On Friday night, three local bands, Black Lodge/White Lodge, Mountain Eats Mountain and Photo Mother Murder Tree gave a free show at DG’s Tap House and they rocked local Ames residents.

The night kicked off with a live show featuring Ames-based band Photo Mother Murder Tree, a hard rock band with elements of Seattle grunge and post-Tool metal. Three Ames musicians: Zach Rhodas, Jordan Dorpinghaus and Ben Schwarz led the stage, some of them were students from Iowa State University. They met each other at a music club meeting and started the band when they were still in college. Most of their original music has been played at music clubs on campus.

The show started with a pretty slow song, “Closed Casket,” making the whole environment very quiet and emotional. Following up with their most popular song, “Life and Crime,” different from other songs in the album, a country western song, the theme of this song was about robbing a bank. Most of the influences of the songs were originally from ’90s music, aggressive rock and metal.

The band closed their performance with an original work entitled, “Back Burner,” which was a mix of original music and dance. The band invited the audience to join in the “bees in the hair” dance with them, dancing and playing with them. Several audience members sang with the band throughout the show. 

Mountain Eats Mountain rocked the stage by starting to play his original music “don’t mess with tech sis.” Adam Lyons, a solo musician, started performances five years ago. When he was in high school, he started to play guitar and fell in love with music. Later, he started to practice drum and bass, and joined several local bands. He came up with the band’s name while driving through Arizona. He said, “It’s about eating your former self. Becoming a larger mountain than you were before.”

The inspirations of his music were originally from the moment when he was playing guitar. “A bunch of songs have been in my head for a long time, so when I played guitar, I could quickly come up with beautiful melodies and wrote them down,” Lyons said. “It’s very easy for me to control everything on my own, all the music is original.”

Most of the time he does shows in Ames. He considered playing music as his ideal job in the future. His first EP “Escapism” was just released with five songs. Most of his songs don’t have names.

“Right now, I’m working on creating merchandising products for the band,” Lyons said. “I hope to play at Chicago or Minneapolis, and let more musicians join this band in the future.” After the show, he said, “After everything is done, I feel pretty good now.”

Finally, the group black lodge/white lodge led the stage. This band was made up of three local musicians, Aaron Alcott, Erik Holt and Breighton Robison. Erik, under the influence of his father, a music teacher, started to play with different instruments in his childhood. Before the show started, more teenyboppers and screaming fans showed up for the upcoming rock and roll music. 

Eleven songs were played throughout the performance. They mixed a variety of styles, such as heavy rock, blues, and R+B into their songs and tried to create something unique. Most of their songs’ inspirations were from the filmmaker, David lynch. The song “Wow, Bob” was originally from the show “Twin Peaks,” which has a recent revival. His music is heavy metal and played in non-standard time signatures. Another song, “Chapel,” presented very slow but really loud sound, using a whole bunch of different time signatures. The idea of this song was originally from the book, “Cosmic Trigger.”

The band received huge greetings from the crowd after they finished their show. They told the crowd that last year the first EP released and they had a Hexegon show in Minneapolis. The next album will be released early next year.

After the show, Nicole Boulais, a resident from Ankeny, described her experience. “ I know the drummer of Photo Murder Mother Tree, so that’s why I’m here. It was awesome! Very well done! I will definitely come to watch this show again!”

Leath Hogle, who drove from Minnesota to watch this show, said, “I’m here to support one of my favorite bands, I only watched the videos before, never attend an show, now I can feel the energy here!”