BABY, WE GOT NEWS FOR YOU Kelley Stoltz
Nov 29, 2010
The songwriter's ever-widening circle of friends includes the Dirtbombs, Sonny & the Sunsets, Echo & the Bunnymen and Nuggets-era rocker Pete Miller.
BY JENNIFER KELLY
Kelley Stoltz is not normally big on covers.
In fact, you'd have to go all the way back to his one-off CD Crock-A-Dials, a tribute to his beloved Echo & the Bunnymen to find much in the way of other people's songs in Stoltz's catalogue. His own five full-lengths are full of allusions to older songwriters - Beatles, Kinks, Beach Boys and others - but freshened up and touched with a sweet, faintly goofy intelligence that is all Stoltz's own.
That's why it's so surprising that To Dreamers, Stoltz's sixth album (released earlier this fall by Sub Pop), has a cover right at its heart. The song "Baby, I've Got News for You," was written by Pete Miller, a Nuggets-era rocker, who ended up playing guitar for Stoltz on the track.
"It was just such an incredible song," Stoltz remembers, explaining that his Australian guitar player Mike Young had turned him onto it. "Mike and I couldn't believe it was really from 1965. There were elements of Troggs, but then other parts that sounded so advanced. We thought maybe it was an internet hoax...somebody from now putting on a 1960s persona."
Through the internet, Stoltz began putting Miller's story together. "He had recorded with Joe Meek in the 1950s and played 130-odd shows with the Beatles," said Stoltz. Even odder, it turned out that Miller had moved to San Francisco in 1970. He had opened a recording studio and recorded early Bay Area punks like the Avengers.
Stoltz tracked Miller down and started bugging him, finally getting him to sit in when he recorded "Baby I Got News for You" for his new album. "He's a real inspiration, still making records of his stuff and popping out new songs and ideas," said Stoltz. "He's still chasing his muse."
So is Stoltz, as it turns out. His latest album is full of the wistful, 1960s drenched pop songs that have always been his trademark, but there are also some rockers. For those, you can thank the Dirtbombs, who brought Stoltz out on tour with them in 2008. "For a guy like me to try and keep up with them, it was tough," said Stoltz. "They have an open-minded fan base so 50% of the people were into it every night. But still, I knew if I had a 45-minute set of uptempo rock songs, it would go over."
When he returned to the Bay Area, he played more shows with more rock bands and - through a process that he calls partly conscious and partly osmosis - started to rock out a little himself. The album version of "I Like, I Like" is downright rowdy, an inebriated, all-hands-on-deck romp through one of Stoltz's earthiest compositions.
"I was also listening to a lot of Stiff records stuff," Stoltz recalled, in trying to explain his raucous new songs. "I was just kind of interested in punk rifferies...with maybe a little bit of songwriter's craft."
But if Stoltz seems more enamored of rocking rhythms lately, it might be because of his side work. "I've been playing a lot of drums for other people which has been awesome because I think it's the instrument that I was really meant to play," he said.
Stoltz has been drumming on his own records from the beginning. He learned on a borrowed drum set that a punk rocking roommate left unattended in the apartment. These days, you can hear Stoltz playing drums on Stephanie Finch's new album Cry Tomorrow, recorded with Stoltz, her husband Chuck Prophet and Rusty Miller about a year ago. You can also catch him slinging the sticks for Sonny and the Sunsets, a band fronted by his long-time friend Sonny Smith. "We always have listened to each other's stuff and adding this and that, and so he asked me to be his drummer. That's been a real blast, too," he said.
"I just love playing drums," he said. "Everybody plays guitar and bass to me is just more boring guitar, guitar without any of the thrill. If you like doing the same thing, over and over again, then you're a bass player. But the drums... it's just fun. You get to live out your Ringo Starr fantasies instead of the Paul McCartney ones."
And speaking of rock ‘n roll fantasies, Stoltz is still beaming about his recent gig opening for long-time heroes Echo & the Bunnymen. "That happened because I just stalked them for years...well, not stalked but just professed my love in public since 1984," he said. It got to the point where he would meet up with the band whenever they played San Francisco and take them around the local bars. Then in May of 2010, out of the blue, Stoltz got a call from Echo & the Bunnymen's manager who was then at Coachella. That was Friday. The band was playing the Fillmore in San Francisco on Monday. The openers were stuck in transit due to volcano ash fall-out. Could Stoltz step in? For the whole tour?
Stoltz dropped everything - and got his backing back to drop everything, too. By Tuesday they were flying to Chicago as Echo & the Bunnymen's opening band. "It was so cool," he said. "because Ian McCulloch and Will Sergeant. They're my heroes. They were the people that made me want to play music and play guitar."
One night Ian McCulloch came to Stoltz's sound check - and complimented him on his songwriting. "That was surreal," said Stoltz. "I had their posters on my wall as a kid. As a kid I used to buy bootleg cassettes from this record shop in Detroit, and I would memorize stuff he would say. I even had my hair like him, sprayed up with aqua-net, and wore a trenchcoat. And now here he was giving me compliments. It was like a teen dream fulfilled."
Kelley Stoltz is on tour in England with Stephanie Finch & the Company Men (Nov. 30 - Dec. 3) and then with Echo & the Bunnymen (Dec. 4 - 12). Tour dates at his official website.
[Photo Credit: Rich Hirneisen]
blog comments powered by Disqus
More Photos
