Treadmill Trackstar Says Goodbye To Analog

 

The  concept of a not-for-profit band isn’t necessarily a new one, as most bands fail to make any significant amount of money from their efforts, laudable or not. Former Columbia, SC resident Angelo Gianni, who has called Asheville, North Carolina home for many years now, has given this method a new internet-age twist, however, with his band Treadmill Trackstar and their newly released album Goodbye to Analog, the third to be issued via fan funding and sales that are plowed directly back into the next album with nobody from the band actually getting paid from the proceeds–the fourth is already underway, actually, even as this one comes out.

All that wouldn’t really matter much if the music wasn’t great, which it is. Gianni and company flirted with the mainstream back in the late 1990s (their 1997 album Only This came out on the Hootie & the Blowfish-curated label Breaking Records), but the last few sets of songs are stronger and more mature than even that commercial ‘high point’.

Eschewing the quieter acoustics of the previous album Leaving Ohio, Gianni brings back the snarling electrics again from the get-go, with “Life Is A Fatal Disease” blasting out of the speakers like a lost Smashing Pumpkins anthem. Its fatalistic lyrical outlook is typical of Gianni’s long-term worldview, which is resigned to everything sucking, pretty much. The difference as he has aged into things like marriage and parenthood is that there are silver linings and positives to be taken from even the everyday crap of life.

“Dying In Style” begins in fine despairing fashion, but the hope for satisfaction is palpable in lines such as, “you know dreams almost never pay, so you know I feast on the kids to live.” Maybe it’s a commentary on our youth-centric culture, or perhaps it’s acknowledgement that his children are giving him a reason to keep on keeping on.

The guitars abate occasionally for quieter numbers, such as “Rewrite Genesis,” which with its cello intro and gently loping drum machine beat sounds suspiciously like a Contemporary Christian tune except for the lyrics:

I don’t need God anymore, she gives me communion, gives me body and blood,

I don’t need God any more, we’ll make our own sun and moon and stars

I don’t need God any more I found something I can touch to believe in

I don’t need God at all, when I pray to her she hears me.

Gianni has never been violently anti-religion, but he’s clear on where he stands on spirituality, which he takes from his personal relationships. He’s still searching, however, something made plain on a song such as “Looking For Light,” which aches for some sense of home among the thorns of life:

“That town I left forever, this one is turning into the same, oh why do we try so hard to run past the length of the chain”

It’s a frustrated search, one that has kept Gianni’s creative muse at work for years with no real expectation of ‘success’ in worldly terms. His efforts with Treadmill Trackstar may not be for monetary profit, but one could argue that he’s more than getting his money’s worth for the therapeutic effect of releasing all this angst and agony in exquisite musical form.

Side note: longtime Treadmill fans will want to notice that cellist Katie Hamilton returns to the group for the first time since that 1997 album; Heidi Carey and drummer Tony Lee both sat out these sessions.

Check out the entire album on Bandcamp below, where it’s available as a Name Your Price download:

 

Treadmill Trackstar, Leaving Ohio

A self-described “nonprofit band” (aren’t they all, really?), Treadmill Trackstar‘s second act (the band’s roots stretch back to the late 1980’s and they released an album in 1997 on an Atlantic Records subsidiary) is proving to be more fruitful than the first, from both a creative and numerical standpoint. Leaving Ohio is the band’s second album in as many years and they are already working on a third even as this one sees its official release this week. All of these recordings have been financed through fan donations, Kickstarter campaigns, and other creative financing options, allowing Treadmill to proceed at their own pace, a luxury that’s paying off in its best work to date.

If I Belong To Me was a focused return to rock ‘n’ roll form, then this latest effort is the more thoughtful morning after. Recorded almost entirely with acoustic instruments, it is noticeably more mellow but no less densely arranged. Instead of walls of guitars and drum tracks, the space is filled with violin, castanets, acoustic guitars, and the group’s signature cello. This video of the song “Waste” is a great example of the band’s acoustic direction this time out:

A thematic album of sorts that deals with a man trying to get on with life after his long time mate drowns in the Ohio River, there are multiple songs dealing with loss, such as the line in “Cardinal S,” “Sorry kids we never had, your dad and mom are gone.” it’s that kind of perspective that Treadmill’s key instigator, singer-guitarist Angelo Gianni, brings to even the most straightforward stories–thinking always of the possibilities and expanding upon them in ways the average writer wouldn’t even think to.

The most unusual track here has to be “Knives in the Kitchen,” which is like an Edgar Allen Poe poem with a punchline, or ‘gotcha’ moment at the end. Creepy-sounding and totally different than anything Gianni or Treadmill have ever done before, it’s the album’s most arresting yet anachronistic moment, as if “The Telltale Heart” had been set in the backwoods of Alabama.

The acoustic framework suits these songs, perhaps that was one reason Gianni and company went that route; several songs do still retain vestiges of the more insistent rock found on the band’s previous work, however. “Lions in the Woods”, for example, could have easily come out in a crushingly electric version, as the acoustic take included here is fairly intense already.

The title track that closes the album is another different-sounding tune for Treadmill, as it is mostly just Gianni and a piano (think Ben Folds and “Brick”, also an unusual tune for him at the time it was released). It’s a closing in more ways than one, with the theme of loss and leaving reaching its natural conclusion as the character finally resigns himself to departure from all he’s known with both regret and hope. The lyrics are powerful, the best Gianni’s ever written, so I’ll reprint them below. (At the band’s official website you can find the lyrics to all of the new songs)

LEAVING OHIO

The rust has been plotting
(To) turn flawless and fine
To rotting and gone
I’ll cover the driveway
With ivy and weeds
Draw the bridge up to stay

You taught
me something about heaven
Then packed it up took it away
Hell is ready for check in
Bell Captain is leading the way

I’m leaving Ohio
What held me is no more
I’m leaving Ohio
Nothing left but the door

I lost it to failing
I lost it to rage
Found it too late
To open your cage
Put your things in the pantry
Swept the leaves from your grave
I will pray for my sinning
but I’ll never be saved

from reaching for heaven
if you’re in the sky
then I’ll try to believe
Hell is a fine destination
I’m not sure which tickets I’ve saved

The flood as it raised
The locust they grazed
But your famine was I never did treasure our days
The crops are all gone
And I give up the farm

I’m leaving Ohio
Lower the drawbridge and let me in
I’m leaving Ohio
I’ll track you and chase you and turn on this pain into fuel
I’m leaving Ohio
Gonna try not to turn back and wave
I’m leaving Ohio
But I’m taking my faith…
I’ll be better when you see me again

Dan Cook (Verna Cannon, Lay Quiet Awhile) and Susan Cramer (SC Philharmonic) lent their talents on violin and Mako Fujji recorded some didgeridoo for the record in Fukuoka, Japan. (Angelo performed with Mako while doing a few solo gigs in Japan in 2010.)

The record is avail on iTunes and www.treadmilltrackstar.com and for FREE download at http://treadmilltrackstar.bandcamp.com/

Ten Columbia, South Carolina Bands That Matter More Than Hootie & the Blowfish

Okay, this week’s unveiling of a commemorative monument honoring Hootie & the Blowfish in their hometown of Columbia, SC is big news, at least around here:

Free Times Cover Story
State Newspaper Coverage

I contributed an opinion piece to the Free Times cover story that acknowledged the band has done plenty to deserve the honors they’re getting, even if the monument seems to be about ten years too late to really mean anything, but I didn’t really have the space to expand upon the relative importance of Hootie vs. others who came from their home state. Massive sales figures are great for the bank account but a lasting legacy of musical innovation and influence is not something that even Hootie’s members would lay claim to, surely. With that in mind, here are ten South Carolina acts who ought to have legacies that stand up to and perhaps outstrip their more famous ‘neighbors’ (though even they have some solid connections to Hootie themselves.)

1. Lay Quiet Awhile–the alt-rock of this late 80’s, early 90’s quartet could be artfully spare or a sonic sledgehammer, depending on the song. Their legacy? Singer Danielle Howle went on to a critically-lauded solo career of her own and bassist Dan Cook released two albums with Verna Cannon, served as music editor and now overall editor at the Columbia Free Times alt-weekly. Hootie connection: Cook played violin on the “MTV Unplugged” Hootie special taped on the USC campus.

2. Danielle Howle–Yes, she gets two spots technically since she was a member of #1, above. But her solo output has been even more lauded, appearing on several different indie labels over the past fifteen years. Hootie connection: Howle’s Thank You Mark album was produced by Hootie’s Mark Bryan, and she sang a duet with him on his most recent solo disc.

3. Isabelle’s Gift–one could say that these guys are here due to longevity, as they’re still out there plugging away. I’d argue that their length of service is a deciding factor only because their redneck punk/metal hybrid was ahead of its time when they started and now it would seem almost quaint, if it weren’t for the bulldozing intensity of their best material. Ask anybody in a hard rock band in Columbia what inspired them to play and I guarantee this band’s name will be on the list somewhere, if not at the top.

4. Treadmill Trackstar–Would Angelo Gianni and friends have conquered the world in the 1990’s if they hadn’t signed a dead-end deal with the Hootie-run label Breaking Records back then? We’ll never know, but for a couple of years you could hear “Shouldn’t I Take” on mainstream radio around here in regular rotation, and Gianni’s buzzsaw pop was in line with the then-popular Smashing Pumpkins‘ sound. Their indie release Excessive Use of the Passive Voice remains a favorite locally released album, and while the band’s recent resurrection and new music may not gain them the world, it certainly proves that there’s a lot more artistic output to come from them.

5. In/Humanity, Guyana Punchline, Anakrid--One cannot talk about Columbia’s music scene without mentioning Chris Bickel, and his bands have always had both the attitude and the aptitude to capture whatever punk-inspired zeitgeist was on his mind at the time of their many recordings–tapes, seven-inch records, albums, Bickel has released enough stuff over his career to easily fill up one of those old Peaches record crates.

6. Bedlam Hour–The first Columbia band I can remember signed to a national record label contract (Positive Force Records released the band’s epic Rock The Cradle), the fast and furious yet overwhelmingly positive punk rock that Chuck Walker and company played was a huge influence on a generation of young punks in Columbia and beyond, and “Grey Sweater” is one of the best songs ever to come from Columbia’s music scene. Hootie connection: Hootie’s Mark Bryan and BH’s Walker and bassist John Leroy (as well as second bassist Adam Kolesar) were all student DJ’s together at WUSC in the 1980s.

7. From Safety To Where/Bolt/Death Becomes Even The Maiden–a mutiple band listing that acknowledges the interrelated lineups of these groups, all three of which play some sort of hyphenated post-punk rock amalgam that was (and is, in the case of the ongoing DBETM) light years ahead of their local and national peers. If Columbia were a hipper town in the national music press, Eric Greenwood would be referred to as our Roger Miller (Mission of Burma and No Man founder, not the country songwriter).

8. The Rob Crosby Group–The token 70’s band on this list, to be sure, but Sumter’s Rob Crosby was one of the most popular southern rock acts in the state in his day, and members of his band have gone on to play in other groups and combinations ever since. Crosby ended up a songwriter in Nashville with a string of hit songs, a couple of which he took to the country charts himself.

9. Toro Y Moi–As much as I enjoy Chaz Bundick’s other band I’m not even going to mention them here because this bedroom side project has meant much more to his career (and Columbia’s currency on the international music scene, if it has any). Causers Of This, released back in the beginning of 2010, has immediately secured a spot on my list of the best albums ever by a Columbia act, and one that’s bound to inspire countless kids in bedrooms across not just South Carolina, but the world.

10. Jack Williams–Okay, he doesn’t live in Columbia or even South Carolina any more but there’s no songwriter alive whose music is more intricately entwined in our state’s history, topography, and culture. Since 1997’s Across The Winterline Williams has been releasing album after album of captivating, folksy observations on southern life, and life in general, and touring all over the country.

My Favorite Local Albums of 2009

I write about music from all over the place for publications and websites that are also all over the place, but I’ve had a particular fondness for the music of my own backyard here in South Carolina, and especially in Columbia. Here, then, are my favorite local releases of 2009:

My Favorite Local Albums 2009

Kenley Young, Standard Candle
Smooth, slick, and sparkling guitar pop.

Magnetic Flowers, What We Talk About When We Talk About What We Talk AboutA glorious mess of an album, like a train barely able to remain on the tracks.

Haley Dreis, Beautiful To Me
About as perfect a pop recording as any to have come out of Columbia.

American Gun, The Devil’s Right Hand
Mark this as the one where Todd Mathis’ twangier material shines the brightest and truly begins to define this band.

Zach Seibert and the Red Wagon, Learning To Drown
The year’s most pleasant surprise, a sweetly rendered, rough-hewn gem.

Justin Smith and the Folk-Hop Band, World Unknown
Less hop and more rock made this a local radio hit, with good reason.

Treadmill Trackstar, I Belong To Me
File under “Welcome return” and turn up the volume.

The Unawares, Pinkie Greene
Raw, unassuming, yet immediate and melodic.

Hannah Miller, Somewhere In Between
Columbia’s most mesmerizing vocal chords.

Danielle Howle, The Swamp Sessions
Stripped down to just her voice and guitar, Howle still delivers.

Various Artists, Christmas At Red Bank, Vol. 1
Perfect local-centric addition to the holiday music mix, with some great takes on classic carols.