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MUSIC
WORTH LEAVING THE HOUSE TO HEAR THIS WEEK:
Thad Cockrell, Roman Candle
Cat's Cradle
January 31, 2004
"We were recording, and I turned around and the engineer,
John Plymale, was just staring," says Chris Stamey of the
time he spent with Roman Candle last year readying a re-recorded
version of the band's 2001 Says Pop, due for release on Disney's
Hollywood
Records later this year.
"And he just said, 'Are we really getting paid for this?'"
Their immediately addictive, intricately arranged take on laconic
power pop causes--as Stamey puts it--"a lot of jaw-dropping"
for people new to the Candle experience.
--Grayson Currin
EIGHT
DAYS A WEEK
Chris Stamey and Roman Candle
McCorkle Place (Sept. 13, 05)
When Roman Candle's major-label debut hits shelves hopefully
sometime late this year on Richard Branson's post-Virginity
V2 Records, expect the buzz to be deafening. Their basement-made
indie entry Says Pop was hailed by one writer as the best album
of 2002, and nearly everyone that's heard the reworked version
raves about it, including producer Chris Stamey.
In essence, it's a tall tree of jangly pop, brilliant melodicism
serving as the rich soil around its '65-'66-'86-fertilized roots.
Candle will open for Stamey, who--what with the golden horizons
of Roman Candle and the reunion of his pop starship, The dBs,
in September--may have another fine year that's been long in
the making. This free show on the UNC-CH campus starts at 7:30
p.m. --Grayson Currin
(the following was a feature article written about the "exiled
on main street /
live at the speakeasy" record RC recorded with Thad Cockrell
and Chris Stamey
in April 2004)
ROMAN CANDLE - THAD COCKRELL:
Out of exile and live on Main Street
April 14, 2004
Cramped behind a table at Amante's Pizza just two doors down
from the Cat's Cradle,
Thad Cockrell, Skip Matheny and Timshel Matheny are groping
for the essence of Chris Stamey: as a producer, as a collaborator
and as a friend.
Cockrell discusses his work ethic, his attention to detail,
his drive to get the sound just right. Skip and Timshel--husband
and wife since 1998 and bandmates since 2002--can only agree
that Stamey is the best thing that has ever happened to their
music careers. But it's a tough topic.
Stamey, eating a salad just one table over and listening to
every word, doesn't want to hear about himself and about the
fact that his involvement over the past two decades with some
of the country's best music isn't simply some cosmic coincidence.
He attempts to dismiss the question, to turn the attention back
to the bands.
Nevertheless, the Mathenys, along with Cockrell and the rest
of Roman Candle, are struggling for something to say.
Suddenly, they grin from ear to ear. They are facing the door,
and the answer to the lingering Chris Stamey conundrum has just
bounced in: a 5 year-old named Julia Stamey.
"My day can start now," exclaims Cockrell, bending
out of his seat to greet the girl with a high five. "I'm
so glad to see you."
When the greetings finally die down and Julia has found her
seat with her mother and father at a nearby table, the band
continues with the question without so much as a pause.
"She's the smartest and funniest kid I've ever met,"
explains Skip, as the rest of the band--alt.country veteran
Danny Kurtz on bass, Nick Jaeger on guitar and brother Logan
Matheny on drums--nod their assent.
"We'll be recording, and we'll be stressing over this song
or this note or that detail, and she'll just come in dressed
like an alien and say 'I'm going to put on a puppet show for
you guys,'" Timshel continues, turning every few minutes
to laugh with the giddy Julia. "It's a lot easier then."
Of late, that feeling of shared affection and community between
Roman Candle, Stamey and Cockrell has been the norm. The five-member
band, the country solo artist and their producer have been behaving
more like one band--or even an extended family--rather than
a group of musicians who happen to share a circuit and a stage.
Cockrell made his first two records with Stamey. Lately, Stamey
has been busy producing the re-recorded re-release of Candle's
debut record, Says Pop, for Hollywood Records, a Disney imprint
and home to The Polyphonic Spree and Josh Kelley. The producer
insists that Roman Candle is so good that he shouldn't be paid
for the sessions, and Cockrell bluntly says that the record
hit him with more impact than anything he has ever heard.
On New Year's Eve, Cockrell joined with three-fifths of the
band to open for The Connells as the one-off Teenage Queen,
and, one month to the day later, Roman Candle opened for an
elated Cockrell at his first gig headlining the Cradle. These
days, Skip is bouncing songs off of Cockrell, who--in turn--uses
the Matheny's as a sort of litmus test for his own material.
Thad and Logan are roommates.
"Songwriting's a weird thing for me, and I don't think
half of what I'm writing now would have happened if it wasn't
for these guys," says Cockrell. "It's rare that you
actually meet people where you get along musically and you get
along personally so that you can work on stuff together like
that."
This week, Stamey will get his chance to push record and document
the results of this close-knit relationship. For three nights,
Cockrell will open for Roman Candle and later sit in with them
during their headlining set in the window of The Speakeasy at
Tyler's Taproom as
Stamey lets the tape roll.
During the day, The Speakeasy will serve as an open control
room for the project. The band and Stamey will listen to playback
as folks drop in and out, adding overdubs on the spot or making
adjustments to the upcoming night's setlist and arrangements
based on the recordings from the previous night.
The band hopes to capture enough quality takes for upcoming
compilations and in order to produce an EP they can sell while
touring this summer before their Hollywood debut is released.
But the point of all the work--finding a venue that would allow
two bands to turn its front window into a stage, finding sponsors
to turn the venue itself into a temporary studio, printing and
selling advance tickets--isn't simply an EP.
"We really spent years making our first record, and getting
the sound right...We would set up a microphone for hours and
then go eat and come back and record some. This will be different
for us, a different way of recording the same songs," says
Skip, explaining that this time the band will be working more
with the songs instead of the sounds.
"This is our first live recording, and we have no idea
how it will turn out," says Logan, summing up Stamey after
he has spent three minutes presenting and dissecting the musical
philosophy of seminal ethnomusicologist Harry Smith and the
importance of "capturing the event, capturing something
that is really happening." "It will be interesting."
-- Grayson Currin
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