Warm in The Wake:
Tomorrow's Nostalgia

By William Cane
Photos By Skylar Reeves

The many resources that modern technology has afforded musicians may make recording and small-scale distribution more accessible realities, but with all the time spent on becoming a successful act, musicians find less and less time to work on their craft. “I think today, it’s ridiculous, more so than it ever has been,” laments drummer James Taylor, Jr. of Atlanta-by-way-of-Alabama’s Warm In The Wake. “You need to wear so many hats. You have to be a graphic designer, a video editor, a sound engineer, a songwriter — you just have to know all aspects of it. And there’s so much business involved, you have to be pretty astute when it comes to everything.” In response, the four gentlemen of Warm In The Wake — Chris Rowell (guitar/vocals), Taylor, Jr., and brothers Daniel (keyboards) and Andy Barker (bass) — have chosen to rid themselves of the modern music responsibilities and focus instead on the artform, with smashing results. Having tracked most of their new album, American Prehistoric, on a rare 2-inch, 16-track Ampex tape machine, they appreciate the rich tones of yesteryear’s oxide particles rather than the sample rates of today’s computers. “I’ve never seen a 2”, 16-track tape machine in any other studio,” says Taylor, Jr., of Georgia’s Vintage Vibe Productions, where American Prehistoric was recorded by Livewire Recordings President Colin Cobb. “We were all tracking together, live,” Taylor, Jr. says, “so the organ, the bass, the guitar, and the drums were all done pretty much together, so that way we saved a lot of time in the long run.”

Besides cutting down on time-consuming overdubs, tracking to tape allowed the band to capture a certain energy that would be hard to replicate with one instrument at a time. The band valued the ability to make eye contact and truly vibe together.

“We were excited about that,” adds Rowell. “You can’t do that in a lot of studios. Physically, you don’t have the room, and you can’t see each other, or maybe the drum room sounds good but you can’t pile everybody in there cause you’re making all kinds of racket.”

Taylor, Jr. even romanticizes the equipment failures that they occasionally encountered through the recording process, citing mechanical know-how as a dying field. “All that stuff breaks down and you have to fix it, and that guy Colin can fix anything,” he explains. “So that made it a lot easier, that he can do his own repairs. I think that’s a lost art, for engineers. Back in the day, they were fixing their own machines. An engineer can take the console apart and you can do it all yourself. Now that’s gone, it’s just like, ‘I can work a computer, so I’m an engineer.’"

New technology may have cheapened the term “engineer,” but it is also what landed the band in such a posh, old-fashioned recording environment. “One of the guys at Livewire found us, like every other band, on MySpace, and emailed us and said, ‘We‘d like to come out and see you guys play,’” says Rowell. “We played with one of their bands, The Rewinds, from Birmingham, at [East Atlanta’s] The EARL, and they came out. We met everyone and they liked our set a lot, and we kind of formed this relationship, talked to them a lot more, and ended up giving them demos of pretty much everything we’ve done.”

Everything that they had done was a sizeable catalog. “We’d been playing together so long that we had so much material to hand over to them,” notes Taylor, Jr. “We were recording a lot together, at my home studio, and Chris had a 4-track too.”

The demos included several songs originally conceived for King Lear Jet, the previous band that Rowell, Taylor, Jr., and Daniel Barker had played with. Those particular songs were recorded at Atlanta’s The Living Room, then known as Redlab, by Ed Rawls, and eventually went on to make up some of the first official Warm In The Wake release on Livewire, the pieced-together Gold Dust Trail EP. Having once worked with King Lear Jet, Adam Lasus (of PJ Harvey, Yo La Tengo, and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! fame) already had a good rapport with Rowell and company, and signed on to mix the songs.

“Eventually,” Rowell says, “when we put it all together, we were sort of a brand new band. Our other guitar player, the other main songwriter in King Lear Jet, Robert Lee, left the band. So at that point we were quite a different band than what King Lear Jet was.”

Livewire Recordings released the Gold Dust Trail EP in early 2007, and it was almost unanimously lauded in magazines and blogs. Paste referred to it as “Southern-tinged psychedelic roots-pop with a touch of old school country goodness,” and Amplifier speculated, “If this is what Warm in the Wake can accomplish in a mere seven tracks, the full-length they’re working on at present has just graduated to drooling anticipation status.”

Though King Lear Jet had enjoyed some critical success and placement in television shows on the WB and PBS, their touring schedule was never very intense. Under Cobb’s direction, Warm In The Wake needed a new work ethic when it came to playing out. Says Rowell, “We weren’t putting all the work into playing out live until really last year, that’s when all that started. And they were kind of on us to do that, honestly. They said, ‘We want to work with you and try to put together a record and do something, but you guys really want to get out there.’”

“I was a little apprehensive about doing so many shows and going out for weeks at a time,” says Taylor, Jr. “But it seems like the more you do it, the more you want to do it. It’s really addictive.” Acknowledging the strain that touring can put on one’s personal relationships, he jokes, “I’m still married, so that’s a good thing. So far, so good.”

When Cobb began to plan the recording process for his new draft pick, he wasn’t sure if he’d bring in outside help with the production and engineering or if he’d fall back on his own extensive experience. Having worked underneath megaproducer Dallas Austin in Atlanta’s DARP Studios, he certainly had the qualifications. He didn’t, however, want to limit his or the band’s options.

“We went in initially just to sort of feel each other out, the band and Colin, and see if we could work together,” says Rowell. “And he’s also sort of one of the principal guys at our record label, so it was sort of a combination package with this project ... they would allow us to go somewhere else, but they wanted to see how it would work, and we were really stunned at how nice the studio was and how easy he was to work with after the first three or four days, so then we stuck with it.“

Despite the instant chemistry and lack of excessive overdubbing, American Prehistoric came together slowly. Aside from a two-week stint in January of 2007, the band typically came together to record only a few songs at a time; their new touring regiment provided only small windows of opportunity. Taylor, Jr., says, “We were touring so much we didn’t spend all our time in the studio, nor did we want to.”

As the songs for American Prehistoric began to flesh out, the band zeroed in on perfecting the timeless sound that they had begun with the demos for the Gold Dust Trail EP. “I feel like I repeat this over and over,” remarks Rowell, “but I keep going back to my favorite songs ever, which are the first three chords you learn on a guitar. Neil Young, Bob Dylan, all that stuff. Sometimes I’ll record something on a four track, and I want to not feel guilty about it only being three chords.” Noting the difference between re-interpretation and mere plagiarism, he adds, “But sometimes it turns into just rehash, and you have to junk it.”

Rowell’s taste for the classics intertwines with the formal training of the Barker brothers and Taylor, Jr. quite well; the band adds nuances that give the songs their distinct-yet-familiar feel. “Andy, Dan, and I went to college together, studying music,” says Taylor, Jr. “We were testing the waters of different genres. We were writing chamber music, string quartets, stuff like that, and we were also playing in a jazz band together. We did a lot of shows playing traditional jazz, like Coltrane and Miles ... I think that kind of learning music can carry over to the pop realm and add something special to it.”
Track three on American Prehistoric, entitled “Airport Girl,” is an example of the band’s jazz sensibilities. While not specifically dissonant or in-your-face, the blue notes in the rhythm section distinguish the song from most indie pop tracks, while not straying enough from the pop formula to alienate the audience.

American Prehistoric is already generating a buzz amongst music critics and listeners, and a few months after its late summer release, Livewire Recordings plans to issue the album on vinyl and possibly even include some bonus material. The label is hoping for a new wave of interest and media attention with the release of the B-sides, and audiophiles will surely leap at the opportunity to own the vinyl.

The title American Prehistoric, according to the band, refers to our culture and its small role in history. Says Rowell, “We find ourselves talking all the time about politics, and TV, and fast food, and things that make up our country. We’re sort of caught up in our culture, and sometimes I think it’s funny we forget that there are all these other cultures on Earth. When [future generations] look at us as an ancient culture, how are they gonna stack us up against other great civilizations?”

For future hindsight, American Prehistoric may make for convenient, one-stop shopping. Daniel Barker’s modern synth swells, Rowell’s timeless chord changes, and Andy Barker and James Taylor, Jr.’s jazzy rhythms, come together to create an American time capsule that smears the past half century or more together perfectly.

www.warminthewake.com