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Dates Appearing: July 12 - 18 Current Release: This Can't Be Life |
The story of Wild Colonials is all about taking chances. Perhaps the first was Angela's decision to become a singer - or at least to start calling herself a singer. Born and raised in Glasgow, Scotland, she had been living in London. But after moving to Los Angeles in 1991, she abruptly changed course.
"Though I'd sung backup for friends' bands, singing was the last thing I thought I would do," she relates. "And I'd always wanted to sing - I figured I'd do it when I was 50, sing jazz or something. But it got overwhelmingly annoying that I wasn't doing what I wanted to do; I was always making other people's dreams come true and never really expressing myself. It was easier than doing my own work.
"Then I came to America and instead of saying, 'I'm a film publicist,' I just said, 'I'm a singer.' And the American Dream literally happened. I mean, I had to work hard, get a club show together and do a lot of stuff, but at the same time, over here you hear a lot more yes's than no's. People say, 'So you can do that? Let me see you,' rather than, 'Oh, get a life. Get a real job,' which is very Scottish." Also very Scottish, according to Angela, is the ability to sing. "I grew up singing," she says. "My parents would have these parties on Saturday nights. They'd play the Beatles and Rolling Stones, and Andy Williams. And everyone would sing and dance. I used to sing so I could stay up late. I'd do 'Summertime' or something and then they'd throw me back in bed. Singing's just not a big deal there, so nobody ever turns 'round and goes, 'You know what? You should sing when you grow up." Still, Angela took a chance on overcoming that attitude.
Toronto-born Shark left New York to gamble on L.A. Brought up on a diet of the Clash, Lou Reed, the Who and Johnny Cash, he had set out to play guitar at age 12. "I took lessons from this old lady in the back of a music shop," he says, "but she effectively beat all the enthusiasm I had for the instrument out of me. I didn't play it for years; I played drums instead. When I got into bands I picked up the guitar to flesh out the sound, just taught myself." Shark was nonetheless playing percussion and singing when he met Angela and Paul in London.
Paul took his chance on violin. He'd given up the instrument at four to focus on piano. The son of a trumpeter with the Philadelphia Symphony (his mother) and a traveling evangelist, Paul was born in Glendale, Calif., but has spent much of his life in Europe. At 12 he began classical piano study at the Paris Conservatory. A devastating bicycle accident in his late teens, however, resulted in extensive memory loss, which forced him to learn how to play all over again. Then, when he and Angela began working together, he returned to the violin out of necessity. "He arrived at my house on his bike one day with his electronic keyboard and a tiny violin case," Angela elucidates. "Lugging this keyboard around to gigs was a nightmare. I pointed at the violin and said, 'Why don't you play that instead?' He didn't want to; I had to force him. It meant a lot of work."
A native of Wilmington, Del., Scott Roewe also comes from a musical clan. "We had a family band, just like the Partridge Family," he reports. "I started out on bongos, then picked up the recorder in about third grade." But he later switched to saxophone, "because it had a lot of keys on it. The trumpet only had three valves; it seemed too easy."
While working as a video editor and film and television composer (he wrote the theme for TV's "Rescue 911"), Scott cast his lot with the bass after hooking up with Angela and Paul in L.A. As with Paul's return to the violin, expedience dictated his decision. "I started out playing piano to fill out the sound, then bass parts on an electronic keyboard. So I thought, 'I'm playing all these bass parts; I may as well play bass.' That's how I ended up playing all the other instruments, too - I just do whatever works with the song. Playing didgeridoo or pennywhistle adds spice to the music." Thaddeus Corea took a chance on Wild Colonials when he answered the call for a tour drummer (numerous guest drummers had appeared on the band's debut). Thad had played trumpet and piano as a child, but he was seduced away from those instruments by a blonde Gretsch drum kit he saw hanging from the ceiling of a Wurlitzer music store. "It was calling to me," he remembers. "So I begged Pops (jazz legend Chick Corea) to buy it for me and he did. I started torturing my mother, practicing to a ten-stack of Super Hits of the '70s on the record changer. She'd be washing dishes in the kitchen, yelling, 'You didn't get that fill right. Go back and get that fill right.'"
In late 1991 Angela conceived the idea of arranging a "musical evening" as a showcase for Shark (a friend for over a decade), who had just relocated to Los Angeles. Paul and Scott were then recruited for the outing. The set contained one original, "Spark," which would later appear on the band's first album. Soon thereafter, Wild Colonials - the name comes from an Irish song called "Wild Colonial Boy" - began a regular gig during open-mic night at the Café Beckett. "By about the fourth week, we knew we had something," Angela reveals. A few months later, the band moved their residency to the larger Café Largo.
All along, Angela had turned to her voluminous collection of poetry for inspiration. "When we write songs, I'll pull the poems from everywhere," she says, "from under the couch, in the bedroom, the kitchen drawer, from my bag. I started writing poems at school. When these guys were really miserable growing up, they probably got in the bedroom and just beat up their sax or violin or piano; whenever I was really miserable, I would write. And Scotland is a stoic place; you don't express yourself. So I think poetry's a big outlet there, though everyone does it kind of secretly."
Says Shark of the band's collaborative songwriting method: "Paul will play some 16th century Gypsy folk riff, which I'll find really exotic, or I'll start playing some old country riff and someone will say, 'Ooh, what's that?' Scott will just pick up whatever instrument seems appropriate, Thad will start trying out rhythms, Angie will pluck something out of her bag of poems and start singing a melody, and it just goes from there. Since we all come from different musical backgrounds, we're not fighting for the same light or the same space."
Reflecting on the disparate musical strains that have converged in Wild Colonials' singular sound, Angela can only wonder, "How did this band ever come to be?" Maybe it was pure chance. The question will surely be irrelevant to both fans and the newly initiated once This Can't Be Life weaves its way into their psyches. As Shark says, "Better just to feel the magic than try to figure it out."
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