Thursday, April 20, 2006
The band will play at Cedars Lounge on Saturday.
By JOHN BENSON
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
Mellowdrone's music sounds nothing like fruit, nor does it require the listener to eat fruit when playing the band's new CD, "Box." However, band visionary Jonathan Bates can't help but use fruit to describe the metal-meets-synth moments found on the Los Angeles-based quartet's recently released debut.
"I found as an artist that you say oranges and everybody hears pineapple," said Bates, calling from his Los Angeles residence. "So you just have to learn to adapt to that, and what I hear is not what everyone else is hearing because I wrote it."
Bates admits he's the worst kind of songwriter, a perfectionist who enjoys experimentation, which raises the interesting question of how did he know when each of the 13 songs on "Box" were finished in the studio?
"It's basically when everybody around you goes 'stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop,'" laughed Bates. "But it's so amazing. You can change one little subtle thing and all of a sudden it becomes a completely different song, and that's what completely amazes me about songwriting. That's what I'm still getting off on. It's actually like an omnipotent feeling."
Friendship
While it's still relatively early on in his major-label recording career, Bates has been in the rock scene for years, at one point performing as a one-man band under the name Mellowdrone. The experimental aspects to this project didn't go unnoticed by, perhaps oddly enough, erstwhile guitarist of The Smiths and now solo artist Johnny Marr, who brought Bates with him to Europe as an opening act a few years ago.
In addition to gaining a new friend in the industry, Bates said Marr would dazzle him with one story after another from his illustrious past -- the funniest of which involved then label mates The Smiths and Van Halen at a time when both were exploding with popularity.
"One night, Van Halen, at the height of their cocaine debauchery, runs into The Smiths who are all dressed in black garb and pale white, and they're all trying to give them high fives," Bates said. "And Eddie Van Halen is trying to ask Johnny Marr, 'What do you burn, bro?' And Johnny is like, 'I don't have any drugs, I'm sorry.' And Eddie said, 'No, what kind of guitar do you play?' Just kind of like that comedy of errors."
For Bates, the story is doubly fabulous considering as a kid he learned to play guitar to Van Halen ("Fair Warning" was the hardest). As a teenager, his talents were obvious, earning him a scholarship to Boston's prestigious Berklee College of Music. But the lure of a music career was too much to wait for, so he packed his bags before graduating and headed to Los Angeles.
Looking ahead
While it's been a long road for Bates and Mellowdrone, the road is about to get even longer with an incessant touring schedule in support of "Box." The band makes its Youngstown debut Saturday at Cedars Lounge. Bates said he hopes music fans who understand diversity, irony and experimentation will enjoy the band's album and its live show.
As for future recordings, he's not sure whether he'll once again employ the fruit basket approach of multiple styles and sounds or just concentrate on one taste.
"I honestly don't know," Bates said. "If I'm lucky enough to make a next record, I have no idea what it's going to sound like. Stuff changes for me exponentially for some reason, and if I'm lucky enough to make another one, it probably is going to sound very different from this one."