There’s always a bar to play at in Chicago. I mean there’s 500 of them and there’s always people in every bar. So you’re guaranteed to get 100 or 200 people at every show.”

Although they were a little down on Des Moines venues, Kolbe and Merz had great things to say about Ames.

“The place to play in Iowa is People’s,” Kolbe said.

Merz said the most exciting thing is seeing the audience’s reaction as Good Things improve each show. “It’s fun to see it in their face,” he said.

“Tom (Zmolek) said once in their staff meeting that he was like ‘yeah we have Good Things coming and the strange thing is they’re good now.'”

Good Things have found success outside of Ames as well, particularly at Gunnerz in Iowa City. They played there for the first time after the Iowa vs. Iowa State game.

“It was like us and two reggae bands so it was a really strange neo-hippe crowd,” Merz said.

The biggest goal for Good Things now is to get their debut CD out by the end of November.

Unlike most local bands, they have been recording the disc in Ames rather than out of town. Iowa State music professor Jeff Vallier is producing the record.

According to Merz, Vallier has a brother who is a big time producer and he “knows what he’s doing.”

“I think you’re gonna be real surprised with our CD,” Kolbe said. “We’re doing a lot of things differently. There’s a violin player. Ames elementary kids are coming in to sing a song I wrote about attention deficit.”

According to Merz, the band has spent a of couple months working on the CD every night, focusing on taking their time.

“We’re gonna try to make it so when you go see our show, you don’t hear the same thing on the CD,” he said.

Kolbe is looking forward to the CD as a chance for her lyrics to be heard without distractions.

“I write a lot of poetry and then Rob or Jim will come up with a riff,” she said about their writing process. “Then we’ll all sit down and work out the song.”

Although Kolbe described their relationship as “getting along really well,” Merz said there is one big difference.

“All of our ages,” he said. “Like Chad and Jim are 24 and I’m 20 and she’s 22, so it’s just a big age difference. We’re pretty close.”

So close in fact, they even share a common dream.

“We always joke about ‘Oh Dave called, tell him will be out there in New York next week,'” Merz said about someday being on David Letterman.

But whatever happens in the next few months, one thing will stay the same. They’re not going to let Paul play with them.