| |
|
 |
 |
 |
|
 Union: Middle English from Old French, or from ecclesiastical Latin unio(n-) ‘unity’, from Latin unus ‘one’ meaning:
The action or fact of joining or being joined.
A state of harmony or agreement.
An organised association of workers formed to protect and further their rights and interest OR an association formed by people with a common interest or purpose.
Well you’ll be pleased to know that Cleveland’s The Stereo Workers Union does exactly what it says on the tin!
From the way its ‘must have’ forthcoming album, ‘God Bless The Stereo Worker!’ has been recorded to the composition of the ‘band’, [ I mean union!], words like brotherhood, fellowship or alliance would have been equally adequate.
But of course how good would be a union without a union leader, and that comes in the great shape of charming, knowledgeable, focused, Cleveland born and bred Harold John DeBoe.
Instantly bowled over by Mr DeBoe’s versatile song writing, I am looking forward to 2007 vindicating my thinking that Ohio has produced another fine artist to join the likes of Chrissie Hynde, Tracy Chapman, Robert Pollard [GBV]......
Florence: Maybe we should start from the beginning with a little background history on The Stereo Workers...
How did you get to where you are today?
HJ: I’ve been making music with my friend Jon Sajetowski for a long time. We were aware of the music scene in San Francisco and one day being requested to be on some compilation we decided to move there.
I got to make friends with some of the guys from The Brian Jonestown Massacre who were around at the time and the guys who later on became the BRMC who were also there....
After a couple of years in San Fran. and writing tons of music I went back to Cleveland and started putting a band together and recorded a demo.
Eventually I met producer Rob Campanella through a mutual acquaintance and he offered to record one of my songs. It was basically him and I and his brother on drums. They loved it and Rob wanted to do a whole album.
At the time I was known as The New Loud and I brought a whole band over from Cleveland to LA but had to get rid of it half way through the project. Rob and I finished it with a bunch of guys from Brian Jonestown, Spindrift and other LA guys.
Rob and I wrote a song called ‘The Stereo Workers Union’ about this union of people and then he said: ”that should be the name of the
band.”
When I got home I played the record to my two favourite Cleveland bands and the singers from those bands said: “let’s get a band going right now! “ and that was about a year ago. So we have the singer-songwriter from The Volta Sound, Mike Cormier playing drums and The Dreadful Yawns’ Ben Gmetro playing bass plus my long time guitarist Fredo Garcia.
 Florence: The name of the band is so appropriate.
HJ: It’s exactly what it is, a union, just like the album was done with Anton Newcombe helping on the production of some of the songs and people from different bands just walking through playing different parts.
I also managed to do a duet with Mara Keagle called ‘Jesus Digs Cash’....
Florence: You’re clearly not too precious about your material.
HJ: No but I am to the point where I want final say about what’s gonna fly!
Rob is a super accomplished producer whilst I have no engineering skills whatsoever but I definitely know how I want the songs to sound and I’m careful about not letting something happen that I’m not comfortable with.
I’m not too precious because if you let things happen, especially at Rob’s studio, surrounded by a bunch of talented people, you’re bound to come up with something phenomenal that you probably would not have been able to come up with on your own.
Florence: The record you are talking about, ‘God Bless The Stereo Worker!’ is absolutely amazing. It’s fresh and exciting. However at times it gently drags you back to the David Bowie of yesteryear, among others. You certainly enjoy honouring your influences.
Tell me more about that.
HJ: To me everything starts with The Beatles.
As a child you soak up whatever your parents would listen to and they really liked that stuff. [They also had the ‘Double Fantasy’ album. I was five years old and I remember going on a family vacation and they played that record over and over again. It was after Lennon was murdered and my mum was choked up telling me his story].
The true discovery is when you’re an adolescent and you start picking the music that you’re gonna dig for the rest of your life.
You catalogue so many bands, so many sounds but certain bands tend to stand out and sometimes it has to do with their politics or the person that they are compare to the person that you are, or the person that you perceive them to be in comparison to who you are.
The next phase was David Bowie, late 60s all the way through to the mid 70s. That’s probably my biggest influence but I love so much stuff...I love Joy Division, and to me it seems like an obvious link to the same thing, great music is just great music!
My influences are far and wide for sure, from The Byrds to Bing Crosby. I love Neil Young almost as much as The Beatles and I would love to be able to just grab a guitar or an harmonica and do what he does but I don’t think that anyone can.
Florence: Your voice is very versatile.
When writing a track can you already hear where you’re gonna take the vocals?
HJ: Sometimes it starts out one way and then I think: ” I can probably do this and it would sound phenomenal “ or I start doing an harmony and I realise that maybe I should be doing it another way!
But for the most part I am probably ripping somebody off, in my mind, even though no-one catches it!
Florence: Should you be admitting to this so candidly?
HJ: To me it’s very simple. I’ve been inspired by somebody and personally I am not trying to combine Reggae, Rap and Jazz into my music. I am doing something that has already been done and I don’t have a problem with that because it’s the music that I love. I always have something in mind like: “today I want to write a song that sounds like this! “ but the final project really ends up being influenced by so many different other things and other bands that people don’t pick up on it. Sometimes the influences are so obvious it’s crazy and people recognise it straight away and I’m like: “Yeah! totally, I’ve just ripped off The Stones but so is everybody else! Sue me! “
I don’t think that there is anybody in our genre that isn’t ripping somebody off. We’re epically inspired by the music we listen to.
You’re so in love with the songs that you’re hearing that you can’t go home and play guitar without it having something to do with that.
It’s just that I am willing to admit it.
Then again our heroes were the first ones to admit that they were ripping off someone else, even though it doesn’t sound like Delta Blues for instance, people in the 60s were trying to be this or that.
I believe that it’s the way every single person writes if they’re doing Rock’n’Roll. You’re not gonna fucking reinvent the wheel man!
Then again sometimes it’s random, you just pick up a guitar and start playing chords and it just works out without you knowing where it’s coming from and that’s kind of magical.
David Bowie can turn his voice into anything, that’s why they called him a chameleon and I would like to think that vocally I am not limited either, that it comes out naturally.
 Florence: 2007 started on a high note for The Stereo Workers Union, notably on Feb. 3rd in Cleveland opening for Anton Newcombe and Rob Campanella’s acoustic show. Irrelevantly of how the evening went this must surely be the right kind of exposure for you.
Do you have high hopes for this year?
HJ: Absolutely I do!
I am finally in a position to put out an album.
Making this record was probably the best experience of my entire life.
You hear so many horror stories about the pains of being in a studio...
I lived at Rob’s studio for a month, sometimes recording until 4 or 5 am.
We would start at 5 or 6 pm and finish quite late. Everyday that I would have been happy to sleep until Noon or 1 pm, I’d wake up at 10 am with Anton Newcombe, who was spending a lot of time there as well, kicking me and saying: “Hey man! Are you on some sort of program in Ohio where they allow you to sleep and make money? Listen we’ve got things to do today my man, get up! “
That was literally everyday and it was kind of trippy to live for a month on five hours sleep, but it was fun though because you’re so happy to be up knowing that you’ve got another day recording.
It was an amazing experience and I definitely will go to pains to make the second record at the ‘headquarters*’ ‘cause it’s an experience in itself that I miss.
* Rob Campanella‘s LA studio is also known as ‘The Headquarters’ for ‘The Committee To Keep Music Evil’.
Florence: Tell me about the art scene in Cleveland?
HJ: On one side you’ve got New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and San Francisco and then you’ve got a dozen or so major cities that are nowhere near as big as the major four and Cleveland is one of those.
Unfortunately in Cleveland, which was built on blue-collar and working class, we also have one of the worst economies in the country. We have what is referred to as ‘brain drain’ and over the last five years we have lost, every single year, quarter a million people. Of course the people leaving are ‘smart’ people, artists and musicians.
The chances of being discovered in Cleveland are minimal so we loose some of the people that we would appreciate being around.
However, right now there is this rise of great talent in the city, there is no way of knowing why that is, but we’ve been able to gain some national recognition, be it from our peers, which we appreciate, bands like The Quarter After, The Brian Jonestown Massacre and other guys from LA or some of the guys from the New York scene and from fans.
We have the distinctive advantage of not having to pay shit to hone our craft, to practice or pay for studio time because we live in Cleveland. You can buy a house for next to nothing and set up a studio in it, and it’s all built on the back of the working class in a poorly designed city.
Florence: Despite the intrinsic hardship of your city I can also feel an equal amount of pride.
The working class is also very often associated with great music and somehow very passionate about it.
HJ: I think that anybody who hasn’t been handed everything, which is probably every single one of my friends, who had to work their ass off to accomplish what they’ve accomplished has a pride in that.
Jon and I grew up here and sometimes we’d get in fights, ran around and didn’t have curfews and did what the hell we wanted to. There wasn’t anybody telling us we had a prayer, telling us we had something special we should think about, but somehow we still had pride.
Pride in the city of Cleveland which has been nothing but a national joke since it was conceived. “The Mistake On The Lake” was built on a section of Lake Erie which guarantees to provide piss poor weather for nine months of the year. It was designed with nothing in mind but industries that no longer exists.
Luckily we still get every major tour. Blue collar people go to rock shows. A lot!
As a band we appreciate working class rock’n’roll enthusiast like ourselves. The Beatles were working class, so was Black Sabbath, Iron Butterfly...and that kinda appeals to people living in a shitty neighbourhood!
But then again you will take the time to listen to Pink Floyd.
Maybe the generation before us in Cleveland was very close minded and probably only liked midwestern Bruce Springsteen and John Cougar kind of shit but we were so fucking sick of hearing the only two rock channels that played that shit over and over again and maybe that’s why in our developmental years we decided to seek out other bands, wanting to get away from this bullshit so much that we were willing to like anything from anywhere.
Florence: What about home-grown talent right now?
HJ: The great thing is that everything goes in waves.
The last time we had a group of home-grown bands was around the time Chrissie Hynde was with The Pretenders. She called Cleveland her home even though Britain was where they really got things rolling.
She comes to Cleveland and put shows on all the time.
Florence: She’s not a Cleveland girl though, is she?
HJ: She’s actually from Akron, an even more disappointing city outside of Cleveland, also known as “The Rubber City” because of its only major industry.
But once again the music scene is very exciting.
It just happened and there isn’t a band it revolves around... there are four or five bands and we’re not necessarily all the same.
Obviously I’d recommend The Dreadful Yawns who were the last band Greg Shaw from Bomp! Records signed before he passed away. They’re now on Exit Stencil Records and they have a new album coming out which is absolutely phenomenal.
Another band I evidently really care about is The Volta Sound. They’re kind of psychedelic jamboree revival cult music and it really feels that way when you see them live. You can’t help but move. There are lots of tambourines and singalongs. It’s really great stuff.
Florence: Any touring planned this year for The Stereo Workers Union?
HJ: We’re hoping to do a month in the fall but the biggest thing we want to do is get to Europe because we’re pretty sure that there is an audience there that’s very like-minded, musically speaking.
Fortunately there is here in America too, more than ever but I feel that most of my favourite artists are from Europe and mainly Britain.
We’re gonna do our best to promote ourselves in The states, have fun playing shows and focus on the prize which for us is playing Europe.
As an artist you want to be liked by as many people as possible while being true to yourself. You’ve got a message and a belief you’ve created that you want to share with other people, and obviously America is a huge country and to be well liked throughout the country would mean a lot. But for us Europe is a big deal because of all the artists that we love, also the need to reach a wider audience, it’s prestigious and it’s being recognised by people who aren’t even from the same culture that you are. You’re universal and your message is world wide!
Words: Florence ACHERY
www.myspace.com/thestereoworkersunion |
|
 |
|
 |
|
