These are the people behind the music of Flumergex.
Jesse S. Smith (Jessiah Maximus)
Flumergex is primarily the work of indie/alternative singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Jesse S. Smith.
Smith began taking piano lessons at age 4. He learned to read music, and in high school began teaching himself to play songs from Pink Floyd’s The Wall on the piano.
But his main instrument is the guitar. Jesse began playing the guitar way back in 1988, when he was in the seventh grade. His father taught him his first chords. He then took those three or four chords upstairs and used them to figure out how to play most of the songs on Def Leppard’s Hysteria. After that, he was unstoppable. Smith took guitar lessons during high school and through his college years.
Inspired by the rock band Ween, Smith got a 4-track tape recorder in 1995 and began multitracking recordings of his own original songs. This is when he first began playing a borrowed bass guitar. (His skills on the low-end later took his music trajectory to new levels when he played bass in the blues-rock band, T. Ray and the Shades.)
Smith took college coursework studying music theory and jazz theory. Based on this education, in his mid-twenties Smith spent a year teaching Music overseas at a private school in Egypt. His year as the Music teacher was one of the primary formative experiences of his life, and he speaks of it often.
But Jesse S. Smith is primarily an entertainer. In 1985, as a fourth grader, he played Kurt von Trapp in the local high school production of The Sound of Music. In 1989 he joined the school choir, and continued singing all the way into his college years: including performing with the extracurricular high school jazz choir, which is where he first learned to scat sing in the bebop style. (Thank you, Mr. Judd!) Smith played roles in drama and musicals throughout high school and community college, including Oklahoma! and Guys and Dolls. It’s this performance background that made Smith the performer and the public personality that he is today.
Smith is a poet and a multi-instrumentalist. On the Flumergex recordings he plays the drum kit, hand drums, drum machine sequencer, bass guitars, keyboards, synthesizer, acoustic guitars, electric guitars, mandolin, sitar, clarinet, vocals, percussion, and random noises. For the Flumergex live performances between the years 2005 to 2009, Smith played the acoustic guitar (usually, although we have it on record that he played electric at least once).
Smith also produced and engineered most of the Flumergex recordings, and mixed many of the songs, too; so if you have complaints about the EQ, or you think the vocals are too quiet, he is the one responsible. Don’t blame the webmaster, man, I just type this stuff.
Smith is a remarkably common name: so common, in fact, that there are at least two other Jesse Smiths from Portland alone, with social media presences that dwarf our Jesse Smith. So, no, we’re not talking about that Jesse Smith; and we’re not talking about that other one, either. The one and only Jesse S. Smith behind Flumergex is the guy who goes by JesseSmithBooks on most social media platforms, except for Facebook where he’s JesseSmithAuthor due to, well anyway.
Jesse is the band’s only continuous member; and has been the band’s only member since that one last recording session in, what was that, 2013? Yeah, I think that was it.
Historex Flumergex
Prior to that date, we were blessed to enjoy the participation of these rock stars and guest appearances by several others.
Andrew Hoke (aka Maestronicus Androcles Hokemanensis and whimsical variations thereupon)
Andy Hoke has also been playing the keyboards since a young age. He attended Reed College in Portland, where he majored in Classics, which prepared him well for his day-job career as a librarian. But in his heart, Andy Hoke is a musician, first and foremost.
Jesse met Andy when they were both playing in a band called “The Burners” with Matt and Tiffany Murray. That group began as almost a hard rock band, but later reformulated as a blues band under the name “T. Ray and the Shades,” complete with saxophone, you may have seen us at McMennamin’s in Hillsboro, or at one of our epic gigs at The Landmark in Yachats.
A Side Project of a Side Project
Andy is an awesome musician: so when Jesse wanted to form a side project, he asked Hoke to join him. That side project was “Operation J” with Tom Morgan and Steve Hovey. The group’s rehearsal breaks were sometimes longer than the rehearsals themselves, which could possibly help to explain why Operation J never really made it big; which is too bad, because they had rare talent and moments of true greatness. Check out this Operation J performance on local access cable television, featuring Screemin’ Steve on the bass:
Anyway, Andy and Jesse dreamed up the band name “Flumergex” during one of those extended breaks one night, and Jesse took that idea and ran with it when he began his next recording project.
Thus, it was a side project of a side project which eventually became the Flumergex album, This One.
Hoke and Smith co-wrote a number of songs over the course of the next several years: including “The Creatures of the Forest,” “The Bipolar Song,” “The Flumergex Lament,” and the iconic instrumental, “It Goes Like This.”
Jon Rigby (“Armadel Rigberto”)
Jonathan P. Rigby, Esq. is the mystical idealist of Flumergex. You thought that was Jesse’s role? There’s no competition, man, Jon wins.
Jon is a figurehead of the local Portland Pagan community, a caster of circles and a teacher of the runes. He came to Portland by way of Colorado and Louisiana, and has met some amazing people along the way.
Jesse first met Jon when they both worked at OMSI, the science museum in Portland, Oregon, way back in 1999. They worked in the Visitor Services department, which was such a close-knit group that Jon started building hand drums in collaboration with some of our colleagues, and Jesse started dating Jon’s roommate, who may or may not have been the partial inspiration for the hit song, “Girl Trouble.” Um but so anyway, Jon and Jesse eventually formed a band called “The Visitors” with virtuoso Brendan Slevin on bass. Then Jesse went and got a job teaching overseas for a year and everything changed.
Jon played the ashiko, doumbek, and/or conga on at least one track of each of Barnlife, This One, and Emerges. Jon also played at most of the Flumergex live performances from 2005 to 2009.
This page is incomplete, it should also talk about Tom Morgan, who was the real driving force behind experimental funk-fusion band Operation J, and who played awesome drum parts on several songs on the Flumergex album, Emerges: namely, “Understand U,” “Make a Little More,” and “The Creatures of the Forest.”
and this page should mention Todd Wells, who probably doesn’t remember us, but way back in the summer of the year 2000, Jesse paid Todd $20 and half of a six-pack of beer I think to lay down the drum track for the original recording of “Faceless Man,” which is not the version that appeared on Barnlife, it is the version that is only found on the unreleased album The Lost Minute, but it is definitely the version with the much better drum track! Thanks Todd!
These are just a few of the people who have made Flumergex possible over the years.