Musician embraces mess-ups on stage

"I love the mess."

Philadelphia-based singer Aimee Collet Argote lives for the moments when something goes wrong on stage.

"Someone once told me when I was really young that it's OK when you mess up," said Argote, lead singer of the band Des Ark. "It's not the (expletive)-ups that we want to see, it's how you get back on top of it."

"If you (expletive) up a song, there's 30 ways to fix it. Which one do you pick?"

Des Ark - with or without (expletive)-ups - will perform at 9 p.m. Saturday at The 806, 2812 S.W. Sixth Ave.

"I've never wanted to be part of the indie rock scene or the country music scene," Argote said. "I think that all music is always interesting to me at all times."

And the tougher, the better.

"I think it would be real easy to get with one group of people. You can move through things as a unit," she said. "But I think it probably does come easier to push yourself into new territories and new ideas when you're changing your environment a lot."

That's one reason Des Ark's lineup has been so fluid. Even the band bio acknowledges that Argote has gone through nine drummers in about a decade.

"There's so many styles of music that I'm interested in exploring that it just doesn't work with one (drummer)," Argote said. "When a lot of people talk about touring as an opportunity to see the world, and I feel like that about playing music - playing with as many people as I can."

Argote's currently on one of her "quiet" tours, so she'll appear in Amarillo only with guitarist Taylor Hollanbeck of the band The Appleseed Cast.

Though she embraces the possibility of chaos on the road, back home in Philadelphia, she's all about order.

"I have a lot of things that are anchored. Sure, I'll go across the country and do this thing and don't know how it will turn out, but I feel like it's because I have a really strong support system at home that allows me to be a freak in the wind everywhere else," Argotte said. "I found a real nice balance of being impossible to pin down and completely grounded in reality."