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[Cellars]
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Fresh starts
Steve Powers and Adam Buhler team up; Jimmy Ryan goes solo
BY BRETT MILANO

When Steve Powers first met Adam Buhler, he had a panic attack and couldn’t play guitar. So the two decided to blow off his audition, get really stoned, and talk about classic rock. Next thing they knew, they were in a band together.

That may be an unlikely story, but Sparkola are a pretty unlikely band. The two principals’ backgrounds couldn’t be more different: Buhler has a high local profile and a growing national one, whereas Powers’s only previous outfit was Plank, who never left the studio. They’re both guitarists, but Powers is a long-time rock guy and Buhler was in a handful of stylish electronic bands. What’s more, after stints with Sirensong, Splashdown, and wife Cynthia von Buhler’s band the Countess, Buhler had never been in a group with a male frontperson. But chemistry is chemistry, and it didn’t take long for the two to figure out that they had it.

It was Powers’s girlfriend Melissa (now his wife) who started pestering Buhler with his demo tape. "She probably asked me about 89 times. I always say no, because we get so many demos at CVB [the label run by Adam and Cynthia]. Usually it’s people who haven’t done any research of what kind of label it is and what kind of music I like. She kept hounding me until I played Steve’s tape — it was pretty rough and ready, but there were some real bright flashes of light in there." More to the point, the two realized they got along. "We shared some things that really aren’t that typical, like an appreciation for classic rock. We also liked to smoke a ton of grass — okay, that’s not so atypical."

You might not pick those influences up from Sparkola’s homonymous debut — for one thing, you probably wouldn’t expect a band who love pot to get through 11 songs in a concise 35 minutes. And despite their professed love for classic rock — for which I can vouch, having spotted Adam at a couple of Yes concerts — Sparkola is a thoroughly modern rock album. In fact, in its way it’s one of the more obvious hits ever to come out of the CVB camp. Credit that partly to Powers’s songwriting, which is smart, catchy, and varied ("Working on It," inspired by the day-job grind and sporting a chorus of "I’ve got my people working on it," settles the question of whether he can write hooks). He also has the kind of rough and grainy voice that rock radio currently loves; and what sound like occasional female back-up vocals are in fact "me doing my sissy falsetto." It’s clear that he could also do the Eddie Vedder/Scott Stapp howl with the best of them — but he gets extra points for refraining.

For his part, Buhler plays bass (instead of his usual guitar) and gets to run wild as a producer, filling the tracks with natural and electronic instrumental details. The intro to the opening track, "Climbing Out Your Window," is a clue as to what the album is all about. The first thing you hear is an acoustic guitar and hand drums, which give it the feel of a Zeppelin ballad; then programmed rhythms and synthesizer jabs break through on the choruses. But whereas Garbage sounded overly clever when they tried a similar trick on their last album, here the idea sounds live and natural, as the programmed band kick in with the energy of a real one. (Drummer Jason Sakos fills out a few tracks; he also plays with Sparkola live.)

"I wanted to mix the classic rock sound with the things I was doing in Splashdown, sort of looking forward and backward at the same time," Buhler says. "I thought that would make an interesting stew, like a new mix of chocolate and peanut butter."

Sparkola actually formed a year and a half ago — around the same time the Countess project took off — and Buhler says he tweaked each of the individual tracks for months at a time. This was easy enough to do, since the whole disc (save the live drum parts) was recorded directly to a Macintosh computer in his living room.

"Even if the music had completely sucked, we would have kept going because we were having such a good time," Powers says. Buhler adds, "We had the Mac, one microphone, a couple of guitars, and many bags of Ted Nugent beef jerky. My personal preference is for sonic density; I like it thick. Everything was done in 24-track, and I made sure to use up all the available space." Powers continues, "We’re such perfectionists that whenever we found one word that didn’t sound great, we’d take it out and redo it until it was right." And Buhler concludes, "I didn’t sleep too much while we were doing it."

The surprise is that old Splashdown fans have been the first to show up at the gigs, even though the music is such a departure. "That’s not what I was expecting, but I love it," Buhler says. "At least, the more open-minded ones came along. The ones that were into the gentler pop side of Splashdown are the ones we probably lost." Buhler is also working on a solo album with various singers, including Melissa Kaplan from Splashdown. But he’s happy to play the Svengali role in Sparkola, letting Powers be the star — he even feels willing to court the major labels, despite Splashdown’s getting famously screwed by one two years ago. "I’m pretty allergic to that scene," he says. "But I think Steve deserves a shot." Sparkola’s next local gig is August 17 at the Linwood Grille.

IF YOU’RE GOING TO BE a full-time mandolin player in the rock world, you’ve got to have attitude. Former Blood Oranges and Wooden Leg member Jimmy Ryan, who makes his solo bow with the just-released Lost Diamond Angel, may be one of the nicer guys on the local scene. But you still wouldn’t want to be the one asking him why he’s never moved on to guitar.

"I get so much shit from people asking about that," he says. "We live in such a guitar/bass/drums universe that it’s ridiculous. People say, ‘Why don’t you just play guitar?’, and I say, ‘What are you, a lemming? How is rock and roll a rebellion when everybody’s doing the same thing?’ Besides, I’ve tried it and I can’t really play guitar. But I’ve always thought the mandolin can be used in other than the stereotypic setting. Then there’s all the producers who’ve said [sarcastic] things like, ‘Mandolin? That really rocks, dude.’ And I say, ‘Oh, yeah? Guitar didn’t rock either until you plugged it in, asshole.’ "

You probably wouldn’t know by listening that there are almost no guitars on Lost Diamond Angel — and in part that’s Ryan’s demonstration of what his instrument can do. He opens the disc with what sounds like a blast of slide guitar (actually an electric five-string mandolin), and he plays a heavy, wah-wah solo on "Hardtime." Backed by most of the Morphine/Twinemen/Lizard Lounge axis — drummers Billy Conway and Billy Beard, saxophonist Dana Colley, singer Laurie Sargent — he plays down his bluegrass roots and plugs into the moody bohemian sound associated with those players. Only on the old-timy-sounding "Face Up" (actually an original, like everything else here) does he return to the style of playing that first inspired him. He says it was Ry Cooder’s albums that turned him on to mandolin rather than the acoustic Led Zeppelin songs most of us heard.

Although he co-founded the Blood Oranges (who briefly reunited last year and may do the same later this year), led Wooden Leg for five years, and is currently a mainstay in Catie Curtis’s band, Ryan never considered a solo album until this year. "Billy Conway made me do it," he admits. "I had no desire on any level to do one. We were playing on Catie’s tour, and he starts saying I had to make a record. And I’m like, ‘Bill, that’s going to be such a pain in the ass.’ Guess I had to get used to using my own name, owning up to being the guy instead of being in a band. That’s what he was trying to get my mind wrapped around."

Not released to stores as yet, the disc is available through amazon.com and at gigs. Instead of playing out solo, Ryan is planning a September residency at the Lizard Lounge with the Dangerous Brothers, a project he shares with Hybrasil singer Christian McNeill. They’ll be joined by guitarist Duke Levine and by Dave Mattacks, the legendary Fairport Convention drummer who’s now based in the Boston area. And what kind of music will they play? "I guess I’m folk-rock if you have to put a name on it, which is what you do when you make a record. But 45-year-old mandolin players aren’t a particularly hot commodity, and I ain’t wearing no bare midriff."

Issue Date: July 25 - August 1, 2002
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