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8 Balls finally release their debut album
If YOu Go
Who: 8 Balls record release party
When: 9 p.m. Saturday
Where: Cedars West End, 706 Steel St., Youngs-town
By GUY D’ASTOLFO
YOUNGSTOWN
It’s never too late to release your debut album.
Just ask 8 Balls, the Youngstown band that used to tear up Cedar’s Lounge 30-some years ago. Despite playing myriad gigs in its heyday, the act never recorded an album — until now.
The pop-punk quartet just released “That Was Then, This Is Wow,” which compiles 11 of the band’s songs from the 1980s. A record release show will take place Saturday at Cedar’s West End, with two sets, beginning at 9 p.m..
In an interview last year, Timber Gilliland, lead singer and guitarist, called it “the album we should have made 30 years ago.”
The album was recorded over a series of sporadic sessions, beginning in November of 2016, whenever all the members were in town. Gilliland and drummer Sandy Naples still live in Youngstown, but bassist Bob Cerny lives in New York and Dave Lisko (also of The Indidels) lives in Hudson. Lisko took over guitar duties from the late Dave Taraszewski, who died several years ago.
Gililland came up with the album title. He said it refers to the fact that the songs may be old, but still sound new.
Lisko said the record stays true to the 8 Balls sound. “They always had a New York Dolls, Replacements, Stones-y drunken groove,” he said. “We wanted to keep that spirit intact while still making sure the songs were tight. The biggest differences between then and now are we added a lot more backing vocals than the band ever utilized, and while being sure to keep the guitar parts true to the spirit, took the approach of making sure the parts were complementary of each other, whereas back in the day the guitars would often drive the same parts to create more of that ‘wall of sound’ approach.”