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Photo by Jen Goldring / Juniper Tree Studio
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A significant batch of new releases have hit local record store shelves—and digital outlets, of course—so we dedicated space last week to showcasing four bands with new work. Turns out that this wasn’t enough space, so we’ll do it again, with four more acts: a pair of solo artists and a couple of band projects, all of them with at least a decade of steady work in/around the St. Louis music scene.
Checking in are: Valerie Kirchhoff of Miss Jubilee; songwriters Brian Andrew Marek and Kevin Renick; and Finn’s Motel bandleader Joe Thebeau. We sent each a selection of questions relating to their latest works and here are the compiled responses.
For starters, let’s get right to the basics of the new release. Name? Amount of tracks? Recorded where and by whom? How long a process from songs written to songs released?
Kirchhoff: The album is titled Throw Me In The Alley after a Peetie Wheatstraw song we play. It’s a shoutout to all the St. Louis musicians in the '20s and '30s that we love. There are 15 tracks recorded at Shock City Studios by Luke Arens and mixed by Sam Maul. The songs are all blues and hot jazz tunes by artists in the late '20s to late '30s, so for us it was the amount of time to learn and study their sweet style and then make it work for us. That’s something that is always a continued process, yet very similar to how players learned that we admire.
Marek: Far & Away (More or Less), 13 tracks recorded by myself (with occasional assistance from longtime collaborator Michael Thompson) in a variety of locales, none of which were traditional studio environments. “Bagels in Bangor (Again)” is a remake of a Rocket Park song from 1999, and “Melt” and “I’ll Stay with You, Mary” were unfinished leftovers from previous projects that gained a new lease on life. The other songs were written in the last two years.
Renick: The new CD is called Clear The Way. It has 14 tracks. All but one were recorded in various studios in St. Louis, including Red Pill, Shock City, and the home studio of Adam Long. The exception was a song mostly produced in Springfield by the legendary Lou Whitney, who died not long after our session. That track miraculously was able to be included here, it’s called “Just Movin’ On.” You hear Lou’s voice at the beginning. Adam did some stellar work on five or six songs, and Jacob at Red Pill turned several songs into classics, including “Different Without You” and “If We Can Keep Dancing.” The length of time was way longer than I expected. I had some serious life interruptions while making this album. I started in 2014 and was working right up through June of 2017. There were many challenges, let’s just say that. I am happy it’s done!
Thebeau: Quinta del Sordo by Finn’s Motel. Produced by Matt Meyer and Joe Thebeau, Recorded by Joe Thebeau and Matt Meyer, Mixed by Matt Meyer, except "Still Got Time" mixed by Joe Thebeau, AD/DA conversion via BURL Mothership by Mario Viele at Cowboy Technical Services, Brooklyn, New York, mastered by Matt Meyer. Most of the recording was done in my house in Affton, except for some vocals and guitars done at Matt’s place. The string quartet was recorded at (formerly) St. Matthews church at Jefferson and Potomac.
Talk a little bit about the personnel for this release. Perhaps it’s band-only. Or band with an active, participating producer. Or band, plus talented friends adding specific bits of brilliance. What’s the formula for who played on what?
Kirchhoff: The lineup on the recording is reflective of who was with us at the time in the band—Ken Cebrian on trumpet, David Gomez on clarinet, Ethan Leinwand on piano, Richard Tralles on upright bass, Dan Conner on drums/washboard and myself on vocals. We had two other musicians playing gigs with us a lot at the time, and had them join us: Joe Thompson on trombone and Tyler Stokes on guitar. It’s been long overdue for us to put out a album, so the whole point behind how we chose our recording line up and approach was to showcase what we’re all about. Make it sound just like us when out live.
Marek: I handled the bulk of the instruments (guitars, keyboards, bass, drums, et cetera) and vocals. Seven of the tracks feature harmonies by vocalist Beck Boston, and there are also guest appearances by Michael Thompson (guitar solos on “Bagels”), Donnie O’Laughlin (drums on “Bagels”), and The Defeated County’s Langen Neubacher (additional harmonies on “Stare at the Ceiling”).
Renick: The thematic and emotional nature of this album made for some unpredictable circumstances, and I worked with many different people. My close friend Ted Moniak, a real stalwart musician, plays on more tracks than anyone else. He GETS me, and he’s able to deliver great guitar sounds and evocative stuff that no one else can do. He also works amazingly well with both my key producers. Another friend, Denise Chappell, stepped in near the end and delivered knockout vocal punches on three of the best tracks: “Different Without You,” “Fast and Off” and “These Things Happen.” Ed Timson, the drummer from Shakey Deal plays on some stuff, and Jacob Detering plays bass on at least four songs. Andrea Morse plays on three tracks, guitar and bass. Katie Kasper sings on two tracks, it’s her recording debut. “Just Movin’ On” is now historic, as it features two members of The Skeletons, including the late Bobby Lloyd Hicks on drums, and the only studio guitar performance by my dear friend Rick Haegg, who also passed a few years ago. There really wasn’t a formula. It was all dictated by circumstance and who could deliver in a given time frame.
Thebeau: The core band for this Finn’s Motel recording is Patrick Hawley on drums, Steve Scariano on bass, and me on guitar and vocals. That group of three played on pretty much everything. The Finn’s Motel production team is anchored by Matt Meyer. In addition to mixing and mastering and all the producer-y stuff, Matt is a supremely talented guitar player, string arranger/composer, player of just about anything including phone apps, and the occasional backing vocal singer. “Sleep Well Tonight” has an actual living, breathing string quartet playing parts that Matt composed, arranged, and recorded in a huge church building down on Jefferson, with a string quartet of: Sarah Velasquez, violin 1; Alyssa Avery, violin 2; Joe Gutowski, viola; Jake Brookman, cello. Matt also wrote a string arrangement for “Still Got Time,” but he "played" that one himself using some sort of application. We had a lot of help from guests on various songs, including: Toby Weiss, backing vocals on “Halo’s Glow;" Chris Grabau, guitars on “Sons of Saturn;" Jenn Malzone, piano on “Simple Math;" Eve Abaray, violin on “Quinta del Sordo,” voice over in Spanish as well as translation of poems.
To what degree does studio experimentation factor into this one, as opposed to a “tape rolling, kill it on the first cut,” approach? Perhaps here, you can also discuss any interesting happy accidents or unexpected breakthroughs that occurred during the recording process.
Kirchhoff: From the deciding moment to get the band in the recording studio, it was all about doing it the right way. What I wanted was for people to hear these old songs with new life, realize that they can still make you feel something. We went with Shock City because of their huge live room, ceilings are up to the next story, and a eight-piece band can move around with lots of space. We wanted to record live, with all of us, including myself, in the same room. For what we play and the energy we have with a crowd, it was the right way to create that same energy on a record. We used one mic for the bass, guitar, piano and drums, then one mic for the horns and one mic on me. Three mics for eight pieces. The magic of having a live room that can allow the sound to spread and breathe, and mics picking up this and that, is something you hear on all those old recordings. It was fun, but also a lot of work to do. Another step was to bring in a Mason and Hamlin upright piano through Matt Sellers at St. Louis Vintage Piano Co. When it came to mixing, I had many sessions and emails with edits between Sam and myself. The goal was to keep that life it the tracks, but balance it to take care of any peaking. Man, all I can say is saying that makes it sound so much easier than it is. I’d thought and said many times “I’d rather someone have the urge to listen again (let it grow on them) than listen to a ‘perfect’ cd with no life, no warmth and say 'they’re better live.'” In the end we did no mastering. It seemed to work against the mixing we did, and against whole sound and concept of the album.
Marek: It’s long been my policy to treat every track as its own experiment—even if the results aren’t particularly “experimental”—because if I try to follow a set formula, the results invariably bore me. I’m a dyed-in-the-wool recording geek who loves working out practical solutions to problems such as applying varispeed and backwards reverb to tracks on a digital workstation that can’t do either. The happiest accident was probably the strange, feedback-like cello squeal at the end of “Hark, The Light,” rescued from a previous take.
Renick: The big experiment on this record is the 12-minute opening track, which we will just call “Prologue” for brevity. I worked on it over many months. It is intended to be an evocative soundscape about change, dashed hopes, the ironies of life and what a “psychic train ride” might feel like. I stage a tornado near the end of the track to represent the actual resetting of my own life and journey when I started this album. Something ends, something else begins. That’s a theme that runs through my whole life, really. Another experimental piece is the instrumental “Mousie Goes Scampering.” I did that one with Andrea Morse, who plays a bit of Jaco-sque bass on it. Happy accidents? Well, my entire keyboard performance on “Girlfriends” might qualify in that regard. That wasn’t planned initially. Having Terri Langerak available to play actual harp on one song strikes me as unlikely, for sure! And the duel guitar instrumental on “Just Movin’ On” between Rick Haegg and Ted Moniak is one of the great moments of my entire career, not just this record. Also, Jacob Detering’s utterly surprising and poignant mix of “Different Without You” was seriously magical. I didn’t see that coming at all.
Thebeau: Even though the end result is usually a rock song, every song on this record started as an experiment. The demos are just a guitar and a vocal. The other stuff gets added as we go. We happen to dig rock, so it’s not unusual for the drums to be the next thing to go down along with a bass track. But, what the beat is and how it rolls along is very much a seat-of-the-pants-feeling in the moment kind of thing. What happens after that is dependent on where we collectively feel like the song wants to go. Matt really added a lot in terms of icing on the cake; stuff that I would maybe never have thought of.
In terms of each band’s/act's trajectory, describe where this music’s at in your own, personal history. In effect, brand new getting first material out? Longer-standing band with other releases out there in world? Somewhere in-between? If an album that follows others in your group’s life, how do it sound-and-feel in comparison to previous works?
Kirchhoff: This album is the second we’ve put out. The band lineup has changed along the years, landing at a point now with the people needed to do the material that, since even before the band was formed, was always my dream material to work with in a band. It’s been my favorite stuff since my teens! When the first album was released, that was about six years ago now, we’d been working on old '20s jazz for awhile already. There was no trad jazz “scene" and it was a lot of learning it all together. People always suggested moving to New Orleans, but I wanted it here in my town. Meeting Christian Frommelt and Jenny Shirar was an exciting point, young dancers who were also interested in getting this music here who ended up creating their event "The Nevermore Jazz Ball." What people new to this don’t know is that they started that event to bring it here, because it wasn’t here at all! Those first years of their event it was all out of town bands and us. Haha. Those times were really exciting, but also very hard. This album really celebrates us doing the music we love, digging into the old songs that we’re more connected to. Not being caught up in having to show and teach a type of music to an audience, prove that it’s valid. This is us being us, and the cool part is that it connects us to old St. Louis music. Even the cover is a visual that was based off the old 78 ads for songs coming out of here.
Marek: It’s the latest installment in an ongoing series, and as I continue to learn my craft as I go, hopefully each album sounds a little better than the previous. While I’d never describe any song or album of mine as strictly autobiographical, I think it reflects a more hopeful feeling in my life than, say, 2016’s DROWNER. As per usual, it’s my idiosyncratic take on classic pop songwriting, weirded-out by psychedelia, pomped-up by prog, and filtered through a DIY sensibility—whatever that means. I think my guitar solo on “Kettle of Fish” is a personal best.
Renick: This is my fifth release overall; if you count the Up In The Air soundtrack, it’s the sixth I have appeared on. I was in a rough place emotionally for most of this record, and I did not feel free to pursue other projects. I HAD to make this thing; it was mostly intended as a personally cathartic release. I’m incredibly glad it’s out and hope it touches some listeners. A great development on this record that makes it different from past work is that I played keyboards on a number of songs. In fact, “Grateful” is my first “just me at the piano” kinda thing. And despite the moody edge of much of the CD, I think “Fast and Off” and “These Things Happen” are two of the most commercial tracks I’ve ever recorded. I’ve gotten many fan messages about that first tune.
Thebeau: Finn’s Motel’s first record was Escape Velocity in 2006. We were working on songs for the follow-up during 2007 up through 2009 or so. A series of family and work situations caused us to put it all on hold for a while. And I went back to school from 2010-2013. During that time I would write and record in fits and starts. But, I picked it all back up in earnest in 2014 and recruited Matt to mix/co-produce. It took us three years of mixing and mastering but we got two new records released in 2017—Jupiter Rex and Quinta del Sordo. As far as the sound, I think that the core band being the same for that entire time has resulted in there being some consistency. Although I like to think there is a broad range of song styles, it all seems to sound like us, if that makes sense.
For some of you, upcoming shows are right around the corner. What are your next shows?
Kirchhoff: We just did the Focal Point, which was a really meaningful gig to me. We play to dancers and regular crowds, which are the best for energy, but this was a first chance in St. Louis to talk about the songs. A lot of our material is from here, so it really meant something to me to explain the music to people. We’ve got a really cool NYE gig planned at Das Bevo (the old Bevo Mill) and I love that, because I’m also really into historic buildings. Our weekly at Bottleworks (Wednesdays 8-11) is a cool way just to see us be a regular bunch of musicians in town.
Marek: Aside from the occasional open mic night here and there, I’ve got nothing on my plate at the moment, but am open to any promising and/or interesting offers that may come my way. Anybody got any promising and/or interesting offers?
Renick: I play at Off Broadway on Saturday, January 6 with my Neil Young tribute band, Shakey Deal. My friend Brian Capps, from Springfield, is opening for us. On Jan. 12, Ted Moniak and I play at Soulard Art Gallery from 7-9:30.
Thebeau: March 3, 2018 at Atomic Cowboy with American Professionals and Fine To Drive. (Ampros includes Chuck Lindo, who makes his home in SF, but is formerly of the Nukes from STL. Fine To Drive includes Mike Eisenbeis, also formerly of the Nukes.)
Most importantly, where can people find your new music? Whether that be an online streaming service or the local mom/pop record store, what’re the best ways to hear this music?
Kirchhoff: The album is available online at the regular spots (iTunes, Amazon, CDbaby, Spotify). You can also pick up physical copies at our shows or online at CDbaby. In the next couple weeks they will be at Euclid Records in St. Louis. Or you can always contact us through miss-jubilee.com. There’s a possible extra song release that will be through that website or our Facebook page.
Marek: The best place to stream or buy online is my Bandcamp site, where you’ll find a wide variety of my music both new and old. And if you run into me in person I’d be happy to sell you a CD-R or two.
Renick: It’s out there now: iTunes, Spotify, Amazon and CDbaby.com all have it, and my ReverbNation page has a handful of the songs for streaming. Limited physical copies are at Vintage Vinyl and Planet Score in Maplewood.
Thebeau: All Finn’s Motel recordings are available on CD and via all the streaming services. If you live in St. Louis, you can buy our stuff at Euclid Records, Vintage Vinyl, and Planet Score. We sell the newer CDs/downloads via Bandcamp.” Escape Velocity” is available via Scat Records.
