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From the White
House to "Real Housewives," transparency has become the
promise of the digital age; everyone is broadcasting
everything all of the time. So what happens when a rock
band throws open the studio doors, stops being polite and
starts getting real?
Des Moines
rockers The Nadas found out when they set out last January
to record their seventh LP, Almanac, virtually
live. The rules were simple: the band would write, record
and release one song a month all year. What’s more, every
step of the process would be streamed live on the band's
website and with unprecedented access to the creative
process; fans were allowed to become an integral part of
this album. By joining the band’s web-based Almanac
Project, fans could monitor their blog and read the band’s
project journal. Comments and criticisms on everything
from lyrics to instruments were welcomed and even, in a
few choice cases, incorporated into The Nadas’ music. In
September of 2009, select fans that had joined the Almanac
Project were extended an exclusive invitation to a special
songwriting session arranged to write that month’s
addition to this most unique album.
By 2009, with
hundreds of thousands of copies of their previous six
albums sold, and having toured along thousands of miles of
highway (in Meatloaf's old tour bus, no less), one would
think Playboy Magazine's "Best College Band You've Never
Heard Of" would have little to worry about. However,
singer/guitarist Mike Butterworth regretted the whole
song-a-month idea almost immediately, “By February, I'd
decided it was a terrible mistake," he says. "I didn't
like being forced to be creative on a schedule, and it
wrecked havoc on the creative process. Knowing that people
were watching me fumble through musical and lyrical ideas
was really difficult. I was self conscious the time whole
time."
Co-founding
singer/guitarist Jason Walsmith was equally dubious, "The
truth is, the process of writing and recording is kind of
ugly. I felt dumb singing things for the first time,
sounding like junior high choir boy."
Butterworth and
Walsmith are known for their flawless songwriting, but
opening the normally intimate process for public scrutiny
proved to be a trying time. By the end, though, the
finished product is truly their best to date. Despite (or
perhaps because) of the rigorous, self-imposed deadlines
and wildly public creative process, the 12 tracks produced
on Almanac, finds The Nadas in top form.
Their previous
efforts The Ghosts Inside These Halls (2007) and
Listen Through The Static (2005) have found the band
(rounded out by bassist Jon Locker, drummer Jason Smith,
and violinist Becca Smith) alternating between alt-rock
and alt-country. Now, Almanac finds the band fully
embracing muscular, anthemic rock. "Bitter Love," "Dodged
a Bullet" and "Last to Know" stand confidently alongside
the band's most amplified efforts.
The surprise is
in the band's strong-but-subtle instrumental choices:
staccato strings in "Long Goodbye," tin whistle in
"Crystal Clear," steel drums "All I Want Is You." Where a
crisp keyboard sound in "Parachute" borrows from Van
Halen's "1984," the hint of auto tune in "Long Goodbye"
appropriates a dash of Kanye West.
Less
surprisingly, though, is the affect of the band's
very-public recording process on the lyrics. Tracks like
"Call Me" and "Crystal Clear" find both frontmen at their
most exposed.
"I'm not gonna'
let it break down," Butterworth (whose marital woes read
like an open wound in “Ghosts”) sings in "Crystal Clear."
"I'm not gonna' let it fall apart the way it did again."
In the end, even
he admits that Almanac somehow captures all twelve
months. "It was an average year: I lived in the same
house, had the same wife, toured in the same bus, and took
the same vacation. But I don't think Almanac is an
average record. We stepped way out of our comfort zone in
terms of writing and producing. Somehow, it's our most
cohesive record yet."
"It was a risk,"
Walsmith said. "But our die-hard fans were game. They came
along for the ride. And, just because a little bit of the
magic was taken away doesn't mean they didn't relish the
process."
Like so many
American bands, The Nadas started as a way for its members
to pass the time between college classes. Unlike so many
American bands, The Nadas outlasted their educations and
rode a growing fan base to a genuine, honest-to-goodness
career.
While
Butterworth is known for his rock ‘n’ roll intuitions (on
perfect display in his live cover of the Beastie Boys’
“Sabotage”) and Walsmith for his alt-country roots, they
work perfectly as a songwriting unit, skillfully evoking
the romance, introspection and uncertainty of living life
on one’s own terms in the 21st Century.
Those terms are
what brought on the thoughts of intertwining their fans
and the rise of social networking into the process of the
album. Over the past sixteen years, The Nadas have built a
strong community of fans and together they have sold more
than 125,000 albums through their own Authentic Records,
including 2003’s Transceiver and 2005’s Listen
Through The Static, both produced by Todd and Toby
Pipes of Deep Blue Something, as well as 2007’s The
Ghosts Inside These Halls. Now, with Almanac,
their seventh LP, they are confident they will continue to
grow their community, bringing in new fans and new
beginnings.
"We started The
Nadas sixteen years ago with just a couple of songs, a van
and a newsletter, then grew a community from there," said
Walsmith. "The tools we have now to communicate with and
build that community are crazy. But it's still about the
songs, and our fans. They're why we do this."
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