Some of the best recipes are created with a bit of happenstance, and a fair bit of that went into The Main Squeeze. Members took years of chance encounters and opportunities, from summer camp to a battle of the bands in Macau, China to lockdown live-streams, and blended seemingly disparate tastes in music and diverse backgrounds into a refreshing mix of funk, jam, soul, rock and jazz. A sound that’s showcased on the band’s most recent release.

“ The album that we just released, called ‘Panorama,’ I feel like is the most sonically-consistent album that we’ve released,” said Silverstein, when he and Newman spoke to Pilot Radio ahead of the band’s upcoming show at the Sunrise Theater. “There’s a lot of things that went into that, and some things that changed for that to be the way that it is.”

The current iteration, with Ben “Smiley” Silverstein (keys), Max Newman (guitar), Corey Frye (vocals), Reuben Gingrich (drums) and Rob Walker (bass), came together in 2015, but its first drops collected long before that.

“I met Smiley at a sleepaway camp when I was like 12 years old,” said Newman. “He was one of, if not the first person that I ever jammed with. We were improvising and playing covers  with other guys.

“That was really like the genesis of the band”

Years later, Silverstein was readying to go to Tulane for college, but Hurricane Katrina caused him to pivot and look to Indiana University. That set the stage for the rest of the parts to finally fall into place.

 “While I majored in business, I knew that music was my passion,” he said. “So, I did everything I could from the moment I got to Indiana to try to find people to make music with and just make music as much as possible.”

Growing up in Florida, he learned to play piano at a young age, but had moved away from it. A performance by his high school’s jazz band inspired him. He began playing again in earnest, but leaning into the counter-culture music of the sixties and seventies that his dad played while he was growing up. He carried that through to Indiana getting gigs at the local bars on keys and DJing whenever he could and with whoever he could find.

“I think Smiley was underage and climbed a fence to get into this bar — there were pianos there,” said Newman. “So Smiley was playing piano at this bar underage. Corey (Frye) came up and was singing, and they were like, ‘Oh shit, you’re talented.’ ‘You’re talented, let’s exchange info.’”

Frye, an Indiana native, had been honing his voice since his first exposure to singing in church. At Indiana University, he continued to refine his skills with Straight No Chaser. The acapella group formed at the university before becoming a nationally renowned act. After the founding members left to pursue a professional career, they continued to foster and mentor a student group at the university under the same name.

 “Corey knows all the original Strait No Chaser guys,” said Newman. “He sang with them, and I think that’s his first experience of professional music and performing. He really polished his voice there, and I think it also helped him hone in on being a great performer.”

Another drop in the cup, and that momentum carried. Newman found the pull greater than he could resist.

“Smiley kind of recruited me to come out to Indiana University,” said Newman. “ My parents were very confused, to put it mildly, but there was an amazing music school there and I got in on cello.”

He began classical training on the instrument at five years old in his hometown, New York City, but quickly picked up the guitar.  

“My early influences were classical music,” he said. “But my dad was always playing the Beatles and Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix and stuff like that. He’s also a guitar player and I started playing guitar kind of in his footsteps.”

It wasn’t long before he was turning back to the guitar at Indiana University, looking to make music in a band with Silverstein, but the mix needed a few more ingredients. One of which hailed from a small Indiana town known for its arts and community.
Gingrich went to the university to pursue jazz drums, and according to Newman, even played in his dorm room.

 “We met because we just randomly lived on the same floor freshman year,” said Newman. “We just started, like, I think I just peeked in his room one day, I heard him playing.”

Within the year, the collected members were serving up the first iteration of The Main Squeeze. To gain traction they played frat parties and other events, but building on Smiley’s experience, they soon were regulars at The Bluebird, known for hosting acts like Steve Earle and Kings of Leon early in their careers. Their eclectic covers and unique style opened doors to some of the biggest bars and venues in the area. The music came together, one drop at a time.

“ A lot of covers at first,” said Newman. “Everybody in the band sort of brought their own flavor when it came to the cover choices, and there was a lot of common ground as well. For me it was like, I loved doing the Zeppelin and the Hendrix. Smiley, he brought a lot of Grateful Dead, Allman Brothers, maybe even a little Phish, Soul Live. He was sort of our liaison into the jam scene and the funk scene. Corey (Frye), our singer, he was bringing like Sam Cooke songs, Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder.  Ruben (Gingrich), the drummer, grew up with hard rock, prog rock, metal. Jazz was also a really big thing for him.”

They quickly began to write songs. It was a natural flow from their gigs into the writer’s room, so what they wrote fit into their sets, and they began dropping them in. First one, then two, until they had enough to pull together an album. They were “just a college band,” as Silverstein put it, but then the next big chance dropped.

“ We were lucky enough to find out about this competition from our drummer Ruben’s friend,” he said. “We submitted a demo of our song ‘Dr. Funk,’ and that got us into the top 12, for an all-expenses-paid trip to compete.
“ That was a win for us. Just getting a fully paid trip to China to play our music was like a massive win.”

From 12 competitors from all over the world, to six, then three and finally The Main Squeeze was left standing.

“ We just did what we do,” said Silverstein. “We did exactly the type of stuff that we would do in Indiana in China, and they had never really seen anything like us before. And it was pretty surreal to go that far and win first place.”

“ We ended with our song ‘I’ll Take Another,’” said Newman, “which has just always been this crowd pleaser with all these different sections, and then there’s the huge like guitar keytar battle moment. There’s a lot of drama and like showmanship in it, and I think that’s kind of like sealed it”

The band was able to come back and pay for the recording time they’d already spent on their debut, self-titled album, squeeze out a few more songs and buy a van, too. Newman said it was a crucial moment for the future of the band, because when they first heard of the competition, they weren’t sure how they would pay for the sessions.
The band spent the next few years gaining skill, growing a following around Indiana and waiting for the final piece to fall into place. Their bass player needed a change of pace, and they knew what to do.

“ We called Rob (Walker),” said Newman. “Because we always remembered his stage presence and his musicality, and just being one of the best bass players in Bloomington the years that we were there.”

Walker, a former high school band leader, had a diverse set of skills that led him to major in jazz performance at Indiana. In his early years, he found gigs around Bloomington, and he would frequent shows as a fan of The Main Squeeze.

“ He truly felt like the perfect fit for the band,” added Silverstein. “ A lot changed at that point.”

The band moved to L.A. and slowed their touring schedule. He said from 2013 until that point, they were performing about 180 shows each year. The move also marked a shift in their approach to writing and producing music. Whereas their first album was the five in a studio, they began to see the opportunities in a community of great musicians.

“We just kept kind of finding new people to collaborate with in this city of so many amazing, talented writers and producers and every album kind of had its own journey,” said Silverstein. “But sonically we continue to just search for one sound.”
He feels that their first album after moving, “Without a Sound,” (2017) was a well-balanced mix of funk and rock songs. The elements hadn’t quite blended, but that can take time. Throughout the years, the band had a regular Youtube channel with original music videos and live covers. In 2019, a cover of Pink Floyd’s “Have a Cigar” spanned the Atlantic, and a Spanish promoter reached out for a tour, which took them to Spain and Portugal for two weeks.

During following two years the band took advantage of the growing Youtube channel to stay in touch with fans during COVID, releasing new covers and creating songs through their engagement. The songs from that period eventually came together on “To Be Determined” (2023).

The experimentation that started after moving to California, was on full display during the production of “Panorama,” said Silverstein.

“We had a three day period where all five of us came to the Squeeze House and we all recorded just a bunch of freestyle jams,” he said. “It was hours and hours of jamming and we ended up slicing it into what was around 20 ideas.  Ultimately, looking back on those 20 ideas a couple months later, we weren’t really feeling it, and we ended up kind of starting from scratch.”

What ensued was a series of virtual collaborations. Riffs and motifs sent to band mates for refinement and extrapolation. Gingrich took much of the lead on “Panorama,” said Silverstein, setting aside some of the ideas to tighten the concept.
“It ultimately led to a very cohesive type of sound,” he said. “One of the most cohesive albums that we’ve done.”

The band is on tour for “Panorama” through July, and will be at the Sunrise Theater in Southern Pines, NC at 3 p.m. on March 9.