3UG: Put Some Ugly in Your Life
By Kevin Downey
Take a little Dave Matthews Band, toss in some Hootie and the Blowfish and Ben Harper, mix with influences ranging from jazz, classical music, and hip-hop, and you’ve got Three Ugly Guys, a Valley band making a name for itself playing around town.
“We get compared a lot to Dave Matthews and Ben Harper—more of a jam-band type of feel,” says Ugly Guy Joe Cea. “Those guys have sold a few CDs, so we don’t mind being compared to them.”
3UG, as they’re known, actually consist of six nice-looking musicians: Cea on bass; Mike “Leif” Erikson, vocals/guitar; Nick Rivette, guitar; Kenny Leslie, sax; Craig McVey, percussion/guitar; and David Drew, drums. The band released its first CD last year—The Pursuit of Uglyness—and also opened for Hootie at the Jobing.com Arena. They regularly play clubs like Martini Ranch in Scottsdale and Skye in Peoria. Their music consists mostly of original feel-good tunes that attract crowds in their thirties with songs that, as Cea puts it, don’t have lyrics about hating your parents screamed into a microphone.
The band, which got its start playing churches around the Valley, has all the ingredients for an explosion onto the national scene. But it’s a local band—each of its members has a day job. For now, they’re playing to increasingly large crowds at clubs like Red Owl in Tempe, on May 9.
“The draw of this band is that we’re not doing it to become famous,” says Cea, who’s married with two young kids. “When you come see Three Ugly Guys, you see six guys who genuinely enjoy being around each other. The product you get is authenticity from the first chord to the last.”
The band’s biggest break came last year in a competition held by Mix 96.9 FM. 3UG won, and was subsequently billed as the opening act for Hootie. But no matter how big 3UG gets or how far across the country it eventually wanders, it’s a Valley-based band that will always play venues here.
“We get some pretty good sized crowds locally,” says Cea. “That’s probably a pretty good indicator that we’re doing something right.”