The Quantum Mechanics is a fun, jazzy sound that makes you want to go on an adventure with them! They are releasing their first album, Quantum Mechanics 101. You can go on a mini tour with them to hear it on May 1 at the Hook & Ladder Theater.
Please tell me about members of The Quantum Mechanics.
The Quantum Mechanics are Interdimensional travelers, experts in pseudo-science, guesswork, hunches, approximations, and quantum fiction, performing original jam fusion with a class of characters that includes, Eli Hoehn (aka Captain Gravitone) on electric banjo, guitar specialist Zach Sproles (aka Grum), bassist, Mark Krogmann (aka MNewK, pronounced “nuke”), Cara Lucille on the super-power vocals, drummer/percussionist Eric Bunde, and jazz-master keyboardist, Larry McDonough.
The Quantum Mechanics are a musical form of theatrical fiction, with banjoist and composer, Eli Hoehn, performer with groups like One Fast Move…, Rain Dogs, and Captain Gravitone & the String theory Orchestra, songwriter/guitarist Zach Sproles, known for his work in the math-rock band, Onion Bun, as well as his uplifting group, Soul Folk Union, bassist Mark Krogmann, an otherworldly bassist and composer, three-time best instrumentalist winner at the Minnesota Original Music Festival’s 48 Hour Band Challenge, the voice of The Quantum Mechanics, vocalist Cara Lucille, with a vocal range moving between lovely to glass shattering in a Planck time moment, our rhythm master, drummer Eric Bunde, most recently with Bee Balm Fields, and keyboard master Larry McDonough, known for his work in a variety of musical genres that include jazz, with The Larry McDonough Quartet, funk, in Funkin’ Right, classic rock, in Whiskey Burn, indie-rock, in HiFi, punk, in the group, Saint Small and now, interdimensional jam fusion in The Quantum Mechanics.
How did you all get together?
Grum (Zach) and I played together in Captain Gravitone & the String Theory Orchestra. When I described the idea of The Quantum Mechanics to him he was immediately on board, so I think I would have to say that we co-founded the group. I was introduced to Mark Krogmann and Cara Lucille through their performances at the Minnesota Original Music Festival’s 48 Hour Band Challenge event. Cara was on the winning team in 2022 where her performance just kind of blew everyone away, and Mark has been selected Best Instrumentalist at the event for the first 3 years of the event’s existence (btw, MOMF now calls it the Mark Krogmann award), remarkable when you consider that electric bass is not generally regarded as a lead instrument. As for Larry McDonough, I became familiar with his work through a performance by his quartet a number of years ago at the Rock Bend Folk Festival. I reached out to Larry on a whim and asked if he would consider playing with The Quantum Mechanics, and was a bit surprised that without hesitation he was a strong “yes.” The most recent addition to the band is our drummer, Eric Bunde, a well-seasoned musician who has been an integral part of the Mankato group, Bee Balm Fields.
Tiny Things, the title song of the upcoming album, is quietly dramatic, like a soundtrack during an emotional movie scene, and then the lyrics literally focus on the little things. It’s almost meta-classic. How did this song come to be? Music first, lyrics, the idea of dramatic music to highlight little things – because that’s what many of us spend time doing? It’s so clever.
Tiny Things isn’t exactly the title song but does have elements that have become features of our sound, with changing time signatures, moderating dynamics and tempos, sprinkled with a little drama and a measure of absurdity. I wrote the song around the idea of sub-atomic particles as part of our effort to create a body of work centering around the quantum world, which has become a fun backdrop for our musical shenanigans. If you listen to the intro bit it sounds like Iggy Pop’s, The Passenger, that I had just discovered. This took me to a place where I could juxtapose a little drama (which Cara does such a good job of capturing vocally) with a little absurdity, by adding the line, “little itty bitty teeny weenie little tiny things” (because it doesn’t get much smaller than that). A chorus of voices in 3/4 time was also added for additional dramatic effect. And then, to finish the song off, made a little space for Mark and Zach to take us on a high energy journey deep into the bowels of the quantum world. As the band recording engineer, Mark does a superlative job mixing all of these sounds together.
Please tell me about your videos and how you went back into the 1970s to create them. They remind me, in the best way, of everything from Mr. Rogers (ritual of arriving and leaving), to the Electric Company (the making of things) to even Zoom and a mystic walking into a new world feel of a Sid and Marty Kroft kids’ program.
The Quantum Mechanics have dramatic tendencies (without taking ourselves seriously). To facilitate some story lines we could use to tell the story of the Quantum Mechanics, we worked on some videos. One of these is a video we did at Mark Hall’s glass studio in Kasota. Mark is a sculptor and glass blower with a wonderful studio full of dangerous equipment, that includes fire, smoke, blazing hot furnaces and all kinds of really cool tools. He was kind enough to let us take over his space for an afternoon where you can see an early form of the Quantum Mechanics busy working on creating some tiny tools we could use in our work as mechanics at the sub-atomic level. There is also a video I did in Ecuador called, Quantum Bananas, where I use a device that reconfigures matter at the quantum level, kind of an early form of a Star Trek transporter I suppose. You can see me hooking up and jolting a banana that just gets smaller and smaller. You can see our videos on the press kit of our website at https://captaingravitone.com/quantum-mechanics-booking-2025/.
Please tell us about the album release.
We will be having the Interdimensional release of our inaugural album, The Quantum Mechanics 101, at the Hook & Ladder Theater on Thursday, May 1, with friends, JoJo Green and Poor Lemuel. The event can be accessed here: https://thehookmpls.com/event/quantum-mechanics/.
This is very exciting for us and constitutes our first work as a band, with seven original pieces that include, Quantum Entanglement, I Want to BE a Philosophy Major, Interdimensional Pansexual, Tiny Things, Better Place, Special Wave Funktion and Quark Dance. Quantum Entanglement was cowritten by Zach and myself and constitutes the very first song written specifically for this project. It is an instrumental romp that demonstrates musically how entangled subatomic particles affect each other, even when separated by infinite distance. I Want to BE a Philosophy Major is a reimagining of a song I did for a grant project years ago. During my college years, I was a philosophy major, and even though never employed as a philosopher, the experience has had a profoundly positive impact on everything I’ve done professionally. The piece was recorded before Cara became a Mechanic but if you hear us perform it live it now carries the superlative power of her dynamic voice. It’s also fun, because who doesn’t want to be philosophy major! Interdimensional Pansexual is the brainchild of Zach Sproles, who upon significant reflection determined that Interdimensional travelers could use some ethical ground rules when traveling from dimension to dimension, so with some collaboration with Mark Krogmann, the song was born, “Interdimensional, pansexual, polyamorous, android from outer space, in another dimension,” (and it’s an absolute scream). Better Place comes from the idea that if there are infinite dimensions, some will be better than others. So, as Interdimensional travelers, a principal goal of the Quantum Mechanics is to find the better dimensions, perhaps there is even a “best” (though I’m not sure this is it). Special Wave Funktion is musically, the creation of Zach. Cara really took a shining to the premise of the song and added a great set of lyrics to it. Finally, Quark Dance is an instrumental that I originally brought to the table. The song is so improvisational, however, that it is really a group song, and constitutes the first piece written by The Quantum Mechanics as a band (with many more to come…we hope).
Mostly Minnesota 