Stateside
Twice As Gone
Disgraceland Records 00002868


by William Michael Smith

After hearing Stateside's Twice as Gone and Scott Miller's Thus Always To Tyrants, I think I've stumbled onto a new musical formula. Take a Knoxville songwriter with a sack full of good tunes and hook him up with some edgy Nashville hired gun musicians, run through a couple of rehearsals, put them in a studio with a competent knob twister, throw a wah pedal on the floor, kick in a little distortion, turn up the volume, shove the synthesizers and string sections and gushy backup choirs out the door, push the RECORD button, and get the hell out of the way. Judging from Twice As Gone and Miller's earlier record, that's all it takes to get a CD full of rocking tunes with great lyrics and plenty of rebellious, in-your-face attitude.

John Paul Keith, former bandmate, roommate and songwriting mate of Miller's, quit the V-Roys and departed Knoxville for the commercial music canyons of Nashville about the time The V-Roys signed with Steve Earle's E-Squared Records. Simply put, The V-Roys were heading toward the Americana niche and Keith wanted to keep on rocking.

True to his desires, Keith is still rocking. After putting together The Nevers with another Knoxvillean, Paul Noe (formerly of the Judybats, now a partner in Disgraceland Studios and bassist for Opposable Thumbs), Keith experienced the typical insane rock and roll rollercoaster ride that took The Nevers to a major label deal with Sire Records and a still-unreleased album (or as Keith refers to it, a Never-to-be-released album) in less than a year only to see the band, like so many bands in the late '90s mired in corporate funk, uncertainty and downsizing, break up in 1999.

About a year ago Keith began playing with three pillars of the Nashville rock scene, guitarist Adam Landry (Keith Gattis, Blue Moon Junction), drummer Brad Pemberton (Patty Griffin, Iodine) and bass man Billy Mercer (Nick Kane, Kim Richey). How good are these guys? Well, suffice it to say that the rhythm section (Keith, Pemberton and Mercer) has a side project known as The Pink Hearts. The Pink Hearts are fronted by former Whiskeytowner Ryan Adams, possibly the hottest property on the indy/Americana scene at the moment.

Twice As Gone is Stateside's first record, but it doesn't sound like a first album nor should it given the fact that nine of the tracks are songs Keith wrote for The Nevers album. Seven of the nine songs made the cut for inclusion on the never released Nevers album. Ironically the Sire producers nixed "You Were Made For Me" (written when Keith was 19) and "After Dark," the opening track on the new album. "I'm Not The One" was written after the Nevers record was finished but before the 1999 breakup, while "Long Way Down" and "Salt In The Wound" were written while Stateside was coming together.

With respected Nashville engineer Chad Brown producing, Stateside's sound is big, bright and full, exactly what Keith's 3-minute, hooks-laden songs require. There's plenty of fuzz and distortion and chunky three-chord rhythm and from the first track there is an "I've-heard-this-before" element at play. If you like big-beat power pop rock bands like The Plimsouls or Tom Petty, Stateside will fit seamlessly into your collection. Not only is there a musical similarity, there is considerable similarity between Keith's voice and those of Plimsoul's front man Peter Case and Petty. This is not a bad thing at all. Keith can flat sing, and the scald he puts on his songs makes any similarities with others completely irrelevant.

Musically 26 year-old Keith and his mates haven't tried to reinvent the wheel or make the listening experience hard labor. Their preferred mode is three-to-four-minute radio friendly songs and they stick to that formula throughout Twice As Gone. After recently wading through numerous rock records where the artists seem to have done everything in their power to "be different" and abstract, I've got zero complaints with Stateside's approach. When they are rocking hard, they tend to take one of two avenues: on tunes like "After Dark" and "Little Black Dress" there is a tight British rock sound like Jeff Lynne got from Petty's band whereas songs like "Salt In The Wound" and "Gone For Good" are delivered with a looser, funkier Southern rock approach. Given the quality of the playing, either avenue is a pleasure to be on.

Lyrically Keith shows many of the talents and tendencies that identify him as a Knoxville transplant. His lyrics are smart and literate. They also demonstrate that penchant for power pop like many of Knoxville's best acts as well as an above average ability to find the bottom line in interesting human interaction situations, like the conversation in "After Dark."

Somebody started looking good
Somebody's wondering if they should
Go home with what they've gone without
After dark in the shadow of a doubt

Baby, baby, don't you get me wrong
Baby, don't misunderstand my song
You're just as lovely in the daylight too
But after dark there is only you

The title track shows Keith also knows how to do an autopsy on a relationship gone bad. Like a pathologist probing for the fatal bullet, Keith unflinchingly locates the cause of death.

I have played the fool
Broken my own rules
Long before you ever came along
You are not the first
And you are not the worst
But it adds up and now I'm half as strong
And twice as gone

Keith has a moody, pensive John Lennon thing working on the brooding, snarly-lipped, you-got-what-you-deserved, no-love-lost "Long Way Down."

How's it feel, babe
To fall for real, babe
And hit the cold hard ground
Welcome down here
To a lower hemisphere
Ain't it a long way down
Maybe I'll see you around

While Keith has the ability and experience to work in almost any genre or style, he absolutely excels at the in-your-face, kick-out-the-jams three-chord rockers like "Little Black Dress." The rhythm section steamrolls everything in its path and Landry shows his considerable chops on this knock-down-the-walls-in-two-minutes sizzler.

You ask if a rose is red
And I answer yes
But violets don't make me blue
Like that little black dress do

Sometimes mascara runs
And makes an awful mess
But sometimes straps come undone
On that little black dress

The band hits that lazy Tom Petty groove on "Gone For Good," a track with plenty of chip-on-the-shoulder attitude, cement mixer rhythms and stellar two-part harmonies. I just kept hitting REPLAY on this cut. Seeing them in print, there doesn't appear to be much that is special about the lyrics, but combined with this music and these voices, the lyrics have a dramatic and almost hypnotic effect.

If I go you won't love me
But if I stay you'll hate me more
But I would go if I said I would, babe
And if I go at all I'll be gone for good

Stateside can turn down the volume and break hearts, they just don't do much of it. "Saturday Night Forever" certainly fits the historical subject matter criteria for a memorable rock ballad. Find me a female who doesn't like this song, and I'll show you a female you don't want to be with.

She wants to go
Where it's Saturday night forever
The weekend of the Twelfth of Never
Only sooner
She wants to be
Where Sunday requires no assembly
Monday is only a memory
Or a rumor

Saturday night forever
Saturday night forever
Saturday night forever
And ever more

She gets so tired
Punching the clock every day
Maxxed out on minimum wage
And counting dimes
She wants to stay
Where she never gets any older
The chips are down off of her shoulder
And she can unwind

"No Such Thing As You" finds Stateside in another perfect, irresistible rock groove like they found on "Gone For Good." This tune would fit on any Plimsoul's record. Call me simple, but I can listen to these chunky mid-tempo rockers over and over, especially when they come equipped with that Peter Case I've-got-Roger-McGuinn-sunglasses-and-I'm-super-cool vocal mannerism. In this dueling guitars track, Keith shows the twangy side of his guitar chops while Landry trumps with a distorted flurry on his Les Paul. If you like two-guitar rock in the three-minute-hit form, it doesn't get any better than this.

To wind the record down, Stateside takes a page from British power pop a la Freddie Mercury with a gentle, sincere break-up ballad, "I'm Not The One." The track has a sophisticated, orchestrated, drama-enhancing pop ballad arrangement that is essential in any thoughtful, sensitive, melancholy, you'll-be-better-off-without-me song.

You want me to feel
Everybody's pain
And you want me to cry
Every time it rains
And you want me to tell you
What you can't explain
But I'm not the one
I'm not the one

With choice lines like "You tell me what to say/You tell me what to do/All I have to give is/Not enough for you" and an ending that asks "No I didn't mean/To let it go this far/But we can't change it now/By wishing on a star/Who do you expect to/Tell you who you are," Keith takes relationship analysis to new depths of realism.

With his Nevers material exhausted and Twice As Gone finally in the stores, Keith is eagerly looking forward to the day when Stateside will record their next album with material that will be purely Stateside. "Since completing the CD, I've written another album's worth of material," Keith said, "including a few which are collaborations with Adam Landry." Keith assures that the next record will be musically similar although it won't be a carbon copy in any sense.

I suppose some listeners may find Twice As Gone to be too straight ahead or "simple" for their tastes in rock. Some might even find this type of effort to be passé. I don't. In fact, I say if you really like rock and you like to rock, you can't go wrong with Stateside's Twice As Gone. It is well written and well played, it's got attitude to spare, and (the true test of good rock) the louder you play it the more fun it becomes. I know it's only rock and roll but I like it.

* That little studio that could, Disgraceland, has come up with another winner (Twice As Gone was the #2 seller at Miles of Music in its first week). But you can make sure the band maximizes its take on the copy you buy by purchasing it through www.statesiderocks.com . Tell 'em Rockzilla sent you.





Contact William Michael Smith at: wms-at-rockzilla.net

 
View My Guestbook
Sign My Guestbook