Douglas Firley played the keyboards in a cover band during the ’80s. When his band evolved into the industrial powerhouse Gravity Kills, he didn’t want to be the little guy standing behind a keyboard anymore.

So drummer and architect Kurt Kearns stepped in. Kearns came up with a concept for a keyboard stand that would allow Firley a chance to be part of the show. The one-of-a-kind stand was created soon after at a metal factory in their home town of St. Louis, Mo.

“Then another problem came up,” guitarist Matt Dudenhoeffer explained. “We didn’t use traditional keyboards anywhere on the record so we weren’t sure what to have Doug play.”

So Kearns stepped in again. Handling both bass and percussion on the band’s self titled debut, Kearns decided he could play drums live — leaving Firley to handle the bass lines on his keyboard. Problem solved.

Firley, Kearns and Dudenhoeffer have a knack for pulling things together, like gravity. In 1994, when the three heard about KPNT’s Best of St. Louis Compilation just four days before entrees were due, they went for it.

“We’ve known each other all our lives. We started our first band in junior high,” Dudenhoeffer said from his apartment in St. Louis. “We were covering the Sex Pistols, U2, Billy Idol, Killing Joke … that kind of stuff.”

“We stayed together up through college where we had this bass player, Dave, who was into the noisy guitar thing. Kurt and I were writing aggressive stuff and Doug was learning a lot about digital editing at the studio he worked at. The industrial sound evolved around that time.”

“The three of us had given up playing together until we heard that The Point was doing a CD,” he said. “It sounded fun, so we put together a tune for it.”

After their former singer backed out and they were turned down by every vocalist they had ever worked with, Firley, Kearns and Dudenhoeffer were poised with a problem.

“Kurt’s cousin was the best singer we knew, so jokingly we said to Kurt ‘let’s call him,'” Dudenhoeffer said. “So we gave him a call and he flew up and wrote the lyrics for and recorded what is now “Guilty” at three in the morning that night.”

“Guilty” quickly became the stand-out cut from the record and shot up the station’s chart to number one, becoming the most requested song of 1995.

So Firley, Kearns and Dudenhoeffer officially reunited with the addition of vocalist Jeff Scheel to form Gravity Kills. The quartet spent the rest of the year writing and recording their debut record.

“We spent 18 hours a day for four weeks mixing down the record in New York,” Dudenhoeffer said. “We had nine down plus an intro, but TVT wanted10. So we wrote “Here” the last couple days in the studio, which is the song on the record that means the most to us.”

“The song is about being so far away from home and putting so much time into the record. ‘Remove myself from all that used to be. Now I’m here for all to see,’ that was us.”

The record was set to be released in October of ’95 but was pushed all the way back to March of ’96. Meanwhile “Guilty” had been selected for the Seven soundtrack and a demo version of “Goodbye” for the now platinum Mortal Kombat soundtrack.

“We have been doing great on the radio,” Dudenhoeffer said. “The “Guilty” single has been out five months and it’s still Top 20. At that rate, we’ll be touring behind this record for a long time.”

With already over 150,000 discs sold, Gravity Kills has just released its second single, “Blame,” which can be found in a remixed form on the Escape From New York soundtrack. The band recently filmed videos for “Blame” and “Enough.”

Gravity Kills returns to Ames Friday night for an all ages show at People’s. Far and Dog Eat Dog are scheduled to open the 7 p.m. show. Tickets are $7 in advance, $9 at the door.