Stop. Look. Listen.

 The Car Music Project is a great deal more than a novelty group, despite wiper-blade bows, brake-drum drums and a certain found-in-the-junkyard air.  While the group’s music contains a fair amount of humor, from cartoony stops and starts, goofy slides and other crazy elements, it never enters Spike Jones territory. Basically, it’s a free jazz outfit that manages to get an entirely musical sound out of its unusual instruments, most of which were made from parts from one single car: a 1982 Honda Civic, to be exact, by metal sculptor Ray Faunce III of Bensalem. The group performed at Binns Park in downtown Lancaster Saturday, to a sparse but enthusiastic crowd, many of whom gathered around at concert break to talk to the musicians and check out the oddball instruments. The musicians, in their turn, were eager to talk about their instruments and answer questions.  James Spotto (seen in the photo at left), who plays the exhaustaphone (the large instrument in the foreground) and the strutbone (seen in the lower right) assured us the exhaustaphone had been made out of a new exhaust system, since an old one would be pretty gunky and carcinogenic to boot. A sort of sousaphone/trombone hybrid, the exhaustaphone has not one but two slides, producing a half-step difference in tone. It has a range of about five octaves, although two of the octaves are incomplete. In the background you can see the “percarsion” battery (all kinds of stuff, from hoods and windows and, of course, brake drum, to bits of engine) played with enthusiasm by William Trigg. With Bill Milbrodt on air (cleaner) guitar, Dave Homan on tenor convertible, a saxophone-like instrument, which, minus mouthpiece and bell, became a flute, and Wilbo Wright on (gas) tank bass, the group played about 10 songs to the gallon, with music that ranged from spacy to funky, improvisational to through-composed, with titles like “Uh-Oh,” “Crenabulations” and “I Can’t Think of a Title.” It was easy to forget you were listening to chunks of an old beater and enjoy the varied soundscape the musicians provided.