In a Genre of Their Own

By Broadside Asst. Style Editor Nicole Ocran
Photo by Broadside Photography Editor Courtney Erland

It’s kind of hard to take Square Trio seriously, and that is most definitely a good thing. The refreshing personalities of musicians Mark Platenberg, 24, Aaron Lager, 25 and 24-year-old English major Bo Dierker have graced the local music scene with their own style of “Jazz-Rock-Dance-Trance-
HipHop-Folk-Funk-World-
Fusion-Experimental,” as explained on their MySpace page. The band will be performing this Saturday at EarthFest and at Mason Day on April 24.

When asked to describe their sound to people who have never heard them before, Dierker joked, “I would say, ‘cock pop.’ Can you say ‘cock’ in the newspaper?” While Platenberg explained the actual genre of “yacht rock” that they have fallen under, which is music that you would listen to on a yacht.

“I don’t know, we always have a hard time trying to describe it,” said Lager, to clarify. “So I guess we try by saying every genre, with a couple exceptions like, we don’t really consider ourselves to play reggae, really, or metal, but we incorporate a lot of elements because we’ve just been inspired by all different genres.”

Dierker and Lager met in high school. After playing with Platenberg and going through their fair share of setbacks—Platenberg had broken his back after an incident with a hammock—Square Trio came back in full force with a fully healed Platenberg in June of 2006.

“I guess we’ve known each other since high school and we’ve kind of been playing in the same circles for a long time, and me and Aaron were in a band that broke up,” Dierker said. “So we continued playing music together after that and we asked Mark to be in our band because we like him.” Up next for Square Trio after EarthFest and Mason Day are shows at DC9 on May 12, then the State Theatre on May 24.

“Our best crowd was at our last show at the State Theatre. We opened for, or we played with a band called The Speaks, and they have a pretty loyal following, so a lot of their fans were there when we played and it was pretty cool,” Platenberg said. Lager agreed, “I don’t know, each one gets better really, especially at the State [Theatre]. I mean, we’ve been playing there more regularly and every show just seems to be getting better.”