Photography by Patrick Lanham and Three Merry Widows
Last weekend, the core quartet of instrumentalists of Three Merry Widows gathered inside Room 2 of Utopia Studios, getting together for two days of marathon rehearsals in advance of their April 5 reunion show at Delmar Hall. Physically absent was vocalist Alice Spencer, though her voice was looped into action through the miracles of modern technology; and auxiliary player Kevin Buckley, whose violin features prominently on their new album, I Was the Moon, and who will guest with the group next month while also playing with his own opening band, Grace Basement.
On-hand were original-era Widows Sean Garcia (vocals and guitar), Brian Simpson (guitar), and Charles Shipman (bass) along with drummer Danny Hommes, who joined the band in advance of their single, prior reunion show, which happened back in February 2015. Since that show, the band undertook one of the most interesting, unusual recording projects in recent St. Louis music vintage, as the band pieced together songs from their early '90s run at Sawhorse Studios. Over two years, they traded digital demos, tied in via Skyped feedback sessions and otherwise used every possible tool they could to coax their long-awaited second album to life.
In conversation with the band during a break, it was Shipman who provided the most stark comment about the experience, noting that he’d not only missed seeing Spencer during the recording process, he has not even been in the room as her since February 7, 2015, when the band played their one-off reunion gig at The Ready Room. For a band that once existed as something of a five-headed organism, that reality is kinda shocking and, today, only Hommes and Garcia reside in St. Louis.
Of the album’s lengthy birth, Spencer says over the phone with understatement that “it was an unusual way to approach it. I certainly have never done a record like this before, where all of the tracks were pretty much done. Normally with Three Merry Widows, the process was about doing everything together, everything was done live. We’d track live and build on that foundation. Somehow, it really worked. I don’t know where the credit for that lies, but the tracks that the guys laid down had so much energy that it felt really natural. When I went in to lay down my vocals, it felt like we were all in the same room together. That speaks to the bond that we have, the history, the relationships that we share and that musical bond. I don’t know how to explain that the album sounds like we’re all together, though I recorded some of it 1,000 miles away in a different studio.”
True enough, Spencer tracked some vocals with Andrea Perry at Cicada Studios, in Austin, with engineer Jason McEntire helming the intermittent weekend sessions at Sawhorse.
“It’s not ideal,” Shipman figures, “but it wouldn’t have happened at all without this technology. During it, I thought all the time of how I couldn’t believe the number of steps involved.”
A bulk of the work was a matter of stitching together all the disparate pieces, which, of course, needed both technical expertise and good ears, brought by the band, McEntire, and mixer Brad Sarno. But as important was the simple idea of how to best interpret songs that were written over two decades ago.
Simpson believes that “I think we felt open to do whatever we wanted to do (with the songs). There was nothing that we were so tied to that we couldn’t change it. The songs had been there so long that we could explore them a bit more.”
Garcia adds that “this music was conceived and written so long ago that, in some ways, it was easy coming back to it with a more mature mind-set.”
For those unfamiliar, the group formed in St. Louis in the late ’80s, coalescing into the classic lineup when Garcia joined founders Shipman, Simpson, and drummer Matt Albert; he then convinced Spencer to join the band and TMW’s sound, intra-band dynamics, and popularity shifted dramatically. Playing a host of St. Louis venues, the band established a growing fan base in St. Louis before decamping to Boston in the hopes of gaining additional exposure to record labels. Their gambit paid off, with TVT Records inking the band to a deal that would see the release of Which Dreamed It? in 1991. With the band back in St. Louis by the time of the release, the group would tour regionally, sharing the stage with a variety of national acts. (In the interests of disclosure, this writer shared housing with several band members during this TVT period.)
The relationship between the label and the band would sour, though, and even as the group had prepped the material for a second album, the lack of a lead pop song became a sticking point, with the band eventually ceasing operations rather changing up their songwriting aesthetic. The dozen songs that make up I Was the Moon are essentially the same ones that would’ve made up a 1993 follow-up, and they sound like a natural, organic follow-up to the band’s debut.
While a few cuts were traded via cassettes (and later mp3s) by the most hardcore fans and were played onstage in the early '90s, these songs primarily existed only in the minds of band members for over 25 years. Live, they were given that test spin in 2015.
Spencer says that going back to the material then was unique, as “some songs were very foggy, and others felt like just yesterday, with instant recall. The arrangements are tricky, because we always change them for live show segues. I was so grateful to work with a new drummer for the reunion show, because we had to work on things a lot. I needed that refresher course. The biggest trip for me is singing these lyrics. You look back on them and I know I wrote this one about an argument with so-and-so, or I can remember exactly what we were doing as people with another.
“It’s such a surreal experience,” she adds, “playing music with people after, well, we’re looking at about 30 years, I guess. They’re strong feelings, because this is stuff that we wrote as kids. But there’s so much love and respect between us. It’s amazing to get to go back and play with people and share these songs again. I’m glad we finally got to make the record.”
Shipman adds that “maybe because this album’s been in our lives all this time, playing these songs doesn’t feel like a strange, new thing. For me, these are the songs now, this is what we are now.”
The songs of I Was the Moon will make up the bulk of the band’s set at Delmar Hall on April 5. Simpson figures that about 30 tracks are in the mix for possible play, but fewer than the 22 songs played at The Ready Room will make the final setlist. Pleasing old-school fans of Which Dreamed It? while satisfying their own itch to play the “new” material will call for some edits.
While the band’s core did manage to log about a dozen hours of rehearsal over their weekend together, another intense round will occur before April, this time with Spencer and Shipman finally in the same room. Last weekend’s rehearsals left the band satisfied, yet wanting more.
“It did feel great right away,” Simpson says. “We’re still in the work phase, right? We weren’t in the performance phase. But it feels good, it feels right.”
Three Merry Widows’ new album, “I Was the Moon” was digitally released on Bandcamp on February 14. Streaming clips can also be heard on the group’s new site. A vinyl pressing will available at the band’s Delmar Hall show, via album designer Jim Harper’s new concern, Fine Print Small Press.
