The Forty Nineteens: Garage rock and pop in 3 minutes or less

October 17, 2014 at 12:05a.m.

Even though Nick Zeigler has called California home since the mid-’80s, the Pittsburgh native likes to keep in touch with his roots.

Lately he’s been doing that by listening to the weekly streaming broadcast of WNCD’s “The Homegrown Show.”

“You can ask Viking Jim, we’re pretty familiar with the Youngstown scene,” said Zeigler, calling from Temecula, Calif. “I listen to his show every Sunday night. They’ve been really great to us.”

Formerly of the Leonards, Zeigler said his latest band, the Forty Nineteens, which is about to make its Youngstown debut tonight at Cedars West End, has gotten plenty of airtime on the show. In fact, that’s why the band booked the Northeast Ohio gig to support its latest album “Spin It,” which is a follow-up to 2012 debut “No Expiration Date.”

“The Forty Nineteens is a garage-pop outfit that has been around for five or six years,” Zeigler said. “We’ve pretty much taken more of a garage-rock approach to what we do these days. There are five guys in the band. We just added a keyboardist.”

Described as a modern band with a penchant for ’80s pop and garage rock, the Forty Nineteens have enjoyed pockets of success around the globe. This led to the band’s opening for the Gin Blossoms, The Fixx, Robin Zander Band and the Fleshtones.

“‘Spin It’ is definitely going more garage than our previous record,” Zeigler said. “That was poppier. We’re going more toward I want to say mid-’60s garage rock, which is where we all come from. That’s our influences like Graham Parker and the Rumour to the Romantics, the Beatles and a lot of surf rock bands most people won’t remember.”

Among the new songs that Zeigler said are his favorite include “Modern Romance,” which has a twangy guitar and cool keyboard riff. That track is about two and a half minutes long.

Another is “Pink ’55 Bel Air.” He said the tune truly encapsulates the garage rock motif with its heavy keyboards and loud sound. The song clocks in at about 2:20.

In case you missed it, the music of the Forty Nineteens has a common denominator.

“Our saying is you have to say it in under two and a half minutes,” Zeigler said “For us, it works well. It’s fine for anyone else to go longer but for us it works the best. We like short songs.”

So fans attending the upcoming Youngstown show shouldn’t expect any heavy bluesy solos or extended jams.

“No, I don’t think we’re capable of doing that,” Zeigler laughed.

He joked the upside to the Forty Nineteens’ short songs is if any audience members don’t care for a particular song, all they have to do is wait 180 seconds.

“We like quick songs and, yeah, we’ll have plenty for them,” Zeigler said.