Behind the Band

Meet the members

All four grew up in Manalapan, New Jersey. See the marquee for their hometown concert.

Titan Tony

Tony Rutledge · Lead vocals

Tony learned to hold a room singing the last set at a hotel bar while the staff stacked chairs. Like titanium, he can carry a surprising load for his weight. He still likes to start a ballad quietly enough that people have to stop talking.

Alloy Alex

Alex Bell · Guitar

Alex repaired amplifiers before joining the band. In Alloys lore, his proudest bit of work was persuading Marshall’s product development team to make Nigel Tufnel’s amp go to eleven. Nigel wanted somewhere to go after ten. Alex took the request seriously and kept bringing it up until Marshall agreed to modify the amp. He still tests an amp with the riff he used at the repair bench.

Ion Ian

Ian Coulter · Bass

Ian got his start filling in for a dance band. The bandleader told him to watch the dancers’ feet. He still judges a song by what happens in the room when his bass comes in. You can usually tell when the room has picked up a charge.

Chromium Chris

Chris Steele · Drums

Chris got his start in a theatre pit, where a late cymbal crash could ruin a perfectly good entrance. He brings the polish to the Alloys and still writes cues in pencil. The timing of the crash in “Periodic Party” is a matter of professional pride.

How the band came together

Tony Rutledge was halfway through his last set at a Bracken & Bypass hotel when the house amp began to crackle. Alex Bell, who’d repaired it that afternoon, was still there finishing a drink. He listened for a minute, realised the crackle was in the microphone cable, and waited until the song was over before doing anything about it. Tony remembered that.

The following week, Alex came back with a guitar and a riff. Tony had a few lines he couldn’t find a tune for. They tried them together after closing. Halfway through, Tony asked Alex to turn down so he could hear the words. Alex turned down. Tony changed the melody to leave room for the riff. They played it again.

Ian Coulter heard them the next week. He was playing bass with a dance band in the hotel ballroom and came into the bar during a break. Tony kept tapping his foot through the spot where Alex stopped playing. Ian borrowed the guitar and picked out a bass line on the bottom strings. With that line underneath him, Alex could leave the gap open. Ian brought his own bass the next time.

Ian knew Chris Steele from a show where a door slam, a lighting change and a cymbal crash all had to land together. At his first rehearsal with the others, Chris asked Tony to sing the last line again. Ian held the bass note. Alex let his chord die away. Chris waited for the last word before bringing the drums back in. Tony asked him to do it exactly like that the next time. Chris made a pencil mark.

The hotel manager offered them a Friday and asked what to put on the sign. At the repair bench the next morning, Alex pulled out the battered periodic table he kept folded into a soldering manual. He liked that the table gave every element its own square. An alloy was what happened when you took some of them out of their squares and found out what they could do together. He ran his finger down to titanium and thought about what had happened to his riff since he’d brought it into the bar. Then he wrote The Titanium Alloys on the card and brought it back to the manager.

The hotel gave them two sets. By the second, people had moved their chairs closer. Tony still had to finish before the staff stacked them, but that night the staff waited.

Before setting out on their first tour, the Alloys played their first concert hall show to a sold-out house at the Performing Arts Center at Manalapan High School in Manalapan, New Jersey. All four grew up in Manalapan and are proud graduates of the school. They dedicated the show to its music and science departments. It felt right to thank the people who’d taught them about both kinds of chemistry.

When The Noble Gases later agreed to open the tour, Ian asked Argon Adam how his band got along on the road. “Very little reaction,” Adam said. Ian could see the appeal.