The central Illinois band, Crash Planet, has two EPs out; 2023's Subconscious and 2024's False Summit. They play shows in the area and are planning a regional tour. Guitairst Cooper Marx and bassist Ben Carver join Community Voices to share the band's trajectory and records.
Randy Eccles: This is Community Voices on 91. 9 UIS. I'm Randy Eccles. Welcome to another opportunity to learn about local musicians. We've got Crash Planet joining us today. Would you like to introduce yourself, gentlemen?
Cooper Marx: Hello, I'm Cooper Marx
Ben Carver: and I am Benjamin Carver.
Randy Eccles: What do you guys do in the band?
Cooper Marx: I play guitar
Ben Carver: and I'm the bass player.
Randy Eccles: Crash Planet is what? How would you describe it to people?
Ben Carver: It's a band! (laughing) It's definitely a band. We're just a group of five young guys that get together every weekend and try to blow the roof off of my garage. Rock out.
Randy Eccles: I saw you at Pizza Records a few weeks ago and you definitely rock it out. That was one of those occasions where you got called in at the last minute, ended up pulling off a really good show.
Ben Carver: Doors were at what, 5:30? And I think we got the text at 1:00 or 2:00 in the afternoon. We were right in the middle of practice. So we just scratched together a set list and got our butts out to Jacksonville and put it down.
Randy Eccles: Good to be able to take opportunities like that. Does it happen very often?
Ben Carver: It's give and take, it happens. But whenever it comes, we definitely jump on it.
Randy Eccles: We've been playing Crash Planet on The X since 2023. We really like Tokyo to Thailand and also Lose Your Grip, Take a Sip. Both excellent. Then you've got an album you just released last year, an EP. What's that one called?
Ben Carver: False Summit. That was a collection of six songs that we put together after losing one of our members, he decided to move on to other things. That was the resurrection of our will. We were down and out at that point. Realized we can still do it.
Randy Eccles: It's got to be tough, almost all bands at some point go through it. The more people there are in the band, the harder it is to keep it together. You recovered from that, it sounds like. Is that frustrating when it happens?
Ben Carver: Oh, yeah. We don't like it to happen a lot. Absolutely. It is always a little frustrating because you have to go back to the drawing board and rework everything and get a different game plan because not everybody was on the same page, and you got to get everybody back on the same page. It is work, especially when we are a little bit of drama queens.
Cooper Marx: It's the work and then we get to play afterwards.
Randy Eccles: I noticed Cooper's Beastie Boys t-shirt, are they an influence of the band? I don't hear that when I listen.
Cooper Marx: For me it is, at least.
Randy Eccles: Ben, that was some stomping stuff I saw you do January 11 in Jacksonville. Cooper was rocking it, too, with some great solos. When you decided to do Crash Planet, what motivated you?
Ben Carver: All of us in the group have grown up around musically influenced adults. Our parents all forced us to listen to Rat, Van Halen, Beastie Boys, things like that. We wanted to do something. We wanted to give it a shot. It had several different foundations of members throughout the years. We've been the same four guys for four years. Middle of May 2024, Cooper joined us officially.
Randy Eccles: Where do you live in the area?
Ben Carver: We're all over. We got a guy in Petersburg. We got a guy out in Girard. Cooper is in Rochester. I'm from Dawson. We're all the surrounding farm areas. We all get together in Dawson.
Randy Eccles: A true central Illinois band. Does it make it hard to have to get all those distances incorporated?
Ben Carver: Oh yeah. Gas is probably our biggest overhead.
Randy Eccles: Ben, tell us a little bit more about your background, besides the band.
Ben Carver: For a full time job, I'm working at Rex Battery. (singing jingle) "Rex, double X." I do a little mechanic work on the side. My dad was a diesel tech for 40 years, salesman for the other half. He taught me a lot. How to wrench. Changed my oil the first time whenever I was like 12 years old in my four-wheeler.
Randy Eccles: You can probably change your strings on the fly very easily..
Ben Carver: No, I struggle.
Cooper Marx: That's why I am there for. It's the panic.
Randy Eccles: How about you, Cooper? Tell us about yourself.
Cooper Marx: I am a student at UIS, studying graphic design. I've been playing in bands for about five, six years now. Grew up in Rochester. Always had two sides of me, I always loved cars and I always loved music. I always love working on my guitars too, and messing around with that, learning how to solder. Lucky to join Crash Planet. Having fun.
Randy Eccles: What are each of your favorite songs to perform?
Ben Carver: None of them are released, unfortunately.
Randy Eccles: So, good stuff to come?
Ben Carver: We have a lot of stuff cooking right now. Musicians, look at everything that is released as old news. We're really excited to get the new stuff out.
Randy Eccles: You can imagine on a major tour, bands have to get tired of the music to some extent. I think a lot of musicians have it where they're, "Okay, we're done."
Ben Carver: There's a couple songs that are a little redundant, but it's not unsatisfying to see the crowd know them. Like Tokyo to Thailand, we definitely play that one out the most. It does get a little repetitious the more we play it, but everybody who has heard it, they can sing along with it. It's apparently a very catchy song.
Randy Eccles: That crowd response balances the repetition out.
Cooper Marx: Yeah, it helps you and motivates you so much.
Randy Eccles: Besides Tokyo to Thailand, what else does the audience respond to?
Ben Carver: Hypervigilance on False Summit is what I'm seeing a lot of interaction with now.
Cooper Marx: Rival is a good one. False Summit, a lot of people like this little instrumental we have.
Ben Carver: False Summit, the title track of that EP, is just instrumental, but a lot of people get moving whenever they hear that, which is cool.
Randy Eccles: If people want to find your music, where can they get it?
Ben Carver: Spotify, YouTube, all major streaming platforms.
Cooper Marx: We've got CDs at shows if you want to buy those.
Randy Eccles: When you have gone into the studio, it looks like at least twice, are you self- producing? How are you approaching putting out vinyl or your recorded stuff?
Cooper Marx: Our drummer, Ty, he built his own studio, this barn he has, so that's where we record. We haven't done vinyl yet. We will try it out eventually. It's, that's a whole other realm because...
Ben Carver: It's expensive.
Cooper Marx: Very expensive. We've always been doing CDs, which are pretty easy to make.
Randy Eccles: You've played some shows locally. Are you planning any bigger tours?
Ben Carver: We're looking at hopefully doing a regional tour sooner rather than later. We'd like to get on a Midwest tour. We're really starting to look at spider webbing away from Springfield. We're trying to really get noticed outside of the 217 area. That's probably our biggest goal that we're looking at.
Cooper Marx: Aiming towards more Chicago shows, St. Louis, just more all around. We'd like to get up around the Lakes. That's one of our bucket lists -- we'd like to try and do a Great Lakes tour. That'd be really fun for all of us.
Randy Eccles: Is it difficult for you to get away from work to be able to do that?
Ben Carver: Cooper's probably the easiest one to work around because he's in school. The only school we have to worry about is finals. Our experience is, as long as we have it booked out far enough, most of our places of work don't really mind as long as we give them a nice heads up. Like that Pizza Records show, if we had that last minute on a Friday evening, I don't think that would have flied. Most of our jobs are pretty lenient with it, which is nice. We are all very fortunate with that.
Randy Eccles: Any show stories?
Cooper Marx: For me, Crash Planet wise, one of the crazier ones was we got this last second Downhome Music Festival call, and we had another show lined up that same day. We had to play both these shows Downhome Festival at 1:00 in the afternoon and immediately go to Champaign to play this house party. That was really interesting
Randy Eccles: A double header day.
Cooper Marx: Oh, yeah!
Ben Carver: Definitely a double header. It was really fun wher we all got sick from the moldy basement.
Randy Eccles: Now, you have to do a mold check before you book a show, right? Anything else you'd like to share? What's coming up?
Cooper Marx: We got a lot of new songs in the mix. We're working on a lot more shows. Check out our Instagram, our social media and all that.
Ben Carver: Instagram.com/CrashPlanet217. You can find us on Facebook.com/CrashPlanet217. Keep an eye out. We do potentially have a music video that we're going to be shooting here shortly. In the next couple of months, we have a show at Whiskey Jacks on February 15.
We have a show at The Gin Mill March 7. That will be with one of our favorite groups that we've worked with Three Way Stop, and they're from St. Louis. They're a really cool group of guys. We love working with them.
Randy Eccles: We appreciate you coming in today. It's great to hear your music and we'll look forward to what's next.
Ben Carver & Cooper Marx: Thank you for having us.
