Taking care of business

by Jonathan Perry
photos by Eric Antoniou

Local male vocalist Aaron Perrino

The first thing you notice about Sheila Divine singer-guitarist Aaron Perrino is how soft-spoken he is. When we meet for an interview at the Middle East bakery, I have to move my tape recorder closer to his side of the table. It's not that I had expected that careening, needle-in-the-red singing voice to come out in conversation. But I certainly didn't expect such shy repose from a guy whose voice, to paraphrase what music journalist Evelyn
McDonnell once said about Polly Jean Harvey, was meant to fill theaters with sound.

Q: So, congratulations. I looked up some of the past winners for Best Male Vocalist -- Black Francis was in there, and Mark Sandman, and Dicky Barrett, so you're in pretty good company. Are you surprised at winning?

A: Um, I mean, it's cool. I think I'm the best [laughs].

Q: What drew you to singing in the first place? Was it something that you always knew you wanted to do, or could do?

A: Well, since I was five, I thought I was going to be a singer. But I never sang in chorus or anything in high school or grade school. My friend [and I] started a band in high school, and he played keyboards and we had a drummer and I couldn't play an instrument, so I just started singing. I was really bad. And then we got more musicians involved, and I started screaming a little more. And then I got a guitar and I started writing songs, around 19.

Q: Describe yourself as a singer: what are your particular strengths? What do you find yourself constantly working on and
refining?

A: I definitely have been working on my voice melody-wise, and trying to see how high I can go and the level of loudness I can get to. I want to start taking lessons again. I definitely would take opera lessons -- I love it. I want to use that, but in a rock sense. Only a few people have really done that without making it sound like show tunes.

Q: What do you like best about yourself as a singer?

A: That's a tough one. I'm really bad with self-analysis stuff. But, you know, I think I try pretty hard on stage to do as much as my body will let me do. And I realize that some people really can't do it. It's funny. I'm sort of quiet. I am soft-spoken -- always -- and then on stage . . . I don't understand it [smiles].

Q: A lot of the comparisons you guys get are to '80s references -- especially, with your voice, to people like Bono, because of the sense of drama you bring to the stage.

A: Well, Bono's my favorite singer of all time, I would say. I don't know what it is in his voice, but it's believable almost always. If anyone knew what it was, it would just be a formula. He's the real deal. I mean, I don't believe it -- I don't think I'm as good as Bono. But, you know, it's nice. I take it as a compliment.

Q: What did you want out of the Sheila Divine when you started? Did you always know that a feel for the epic would be part of the identity of the band?

A: No, because we really didn't know what we were. Jim [Gilbert, the bassist] just kept bothering me to play. I went to college with them [Gilbert and drummer Shawn Sears], and I was trying out for all these bands in the Phoenix ads. And I finally just jammed with him, and it was really good. But I don't sit down with any kind of a plan that this is the way I want to be. I mean, I definitely have a style that I write in, but I don't think we set out to write epics or
anything.

Q: What was the hardest adjustment in getting the band off the ground?

A: There really wasn't. I knew Mahmood [Shaikh] at the Middle East, and we had basically only had a rehearsal space for a week. And I said to him, "Well, I finally got my band going," and he said, "I have a show for you in July if you want to do it." So we had two weeks to get ready for this show, and we just rehearsed every day. And we got signed two months after that. So yeah, it was easy. But at the same time, we pretty much worked 24 hours a day at doing it. . . . Shawn was my best friend, but he was never musical. He had played drums when he was, like, 10, for six months. And so I said, "I have a drum set, you played when you were 10 -- try to do it." And I never thought that he would make it the whole way. I thought it would be a fun outlet to drink beer and rock until we found a drummer. But he stepped up and really got into it.

Q: That's amazing that you found your footing so quickly.

A: Well, I had already done the failing-band thing for three years, and Shawn and I both went to school for music industry, so we knew how the business worked, and we knew what you had to do. A lot of my friends who are in great bands complain that nothing ever happens to them. But they don't understand that if you want to make music your career, it's like starting anything -- a restaurant or whatever. It takes stupid business stuff that no one would ever want to do, and ridiculous stuff that has nothing to do with rock.

Q: There are bands around town that are successful and get criticized for their business acumen. Is that tough, coping with people's impression that somehow the music's not pure?

A: Well, it's just a fact of life. You could pick the most "indie" person, and I bet you that if they're successful, they're probably a hell of a businessperson. . . . That's one thing I've learned, because we just got dropped [from Roadrunner] -- and I'm happy about it -- but right now, I don't know if we should pursue a major-label thing or if we should go in the indie direction. Because with bands like the Promise Ring, even though you hit a level where you can't get any higher, they're probably making 10 times the amount of money that they would on a major and not having to answer to anybody. We got lazy for a while and thought [Roadrunner] were going to handle everything, and we kind of hit a wall when nothing happened. And they don't call you, and you're like, "What am I doing? This is my life, and no one's doing anything!" So we got much more proactive and started trying to get tours and just handle everything ourselves. And I think we pretty much doubled our album sales.

Q: What is it about the Sheila Divine that resonates with people?

A: I think the music's real, but we're also real people, and I think it's our personal touch. I'm just trying to keep it about regular guys who play hard, you know? I like the Replacements' attitude of just getting up there and rocking and then going to the bar and drinking a beer.

Q: There's a lot of competition here among bands when it comes to getting the best slots in the best clubs. Did you guys feel any of that, coming as you do from New York?

A: People are uptight. I love so many of the bands here. The first show I went to when I moved here was the Dambuilders, the Elevator Drops, and Cherry 2000. And I was like, "Oh my God, my band sucks! Why did I even move here?" Because every band just ripped it up, I thought.

Q: You said the scene is uptight. In terms of people worrying about the next step?

A: It's just a lot of angry people, and it shouldn't be like that. I always ask people that I'm really into to open for our shows, and a lot of my friends helped me in the beginning, letting us open for them. But we opened for Groovasaurus at Harpers Ferry and people were making fun of me, saying, Why are you doing that? And I said, They have a huge fan base -- why wouldn't I do that? And they were really nice, and it was great. We got so many fans from that, just regular people. It's those places that seem to get the real fans. I tell my friends you should play places you wouldn't think to play, because that's where you get normal people who aren't concerned about "the scene." They couldn't give a crap. I mean, we've done some uncool things, but who cares?

Q: Any incredible mismatches?

A: We did the Kid Rock/Powerman 5000 festival in Florida, and it was like an episode of Cops. Everyone in the audience were just friggin' hoodlums. I had 10,000 people yelling "Fuck you!", giving me the finger. I got hit in the face with a bottle. They hated us. But we're kind of getting beyond that now, to where we're actually starting to pack them in outside of Boston. People are coming.