详细介绍
The Spinto Band成员都来自美国中部的怀俄明,是一群青梅竹马组成的帮派,最早有七个人,现在是六个。他们的音乐带着浓浓的乡土气息,仿佛躲在灌木丛里对着某个村姑献殷勤,吉他的音色逼近原始.The Spinto Band的音乐因为乐器配合复杂、和声较多,被认为难以在现场演奏出跟录音室一样的效果,但出人意料的是,他们的现场效果甚至比唱片出来的还要完美! 2006年3月的时候,乐队出了第一张专辑Nice and Nicely Done,得到大西洋两岸的一致热评.
Biography
While some kids were busy building tree forts or designing the neighborhood sandlot, a few friends from Wilmington, Delaware were hanging out in the family basement figuring out how to make and record music. While some dreamt that wiffle ball bats might someday turn into Louisville sluggers under the big league lights, none of the future members of the Spinto Band thought that music would someday lead to touring the world, performing to crowds of thousands and making records with their recording heroes, let alone the idea of being in a band that would become a source of sustaining themselves.
The seeds of the dream that would ensue came from the band’s many music savvy parents. Steve Hobson, father of Spinto members Jeff and Joe Hobson, one of two sets of brothers in the band’s line-up, played in Sin City Band, a prominent Delaware-area honky-tonk ensemble, along with Spinto members Tom and Sam Hughes's step father, Scott Birney, and Jon Eaton’s uncle, Andy. As the guys were hitting their teen years, they started getting hand-me-down gifts of musical instruments and gear for birthday and Christmas gifts. First Jeff Hobson got a drumkit that used to belong to Sin City member Jimmy Ficca, brother of original Television drummer Billy Ficca. Around the same time they got a 4-track recorder that Scott Birney, father of original Spinto member Albert Birney, taught the band how to use. The guys soon started amassing a small arsenal of music making toys and began plugging their guitars and microphones directly into the recorder, learning how to record.“We just filled up tape after tape, says Jon Eaton, "The studio with that four track is really where the band came alive.” At these early sessions, fellow Wilmingtonian, Nick Krill was coming home from school with Thomas and Sam and filling up some of those tapes too. This group of guys, at the time under the moniker “Free Beer”, would form what became the Spinto Band. Nick remembers thinking, “Free Beer was a funny name when we were 11, but when we were 13 it dawned on us that it was dumb.” The band’s current line-up is the same group of childhood buddies, sans Albert Birney. Albert has been set free unto the world of visual arts though he remains the bands’ primary video director and a creative force behind much of their visual imagery.
In their studio, named “Jamonkey Stiudios”, they had a quote hanging on the wall that read, “if you start in a basement studio, you only have one place to go and that’s up.” In hopes of being able to try some of their songs somewhere other than the school talent show and basement circuit, Jon had been sending some of the 4-track recordings to his Uncle Robin Eaton, who owned a studio in Nashville, TN along with producer/engineer Eli "Lij" Shaw. Robin fell in love with the band's cassette recordings and invited them to come to Nashville to try their luck in a “real studio.” “We got in a plane and recorded the songs we were working on. That’s when we felt like this is the real deal,” Thomas recalls. Over a series of many trips to and from Nashville, during high school and college breaks, they would accumulate enough songs to widdle down to their debut album, Nice and Nicely Done.
Soon after finishing the recordings they began to “mail out a bunch of demos because it seems like the next step for a rock band,” as Jon tells it. Around the same time, the wildest part of the ride began to take shape, as the band’s breakout song, “Oh Mandy” became what many refer to as “an internet sensation.” As momentum began to build, the band was spending time getting music out and participating in early internet-based music communities like MP3.com and songfight.org, the latter of which was the home to weekly songwriter contests that birthed “Brown Boxes”, “Direct To Helmet”, and “So Kind, Stacy”, songs later included on their debut record. Embracing this new virtual world that brought their songs to people worldwide, they even “utilized the internet, myspace specifically, to get haircuts and find houses to sleep on tour.” They were living the D.I.Y. dream. At this time, after sending out that batch of demos, they’d caught the attention of indie record label Bar-none, where they would release the record in North America. As “Oh Mandy” continued to spread virally, they were capturing the attention of more unlikely suitors and ended up licensing the song for a Sears ad campaign. At the time, “we got to see the album in record shops, were holding a real album, toured for pretty much 3 months straight in the US,” as Jon tells it. “It was becoming legitimized... A step up from our fun little basement studio.”
The buzz had also spread to Europe, and the band inked a deal with Virgin imprint, Radiate records, for rights outside of North America. Nice and Nicely Done would go on to be a bona fide hit record with singles climbing the UK charts, major festival gigs, tours all over Europe with bands such as The Mystery Jets, Maxmo Park, Fields, The Strokes, and The Kooks.
Returning from the whirlwind in Europe, they would trek across the U.S. once again, this time supporting what many were calling the biggest band in the UK at the time, the Arctic Monkeys. Suddenly, they were quite a ways into the record’s cycle. Deciding to take matters into their own hands, without a manager or any other outside supervision, a process the members take great pride in, they contacted a list of the people they dreamt of making a record with. To their own wonderment, two of their recording heroes would agree to sign on to the project. Dave Trumfio (Wilco, Built To Spill) would produce the record in Los Angeles, and Tchad Blake (Tom Waits, Paul Simon, Los Lobos) would mix the record in London. In their typical dreamy-eyed humble way Nick describes his amazement, “You can just send a letter and a CD to Tchad Blake and he’ll check it out and call you back? His insight really added to the songs, in more than just mixing. He helped take it to the next level sonically.”
Preparing to make an album in a different circumstance than the debut, “Moonwink” was a more carefully calculated process. Nick describes, “this time it was about going in to record 12-13 songs and that’s going to be an album we’ll release. We’ll book studio time, and we’ll have a focused effort on completing a record.” They spent about 6 months rehearsing and working on arrangements, and then went into recording for 5 weeks. The songs on Moonwink, heavy in many different instruments and unique structures, are a source of great pride for the band in terms of their artistic growth as Nick says, “We take a lot of pride in carving out space for all sounds in the arrangements. And we got some nice compliments from Tchad Blake in that respect.”
In 2006 The Spinto Band was the first band who did a session for The Take-Away Shows by Vincent Moon.
Moonwink sees a Fall 2008 release worldwide on Park the Van Records in North America and Fierce Panda in the UK. Connecting with Park the Van was a natural progression, as it was home to some of their closest friends in music and life. “We met Chris (Watson, PTV label founder) a while back and we’ve just sort of been aware of PTV being this cool Philly label getting these cool Philly bands behind them. Most notably when the Teeth signed up with them, we were friends for a long time and really admired their music. And then we read a record review of Dr. Dog’s Easy Beat in Rolling Stone and thought ‘wow we’ve never been in Rolling Stone. These guys really know what they’re doing,’” Thomas gushes. Nick, who also mixed the Teeth’s “You’re My Lover Now” with the band, is thrilled to be officially linked up with so many of the bands he considers kin, “I hope it’s considered a scene.” With a focus on Philly and the surrounding cities, he quips, “there’s gotta be something in the water.” Armed with “Jenkins the Van”, a 15-passenger home on the road with a trailer in tow, The Spinto Band embarks on a U.S. tour headlining clubs nationwide this Fall. Moonwink sees its official North American release on October 7, on the heels of another European tour.