Blue Skies for Black Hearts

Culling a Classic Sound With New Tools

“We decided let’s do this now. Let’s not wait to make a record until we have the label we want interested, let’s just go for it.”

- Pat Kearns

Story by Bob Ham

Photos by James Luce

While speaking with the members of Portland’s Blue Skies for Black Hearts, in this case singer/guitarist Pat Kearns and bassist Kelly Simmons, the conversation somehow keeps finding its way back to record collecting.

“You have to be careful,” warns guitarist Michael Lewis, shaking his head. “You go down the path of records with these two . . .” The band’s drummer Paul Noel quickly agrees, “The last tour that we were on, it seemed like every day these two would find a record store.”

Although the talk usually centers on a discussion of minutiae like the messages scratched into a record’s run-out groove, what comes to the surface is that the two are searching for something to grab on to, be it a particular style of playing or a sound that moves them in some way. Mostly, they seem to be seeking that often-elusive moment when a song changes their perspective, scratches that deep down itch, and becomes an instant classic.

Kearns especially has been on a near constant search for this timeless spark through everything from his songwriting and performing, to his brief stint as a live sound engineer for bands like Spoon and Death Cab for Cutie, to his work as a producer and engineer for bands from all over the Northwest, including The Soda Pop Kids, Exploding Hearts, and The Very Foundation. With a history of pivotal moments — ranging from the concert his sister dragged him to that first unlocked the urge to make music at 15, to the fateful day he was sick with nothing but his friend’s 4-track to tinker around with that spurred his career trajectory as an engineer — Kearns has learned to let the present dictate the future and not rely too much on premeditated plans, a philosophy that has translated to his studio work as well as his own life.

This is particularly apparent in Blue Skies’ approach to recording their latest effort and fourth full length, Serenades and Hand Grenades (out next month on King of Hearts Records), an album that’s thick with nods to the punchy beat of the British Invasion bands and the rootsy rock of Tom Petty, but doesn’t feel out of place next to likeminded indie pop bands like The New Pornographers. Though the album was recorded digitally in ProTools, Serenades has the warmth of an analog, direct to tape session — something the band pulled off by recording everything live, using a real plate reverb rather than touching up the tracks after the fact, and finally being able to afford the technology necessary to help get the sound they wanted to hear.
“Before we could only get eight really high quality converters and eight really terrible ones,” he says, “which made things unbalanced and really hard to work with. But now we have 16 really great ones and two pretty good ones all rolling at once. Once we upgraded, I was astounded with the quality of it.”

When discussing the sound of the new album, the band again starts talking about records, pointing out various reference points that they touched on as they wrote and recorded. Simmons makes note of a “big Elvis Costello phase” (particularly his first five albums), as well as the work of ‘60s popster Emmitt Rhodes, while Kearns points to his recent acquisition of a friend’s Tom Petty collection. “I remember Paul comes over and we’re sitting on the couch listening to Tom Petty and I went, ‘Man, that kick drum sound is awesome!’” Kearns laughs.

Perhaps the greatest effect the aforementioned records had on Serenades, however, was pushing Blue Skies to do everything they could to try to capture the immediacy of the creative process, to the point of waiting to work out the arrangements for some of the songs right before they were ready to record them. This also leant itself to relying on spur-of-the-moment ingenuity when a particular sound or instrument wasn’t immediately available. “We really wanted an autoharp on this one song,” explains Kearns, “but we couldn’t get one. We ended up taping up certain strings on a piano to mute them and dragging a guitar pick across them.”

The members of Blue Skies also relied on their own whimsical notions of instrumentation, inspired by the fact that the studio they were using (Kearns’ new public recording studio Perma Press Recordings) was attached to a music store. “We had a running joke,” Kearns says, “where we would go out every day and ask for something to see if they wouldn’t have it. One day we asked for a trombone and you know, they actually produced one.”

Kearns can only think of one moment during these recording sessions when the band detracted from its live-only approach, but even that was grounded in the moment. “On ‘Won’t You Please Stay?’ we were having a lot of trouble getting Mike’s guitar solo,” says Kearns, “but we were getting these really great sounds. So he played this part knowing that it wasn’t working and left it up to me to chop it up in ProTools and make it work.” Thus the band’s dedication to the classic process wasn’t compromised but actually facilitated with the help of modern techniques and technology.

The interest that Kearns has in capturing the spirit of a moment, be it through a recording session or during his days doing live sound for two of the biggest indie rock bands in the U.S. right now, seems to come not only from his appreciation for how music can move you but also his understanding of how precious and rare certain moments are.

Take for example one of his favorite memories from working as Spoon’s soundman during their Girls Can Tell tour. “They hit the Troubadour [in Los Angeles] and sold it out,” Kearns remembers. “Everything was so dialed in with what I was able to give them and what they were doing and their dynamic that there was a part in “30 Gallon Tank” where they drop it down and everyone in the band plays maracas and the audience just goes, ‘YEAAAAAH!’ That was something I don’t think I’ll ever forget.”

Kearns’ entrée into the world of live sound was through his work helping out the students in charge of Portland State University’s radio station KPSU, where he met John Vanderslice and engineered the artist’s live studio session. “I didn’t really want to do it at first,” Kearns recalls, “but my girlfriend at the time said, ‘You really need to give this a try.” After bouncing up and down the West Coast with Vanderslice, Kearns was recommended to both Spoon and Death Cab for Cutie, sending him back out on the road for the majority of the year 2000.

But as much as Kearns relished the experience and moments like the abovementioned night in L.A. with Spoon, his respect for the immediate actually led to his departure from the world of live sound not long after he began. “It’s really the most thankless job,” Kearns says, “because when it’s done, you don’t even have a decent recording of it. I can remember some really kick ass live gigs that I did but it doesn’t matter now that it’s gone.”

Kearns, more than anyone, also recognizes the importance of making the most out of one’s own time, having closely dealt with the untimely deaths of three members of the pop/punk outfit Exploding Hearts. Kearns had recorded much of the band’s extant output and became fast friends with them. “I’d say we talked at least several times a week,” he says. “I became a little bit of a mentor to them. If they had questions about certain things, they knew they could come to me and we could work them out.

“I really believed in them. At times, they weren’t the best people, but to watch what they meant to somebody who loves music, seeing what they had to offer and could have been ... I miss that.”

The accident that claimed the lives of the three young men also left Kearns with an unshakeable feeling that he was running out of time. “I had this fear that things would be snatched up from me like it was for them,” he says. By the same token, it spurred Kearns and his Blue Skies bandmates towards greater goals as a group. “We decided let’s do this now. Let’s not wait to make a record until we have the label we want interested, let’s just go for it,” says Kearns.

Perhaps the biggest testament to Kearns’ ideals about taking advantage of the moment is the physical space in which the band recorded its latest work, Perma Press Recordings. The modest two-room studio was taken over by Kearns after he was forced to leave his previous recording studio (known as The Color Lab) due to some shady dealings with his landlord and a strained relationship with his business partner.

Kearns found the space in the back of a friend’s store and spent a long, furious weekend tearing it apart and putting it back together again, cutting so close to his own self-imposed deadline that the paint wasn’t even dry by the time his first clients were packing their gear in for a recording session. “It was crazy,” Kearns says, “we stayed up all night, getting things ready. By the next morning, I had time enough to run home, shower and change my clothes before I had to hurry back here and let the band in!”

The search for the perfect musical moment might never end for Kearns, booked up as he is with recording sessions and mixing work, on top of which he is piling rehearsals with Blue Skies and some touring the band hopes to do during the course of the year - not to mention adding to his prodigious record collection daily.
But as Simmons points out, Kearns and the band know better than to make too many plans for the future, letting the present determine where things go from here. “We’re one of those bands that has a list of a million things that we want to do, but chances are, we might only get to a few of them. We just have to wait and see.”

www.blueskiesforblackhearts.com