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It's after midnight on a hot Friday night in June, a mile outside
of Chapel Hill and remarkably quiet for being so close to campus.
Impenetrably dark woods surround the duplex, the house's outside
lights casting hyper-extended shadows of four people moving
between the basement door and the burgundy conversion van in
the driveway. Chapel Hill rock 'n' roll quintet Roman Candle
has been still long enough. It's time to go somewhere.
Bassist Jeff Crawford and guitarist Nick Jaeger pile amps into
a closed-top, 8-foot trailer hitched to the van, talking about
tomorrow's drive as they step in, turn around and jump out.
Front man Skip Matheny and his wife, keyboardist Timshel Matheny,
tote black guitar cases and bags of cords out of the basement,
stacking them 3 feet in front of the trailer before turning
to grab another load.
Tomorrow, Skip, Timshel and Logan Matheny, Skip's younger brother
and the band's drummer, will leave, driving west to Wilkesboro
to visit the boys' parents and to run sound at the Heritage
Festival, a Wilkesboro celebration of the town's history. The
celebration isn't much of a haul from Wilkseboro Baptist Church,
the sprawling brick complex right on Main Street in the mountain
town where they grew up. Their dad was the music minister there
and the band teacher at their high school. This is where the
Matheny boys keep their hearts. But they'll leave when the show
is over and drive the van five hours south to Atlanta with their
parents and Skip and Timshel's 16-month-old son. Jaeger and
Crawford will already be waiting in the hotel. They'll play
two concerts for the biggest rock radio station in Atlanta.
They'll turn around and come home, having driven 864 miles to
play rock for three hours. But to them, it's worth it.
For three years, music industry executives have agreed that
Roman Candle is one of the best, most complete American rock
bands to surface in a decade. Skip writes engrossingly vivid
short stories in one verse, and Logan's rhythmic range--packing
love for DJ Shadow, Radiohead and The Rolling Stones in one
kit--turns Skip's scripts into moving pictures. Crawford gets
Logan's rhythmic tendencies and meets them square on. Timshel's
keyboard lines and Jaeger's guitar leads marry taste and technique.
But for the past three years, their second album, The Wee Hours
Revue, has been locked in a music industry stranglehold. At
last, it's free.
On June 20, The Wee Hours Revue will be released by V2 Records,
the New York-based label founded by Virgin Records president
Richard Branson after he sold out to EMI in 1992. Their labelmates
will include The White Stripes, Rickie Lee Jones and Gang of
Four. As independent record companies go, this is a big deal,
and it could make the band very famous. After all, Roman Candle
is better at what they do--writing imaginative pop songs and
building them into captivating four-minute Southern-air epics
with the unleashed spirit of The Replacements and unorthodox
intuition of Wilco--than any other "band on the verge"
in memory. Things could get very busy, very soon.
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Reaching this point has been like running a gauntlet: In 2001,
all-star NFL defensive end Trevor Pryce heard Roman Candle online
and founded a record label to release their first album, Says
Pop. Critics agreed it was an indie treasure. Rolling Stone
wrote Roman Candle was a Chapel Hill "band on the rise"
long before almost anybody in the Triangle had actually heard
them. Pryce put the industry's new buzz band on the auction
block, selling it all to the Disney-owned Hollywood Records.
Hollywood gave the band a big budget and let them loose with
Chapel Hill producer Chris Stamey. Per the label's request,
they re-recorded Says Pop, turned it in and waited. Nearly two
years and well over $500,000 later, Hollywood dropped Roman
Candle.
But V2, interested in Roman Candle from the beginning, bought
the rights. Now, almost three years after recording the second
version of an album written and recorded during college, The
Wee Hours Revue is ready to find its home in record stores.
There's still some doubt. The band hasn't yet seen a finished
copy of The Wee Hours Revue. But, tonight, that's secondary:
The band just wants some rest. They're chipper as always, but
they're tired. Timshel seems anxious to get home and put her
toddler son, Jude--sleeping upstairs--to bed. Skip constantly
reassures himself they've not forgotten anything.
That changes when they find out a finished copy of the album
is in their driveway, stuffed inside a padded-envelope press
kit from V2. Fatigue is forgotten. Skip, bending over to stack
an amp in front of the trailer, looks up, semi-shocked, mouth
agape: "You have it? Here?"
The rest of the band turns around. All of a sudden, Roman Candle
sparks, three years of potential energy delivered in an instant
of excitement.Jaeger bubbles, a kid on Christmas morning: "This
is a big deal. This is a very big deal." Timshel smiles,
beckons: "Bring it here, bring it into the light."
Skip's eyes get wider: "OK, let's see it."
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The music industry has never been exactly scrupulous, or exactly
logical or legal in its choice of strategies for profit. Payola--paying
radio stations with cash or lavish gifts in exchange for radio
play--is as old as the business itself, and reviews in magazines
often come only after a record label secures a sizable advertising
deal. Artistically important music has, more often than not,
been mismanaged or ignored by financially important companies.
But corporate misdirection seems to have only increased in the
past decade, the advent and ascension of new technologies like
the Internet and satellite radio unsettling the old guard, a
few companies scraping harder for every ounce of an ever-limited
market. Four conglomerates--Universal Music Group, Sony BMG
Music Entertainment, EMI Group and Warner Music Group--now own
and distribute 85 percent of America's music, even though they're
often left foundering in the tide of the digital marketplace.
Trends have only become more fickle, and major record companies
are increasingly becoming step-behind dimwits, more focused
on short-term benefits than long-term investments through artist
development. It's easiest to secure a record deal (and to sell
records) on the heels of some gimmick, like a starring role
in a Hollywood blockbuster or an American Idol victory. Idol
runner-up Bo Bice doesn't compare with Skip Matheny, but Matheny's
sales numbers--a few thousand albums sold from a suitcase--can't
compare with Bice's gold plaques.
"We'd be doing so good if we would've had our own reality
show all along," says Logan, Roman Candle's drummer and
studio whiz. "Or what about a talk show?" Timshel
snaps back, referencing Hollywood Records' most recent projects--two
Regis Philbin albums since 2004.
Ideally, The Wee Hours Revue would have been released on Hollywood
in 2004; instead, the album and Roman Candle itself became helpless
flotsam swept into a sea following a currency-driven gravity.
If Roman Candle's story were a work of fiction, it would read
like a collaboration between Stephen Crane and Mark Twain, a
realist's dose of hard times played out by characters with the
wit, wisdom and wherewithal to survive with a smile.
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Imagine: Trevor Pryce--then, a 6-foot-5, 286-pound, four-time
Pro-Bowler for the Denver Broncos--decides to start a label.
He finds Roman Candle on garageband.com, sends them an e-mail,
and then ships them thousands of dollars in recording equipment
to finish their debut, recorded in their parents' basement in
Wilkesboro. After losing in the first round of the playoffs
in the 2001 season, he flies to Charlotte, the entire family
picking him up in one car. He spends eight days with the band,
watching as they record. They are two innocent brothers who
love playing music together and the marvel of a guy who enjoys
their sound and wants to help.
"It was a stroke of luck. It wasn't genius," says
Pryce, who calls them "my favorite rock band in the whole
world." "When I sat down and decided I wanted to start
a record label, I had no idea I would find a band like Roman
Candle," he says. "I took a chance on them, and they
took a chance on me. Someone would have discovered them, either
way."
The record came out better than anyone would have guessed. Skip
and Logan built a live band, recruiting Timshel, who married
Skip in 1998, to play piano. Jaeger, a Nevada native, was working
at an advertising agency in Shelby when he first heard the band's
album and saw them play live. He worshiped Says Pop before he
saw the band in 2002. Meanwhile, Pryce passed the disc to his
own manager, who then passed it to music executives everywhere.
After Rolling Stone lauded the band as a "new alt.country
gem" in 2003, label intrigue hit a fever pitch.
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Live at the Grey Eagle 6-4-06 (Asheville, NC)
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V2 showed interest first, pinpointing Stamey--who has worked
with Whiskeytown, Bob Mould, Yo La Tengo and country upstart
Thad Cockrell--as the guy to make their new record a success.
But Hollywood Records offered Pryce the more lucrative deal
and an enormous expense account for the record, and he couldn't
refuse. Hollywood liked Stamey, too. He had seen the band play
twice, had them over for lunch, and offered to work with them,
even help them find a lawyer.
Stamey and Roman Candle began recording a reworked version of
Says Pop in April 2003. Every day for two months, they worked
14 hours in the studio. By October, the record was mixed. They
were a young band with a record coming out on a major label.
"Roman Candle was the band of the moment, and everyone
wanted to sign them, not just Hollywood Records," Stamey
says. "Hollywood Records is a special case label, too.
They sell a lot of records of certain kinds, but they don't
have a strong identity because they have Disney looming over
them." He adds that he tried to explain they would never
see money from the high figure Hollywood was offering.
Skip and Timshel moved to Oregon before mixing began, spending
several months with Timshel's parents in Portland. Skip tore
ligaments in his knee in a boating accident, which halted the
band's kinetic live show. The band was waiting on a release
date, their main contact at Hollywood always assuring them he
would hear something from label president Bob Cavallo soon.
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"What they say is, well, they don't say anything -- for
years," Skip says. "They say, 'Yeah, we're going to
get together with Bob, we're going to figure this thing out.
But Bob's out, he's playing a lot of golf these days.'"
Cavallo's two-month Christmas vacation continued to delay the
release, Skip adds. Before Cavallo finally agreed to release
the record, he wanted to see the band play live in California,
even after everyone who worked for him had seen Roman Candle
and unanimously approved. Perhaps he was concerned about Skip's
recovering knee, which prohibited him from landing his prototypical
coda leaps.
They practiced in a space lent by The Wallflowers, and Timshel--several
months pregnant and fearful that might slow the release further
still--wore a coat during their 20-minute West Coast showcase.
The band's trip to Los Angeles cost the label $10,000. Almost
a year later, Cavallo decided to drop the band, two years after
he had agreed The Walt Disney Company should pay for its music.
Six months of contract wrangling followed.
"It was heartbreaking, and it's been a lesson for me,"
says Thad Cockrell, a country singer-songwriter who met the
band through Stamey and has since become its best friend. "Sometimes,
you think the other side of the fence has the greener grass
and that when young bands are signed to a major label, their
problems are all solved. But, in some sense, they're only beginning.
Roman Candle recorded their first version of Says Pop in 2001.
I did my first EP back in 2001, and it would have killed me
if that didn't come out. That would absolutely break my heart."
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Cover of Independent (June 21, 06)
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In January, Pryce bought the masters for Roman Candle's The
Wee Hours Revue from Hollywood Records for a mere $50,000. V2
immediately bought the rights from Pryce for $300,000, and then
signed the band directly to the label. Pryce says the record
would have been out for two years if V2 had offered that initially.
Oh, the rocky life.
"You try to fall in love, you try to get control/ You try
to find a little bit of that in rock 'n' roll," Skip sings
at the end of the second verse on "Something Left to Say,"
the rangy gem that opens The Wee Hours Revue.
For three years Roman Candle relegated control to rock 'n' roll.
It's tossed them around, tried to forget them, sold them out
more than once. It's ignored their place as people and the exigencies
of life--babies, busted knees, bad day jobs--for commercial
convenience, and no one has ever apologized. By now, this band
should hate music. But Roman Candle--from Skip and Logan right
down to Crawford, the band's newest member and third bass player--is
obsessed with rock 'n' roll--hearing it, making it, talking
about it.
Their basement practice space is too small, one wall lined with
guitars hanging below cutout portraits of rock stars and ripped-up
covers of Rolling Stone. A picture of Outkast hangs in a closet.
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The same aesthetic also applies in Skip and Timshel's cross-town
living room. Racks of CDs crowd one corner, and a photo of Chuck
Berry--a gift from Cockrell signed "Watch out, Berry, there's
a new sheriff in town. Skip, he's got nothing on you. Love,
Thad"--sits on a coffee table beside the couch. The wall
is plastered with 25 record covers, hanging in clear plastic
sleeves-
-Burt Bacharach, Elvis Costello, Bob Dylan, U2, Neil Young.
Skip and Logan talk about Oasis B-sides with the unfettered
exuberance of 15-year-old boys. Logan bemoans a toy hammer belonging
to his young nephew Jude, saying it should make some gnarly
noise when slammed on a table. The people who live here and
the people who make Roman Candle special still love rock.
"The one thing that never got tainted, luckily, is what
happens when we get together to write music," Skip says.
"We didn't get together and say, 'Well, anything we do
is going to be sitting on the shelf at Hollywood Records' because
it was so discouraging. Even when we thought that was the truth
of what was going to happen."
Skip's sitting outside of The Grey Eagle Tavern in Asheville
with the rest of the band after an opening set, listening through
the club walls on a Sunday evening as friend Seth Kauffman hosts
his CD release party for an empty room. By this point, a Roman
Candle stop in Asheville should invite a crowd, even though
this is their first show in the city itself.
But no one is discouraged: Everything sounded great, the quintet
in tip-top shape and finally locked in and ready to hit the
road full-force behind The Wee Hours Revue. They even recorded
a track this afternoon in the studio of their parents' house,
the same place they've been recording for half a decade.
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At their "too small" practice space (Chapel Hill)
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Luckily, Roman Candle always managed to stay productive, even
with their record and their band name bogged in contractual
swamp. Since finishing The Wee Hours Revue, they've written
a concept album called Love Songs for an Empty Room and, at
this point, the debut's follow-up lacks only lyrics.
"It got to the point where everybody was like, 'Forget
about it,'" Jaeger says. "If we thought about the
record coming out, it would drive us insane. So we started working
on new songs. But getting over that hurdle where time had its
way with us was frustrating. It was something none of us expected."
Keegan DeWitt was worried that the record would never come out,
too, that Roman Candle had lost its powder. As Timshel's brother,
DeWitt watched the band progress from the start, even playing
guitar with them while still in high school. He moved from Portland
to New York to attend acting school, and he would see the band--mixing
and mastering the record, playing shows--every few weeks. He
refers to that period as romantic. Then things stalled.
"A lot of us thought the momentum was dead, and my mom
even asked me if I ever thought the band would really do anything,"
DeWitt remembers. "I think we all thought maybe Roman Candle
had run its course."
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Nick Jaeger in Asheville (6-4-06)
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But friends like DeWitt, Stamey and Cockrell helped salvage
their spirit. Last year, DeWitt decided to move, but Skip insisted
he let him record some of DeWitt's songs before he left. DeWitt,
together with Roman Candle under the name The Sparrows, sorted
through 150 DeWitt originals. They cut 10 in Wilkesboro in mom
and dad's house, and they've played New York and Chapel Hill
together.
Roman Candle has recorded with Stamey again since the Wee Hours
sessions, too. In fact, he's blown away by the band, recruiting
Logan and Skip to back him on his new solo album. Stamey helped
stage a two-night residency at The Speakeasy in Carrboro in
2004, Roman Candle splitting and sharing songs with Cockrell
as Stamey recorded it all. Their contractual difficulties with
Hollywood prohibited the release of those songs. Regardless,
it was a welcome distraction.
"When you're in a situation where you're waiting, it has
to be about more than the record coming out," Timshel says.
"So, in spite of ourselves, we've grown as artists and
spiritually and as a family."
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Thinking Person's Rock? Timshel and Skip ponder an arrangement.
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Brady Brock started working with Roman Candle one month after
they signed to V2. He'd been the head of publicity at Artemis
Records, but Artemis' parent company bought V2 in November.
He's now a product manager for five bands on the label, essentially
making him their label manager. He helps decide what promotions
will work best, what venues they should play and when. Today,
he's giddy about the band's chances.
"What's so great about this record is that it has gone
through so much and it has this backlog of stories and difficulties,
but it survived," he says, noting that V2 left the version
it bought essentially untouched before releasing it. "A
lot of bands and records in that period of time and in those
circumstances wouldn't have made it. But Roman Candle did."
Brock is right. Bands, more often than not, are four buddies
who like the same music. The record-label lashing Roman Candle
has endured would put most bands on the infamous could-have-been-famous
roster in half the time. But these aren't casual acquaintances;
this band's sound is at once wholly fresh and thoroughly developed,
and they're a close cadre. Roman Candle is, after all, two brothers,
one brother's wife and two more guys who, at this point, consider
themselves part of the family. When Logan and Skip's dad talks
about Crawford and Jaeger, he says, "I love them."
He means it.
"When we go to Wilkesboro and we're hanging out up there,
we're part of the family. Their dad is just like, 'C'mon, I
just cooked a meal. Sit down. What do you need?'" says
Jaeger, sitting in the band's usual booth at its usual nook
of an East Franklin Street hangout, Linda's. "And they
tell us we're part of the family."
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At home on the couch.
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Roman Candle behaves like a family, too-inside jokes, everybody
pitching in to help the baby, interdependence. Jaeger and Logan
live together, and operate like brothers: Nick watched Logan
almost go crazy as he waited for word on the record's release,
constantly chewing his nails to the quick. But Jaeger and the
rest of the band helped everyone through those collective moments.
Tonight, Logan missed band practice. His girlfriend has been
out of town for a week, so he took the night off for a date.
But he shows up at the Chapel Hill hangout, a big, anxious smile
stretched across his face."You guys have a copy of the
record?" Jaeger grins back, says his goodbyes, and leads
Logan outside. "Are you ready for this?"
Logan--big brown eyes beaming above the boyish smile he can't
control--answers yes. The envelope is opened. Logan just stares
at the cover, holding it close to his face in both hands.
He's the final member of the band to be a kid on Christmas morning:
"Oh, man. It's finally going to happen. I really can't
believe this." It's time to go.
-- Grayson Currin
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