Corduroy minus Pearl Jam equals Proteus

The protean Proteus: Remember Corduroy? They were a local Pearl Jam tribute act, active for around three months in summer 2019. Joe Moese recruited the musicians, they worked up a set, and then Moese up and moved to Chicago a few months after they started playing out and about. Moese went on to form a Chicago version of Corduroy, while the remaining members of the San Diego iteration ditched the name and continued on as a cover band — with the notable absence of any songs by a certain famous grunge act in their repertoire. “We pretty much never played Pearl Jam again, to be honest, after we switched over,” former Corduroy guitarist Sam Friedman says. “We changed our name to Minus One at that point. It was sort of a bit of a joke about [Moese] leaving right after the beginning. We continued as Minus One for a decent while. Our rhythm guitarist also left at the very end of that year, so we went from five members to three members by the end of 2019. That’s really where we became our core group.”

While many performers and musicians were crippled by Covid restrictions, the 2020 lockdowns created the perfect creative space for the power trio to abandon covers and find their own way. “We sort of went into the pandemic and came out a fairly different band with a new sound,” Friedman says. “It was exciting to just use that time to write.” They worked on songs throughout 2020 and even performed some of them on their Twitch channel, “which had at most like ten viewers at a time,” according to Friedman. The band enjoyed being able to stream performances straight from their living room. Once live music kicked back into gear, the trio — still known as Minus One — got back to playing local clubs.

They had about 45 minutes of original material, but they were still evolving. “Our sound has changed pretty dramatically from what we are currently writing to what we were writing then. I think back then, it was a little more of a traditional rock sound. My favorite band growing up, and what originally got me into rock and metal, was Metallica. For Sean [Curry, bassist and backup singer], it was more Black Sabbath and some Rage Against the Machine. We drew a lot from those influences, and I think a lot of the stuff we were playing, you could tell it came from those periods and those bands. I think what we are doing now is a little more modern. It’s a little more on the metal side.”

One influence that is immediately apparent is Tool, which Friedman acknowledges makes the band, now called Proteus, a bit of an outlier. Despite Tool’s popularity, it’s rare to find San Diego acts that are Tool-esque. As a result, Proteus tends to get billed with groups from across the musical spectrum. “It’s really all over the map, to be honest,” Friedman explains. “When we play [Brick By Brick], it’ll often be more like rock and metal, but we’ve played with more indie bands. Honestly, we like playing with bands in different genres from us as well. It just adds some diversity to the show. It’s not just every band trying to go hard. I think it kind of fits with who we are as people. I’m not sure that any of us are really the quintessential metalheads. I’ve never really pegged us as ‘part of the scene.’”

Minus One officially morphed into Proteus around a year and a half ago. They have one four-song EP, Origins, and are working on material for a full-length, Come Clean, which they’re aiming to release by the end of 2023. “We’re gonna have a couple of our older songs that we are gonna incorporate into the full-length,” says Friedman, “and then we’re planning to do three more of our original tunes that we played out at the bars every single time. We’ll put those into a little EP and probably call it Minus One, as sort of a tribute to those days.”