Future Expands its Musical Family, Releases Second Half of Concept Album

When Candice Mills first saw Future perform live, she was floored. She’d usually dance if she was seeing a band she enjoyed, but not this time.

“I probably stood there for the whole time they played in amazement,” she said. “It was just all of everything that I love and they did it well.”

The sound that reeled Mills in is just as ambitious as the band’s name. While the Northern Virginia-based band could be pigeonholed as a rock band, vocalist/sound sculptor Bucket has coined the term “psykédélique soul” to describe the band’s eclectic, ever-evolving sound.

While its roots are in rock, with two guitars, bass and drums, the band fuses elements of reggae, soul, hip-hop and progressive rock to form a truly unique sound. Bucket adds another layer of texture to the music with his electronic instruments and spoken word and beat poetry style vocals.

On Saturday, Future opens a new chapter in its life at the CD release party for its third album, The Outer Edge of Inside Vol. 2: Spiritus. The show, which is at Jammin’ Java in Vienna, Va., also serves as the official induction of Candice Mills, who is a vocalist and instrumentalist, as the sixth member of Future.

With a band name and sound as determined as Future’s, the album wraps up an equally strong-willed project for the band. The Outer Edge of Inside, or OEOI, follows a character from life to death on OEOI Vol. 1, Mortalitas, and through the afterlife on Spiritus.

Guitarist/vocalist Gordon Sterling came up the idea for OEOI years ago, when he was in band called Ordinary Way prior to Future.

After presenting the overall concept to the other members of Future, together, they came up with how to tell the tale.

The story follows a man born to an upper-middle class family who gets neglected as his parents chase their own success.

“Like a lot of us, he was forced to go out and find his own way; find the teachings that you learn outside of school,” Sterling said.

As a young man, he gets into the streets, gets caught grafittiing and is sent to military school. After college, he becomes a mob lawyer and gets overcome by greed, with his street mentality still intact. He is killed at the end of Mortalitas. The second disc, Spiritus, follows him through the afterlife as he deals with decisions he made in his physical life.

“You deal with almost every episode of this guy’s life and every episode of what happens in the afterlife,” Sterling said. “It was a difficult beast. It was like making a movie, very literally.”

The band couldn’t just write music, drummer Deron Pinchback said. It was done “backwards,” developing music around an idea, rather than vice-versa, he said.

Bassist Tony Moreno said the band really had to connect the story lyrically and musically.

“You have to think, on an emotional level, how you’re going to capture those songs,” he said. “Although each song needs to be able to stand on its own, there has to be some to be some continuity to it.”

And while the band is proud to unveil chapter two of the OEOI story, they are also excited to get back to writing songs just to write songs; without the backdrop of a “movie.”

An Organic Formation

As complex as the band may sound, Future came together seamlessly.

The origins of Future can be traced back to an open mic that guitarist James Helle used to run at Red Rocks Café & Tequila Bar in Centerville, Va. Sterling and Moreno, who played in Ordinary Way together, wanted to keep playing together after the band’s breakup.

Drummer Deron Pinchback, who was invited to join Ordinary Way but couldn’t commit at the time, was tapped immediately. Helle, who had played with Moreno in The Crawford Players, was recruited after Sterling saw him play guitar.

The last piece was Bucket, who just happened to be in the right place at the right time.

“Bucket just happened to knock on my door one day - he had moved away for a while - and I was like, ‘man, he’s the missing link,’” Pinchback said.

While Bucket was planning to move home from Richmond to prepare to go to Full Sail University in Florida for audio engineering, his plans changed rather quickly.

“The day I moved back, I went to visit my old friend Deron,” Bucket said. “He took me to an open mic and I met my band mates that night.”

That open mic jam, in the early summer of 2006, gave birth to Future.

“We spent an entire summer just jamming at my house and putting things together,” Helle said. “It never really felt like we had to work to develop good ideas.”

The band wrote its first song, “Carpe Diem,” at its first practice, which Moreno estimated was about seven or eight hours long.

“We just got together and did it,” Sterling said. “[We] named our band over a toast, toasting to the future.”

A New Face in Future

The band enters a new stage with the addition of Mills. Having a female vocalist in the band has expanded the musical horizons and switched up the band’s vibe in all the right ways.

“It’s definitely a good and necessary addition,” Helle said. “We were a good band before she came along, but I just think we’re that much better now.”

Mills has been singing with Washington, D.C., reggae band See-I for a few years. She still sings with them when Future is off, but Future has taken top priority since she joined.

After multiple sit-ins, the band invited her to officially join over the summer in Florida.

“After an 18-hour ride in that band van, I deserve to be in this band, even if I just played tambourine,” Mills joked.

It was quite the orchestrated invitation. The band went out to the beach, circled around Mills, told her how much she meant to them and invited her to join.

“I’m not even a crier, but there was a lot of tears going on,” she said. “It was a dream come true. They’re everything I’ve ever wanted to be a part of.”

There was some caution on the part of Sterling and Mills, since they are dating, but both felt too good about the band and their relationship to let “what-ifs” get in the way of an opportunity to make music together.

Certain things do come with the territory, though, like girls flocking to Sterling after they hear his wide-ranging voice, which is equal parts soul, blues and rock.

“I always tease Gordon,  ‘as soon as you start singing, the panties drop, ’” Mills said. “We can both do our thing, we just love and trust each other enough that we know this is part of the deal. I love traveling with him and writing songs with him.”

Exploring the Human Experience

Anyone who gives the band a good listen knows that Future writes lyrics that match the music’s intensity. While they do tackle social, political and philosophical issues ranging from homelessness to the environment to pop culture, the lyrics come off more suggestive than preachy. The band is just sharing experiences and trying to get people thinking, Sterling said.

“Future’s goal is to explore the human experience as much as possible through questions and questioning,” he said. “We’re just trying to explore who we are as a species, kind of like Lewis and Clark our way through music.”

Future releases The Outer Edge of Inside Vol. 2: Spiritus Saturday at Jammin' Java, 227 Maple Ave. E., Vienna, Va. Tickets are $10 in advance and $13 at the door. The show starts at 10 p.m. Modern Thieves opens and Future will have a variety of special guests.