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Stockholm Syndrome
holy happy hour

Jerry Joseph- guitar, vocals
Dave Schools- bass
Eric McFadden-guitar
Danny Dziuk- keyboards
Wally Ingram- drums


Holy Happy Hour, the debut album from Stockholm Syndrome is a bracing and revelatory intersection of captivating songs, deep grooves and virtuosic playing that marks the arrival of an important new band in no uncertain terms. This is genre-transcending music…scratch that—it’s genre-shredding music, the product of gifted, attuned and adventurous artists pushing each other past the normal limits to a place that is rarely visited. Given the group’s back-story, it wouldn’t be inaccurate to state that the five band members were as stunned by what they had collectively summoned up as listeners will be when they hear it.

When Widespread Panic bass player Dave Schools and acclaimed writer-artist Jerry Joseph of the Jackmormons decided to do something together, each initially figured a joint project would be a cool change of pace. Schools was currently touring with Panic, and although he had done numerous guest appearances and played in several informal side bands, he was eager to sink his teeth into something a bit meatier. Joseph, meanwhile, decided it couldn’t hurt to air out his career-long predilection for what he wryly describes as “religious-sex-junkie-heartbreak songs” in a collaborative scenario with an upbeat guy.

The pair began their collaboration casually, as Joseph left his home in Portland, Oregon, to hang out at Schools’ home studio in Athens, Georgia. The two friends had formally worked together just once—when Schools produced the Jackmormons’ 2002 LP Conscious Contact—and found that their disparate sensibilities cohered quite naturally, as Schools’ left-brain approach combined with the right-brain aesthetic of Joseph to create something quite, well, brainy. The next step, they decided, should involve playing together live while simultaneously indulging their mutual love of travel, so they embarked on a shakedown acoustic tour of Europe.

The band’s unusual choice for a name, Stockholm Syndrome, refers to the psychological phenomenon in which a hostage bonds with his kidnappers. It seemed an apt moniker for the pair’s somewhat twisted view of their new endeavor. Now all Schools and Joseph needed was a band.

They came up with a wish list of players one or both of them had worked with in the past. At the top were three names: Eric McFadden (a versatile San Francisco-based guitarist whose extensive resume includes work with Keb Mo’, Primus’ Les Claypool and George Clinton’s P-Funk All Stars), Danny Dziuk (a keyboard player from Berlin who collaborated with Joseph on a German release) and drummer Wally Ingram (an L.A.-based drummer who has worked with Jackson Browne, Sheryl Crow and Tracy Chapman, among others, spending the last few years with the brilliant multi-instrumentalist David Lindley). All three musicians eagerly threw down for the project.

“Not only are these guys great players, but we both think they’re really cool,” says Schools. “We pretty much feel like we’d be able to survive on a bus for six weeks together without killing each other. That comes first—and then the fact that they are incredibly unique stylists. Eric can play anything from flamenco guitar to Hendrix—and he can do it on a mandolin as well. Danny has got so many talents that you usually don’t find in a rock band. His keyboard playing approach is very European; he’s classically trained; he does a lot of soundtrack work and he captures moods very well. And his vocals are beautiful and breathy—which offsets Jerry, who sounds like a chainsaw. Wally drapes his drum kit with pirate coins, Egyptian bells, a Swiss Army helmet and hubcaps, which sort of make white noise while he’s playing. It’s a pretty interesting approach, especially today. I want warmth, distortion and room sounds. I want the things that make music comfortable-sounding.”

The pair booked time at the legendary Compass Point Studios in Nassau, Bahamas, then returned to Athens for some intensive songwriting sessions in Schools’ basement studio, which he refers to as “Featherwood Hospital.” Among the room’s appointments are a Tascam D88 digital recorder and, for inspiration, a Lava Lamp.

Joseph recalls the experience: “I’ve got a piano and an acoustic guitar, he’s got a bass and a keyboard and we go, ‘Okay, where shall we start?’ Dave said he’d like to address stuff and be more political. The first song we wrote was ‘One in My Hand,’ which was based on Dave’s keyboard line. He’s got a great sense of structure and music in general, where I tend to write from the hip. Plus, Dave’s a really intelligent guy. He’s pretty good at saying, ‘That’s fucking corny.’ It’s definitely a co-author thing.”

With Joseph pulling the lyrics out of the zeitgeist and Schools coaxing the grooves, the partners cranked out a series of fully realized songs in just three days. These included the corrosively contemporary “American Fork,” an impressionistic slice of dual autobiography titled “Counter Clock World,” the Caribbean-flavored “Sack Full of Hearts” the lilting “One in My Hand” and the vivid narrative “White Dirt.”

“White Dirt’ is my favorite song on the record,” Jerry says, “because I got to put in the line, ‘Rosemary’s Baby running endlessly on late-night.’ It was important that every song sounded like a song and not like a jam with some words over the top of it.”

“We wound up with a batch of songs captured at about 3 in the morning over various nights on the 88,” Schools summarizes. “I made it presentable-sounding and sent it to the other guys, and they did their homework.”

McFadden, Ingram and Dziuk then came to Athens for rehearsals. “This plan looked great on paper,” Schools says. “Jerry and I just crossed our fingers, and within five minutes of all of us playing together, Jerry and I made eye contact from across the room and we’re like, ‘Great! It’s really cool.’”

Additional tunes rounded out the project including the rip-roaring rocker “Princess Cruise” (definitely not a commercial endorsement), the post-modern anthem “The Shining Path,” and a cover of the Climax Blues Band’s “Couldn’t Get It Right,” which power-shifts into a heated rave-up. “If you’re going to do a remake,” says Schools of the song, “you’ve gotta add a little bit of your own jizz to it.”

For Schools, the new band was a radical change of pace: “Ultimately, it boils down to me and Jerry being in charge but we wanted to provide a really strong framework so that all these great individual talents would have a direction while also allowing their own personalities to come out.”

The players quickly picked up the fast-paced rhythm of the co-leaders’ creative process. When they arrived at Compass Point, the five band-mates had logged a mere two days of rehearsals and had never shared a stage. But the nascent band had one big advantage going in: Engineering the sessions would be the legendary Terry Manning, who had relocated from Memphis’ famed Ardent studios (where he made his name working with Led Zeppelin, Big Star, ZZ Top, George Thorogood and Jason &
the Scorchers) to Compass Point a few years earlier to run the storied facility where such legendary artists as AC/DC, the B-52s and Bob Marley recorded.

“Working with Terry was a dream,” Schools confirms. “I told him I wanted to cut the whole band live in the big room. I said, ‘I need to rely on your experience and talent because this is the biggest project of this kind that I’ve ever undertaken. And when I’m in the room playing with the band, I’m not necessarily going to be able to tell what is a great take.’ We worked phenomenally well together and it was great to have an engineer with ears and ideas.”

There aren’t many bands with the ability to hit the ground running the way Stockholm Syndrome did. “All the people were brought on board for their specific talent, but they also have an underlying talent of being able to feel the part,” Schools enthuses.

Schools produced and arranged much of the material and took the completed tracks to Athens, where John Keane (R.E.M., 10,000 Maniacs, Cowboy Junkies Widespread Panic) mixed the record, after which Dave returned to Compass Point to have Manning do the mastering in order to ensure that the original warmth of the performances was retained.

“We knew we had the players and the tools to approach it from a more modern standpoint,” Schools says of the experience.

Joseph seems equally delighted with the results. “What Dave and I were hoping to do,” he says, “was to have a band where we could play with our favorite players and make records that we were proud of. Now it’s turning into something that looks like it may have more legs than that.”

While Stockholm Syndrome readies to serve its potent brew of provocative songs and thrilling, genre-transcending musicianship to American audiences with Holy Happy Hour, Schools is already contemplating the future. “We’ll take it as far as it wants to go. I think that everyone is really enjoying playing together. Some of the guys may have been looking at it as a recording session until we got together and realized that this was really special. Then it ceased to be a recording project and became a band.”

TRACKLISTING

Counter-Clock World
Empire One
One In My Hand
Tight (MP3)
White Dirt
Purple Hearts
American Fork
Bouncing Very Well
Couldn’t Get It Right
Princess Cruise
Sack Full of Hearts
The Shining Path


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