Feathermerchants
Dual female fronted alterna-pop band with a Middle Eastern vibe.
0
plays
Take a dual female fronted alterna-pop band and add an exotic world beat sound.Band/artist history
Amidst the enormous changes currently affecting the traditional recording industry, more and more artists are choosing the "do it yourself" route. One of them,Feathermerchants,has already created a measurable impact prior to release of their first album, having beaten the likes of Joey Ramone and Jules Shear in the "best artist" on-line voting at last year's Intel New Music Festival in New York.
The self-titled Feathermerchants, was released in October, 1999 on the band's own label Innocent 12th Street Records. Noteworthy, is the Feathermerchants track "Runaway," which features wailing vocal backup by the great Moroccan gnawa singer Hassan Hakmoun. Hakmoun,who accompanies Erin O'Hara (one of Feathermerchants' two female lead vocalists), was so thrilled by the session that he hired Jim Chapdelaine (one of the group's two guitar/Bouzouki players) to mix his new album, which includes a duet with Paula Cole. As the Hakmoun collaboration, female co-lead singers, and the band's twin guitar/bouzouki instrumentation suggest, Feathermerchants offers a unique world music take on modern rock.
Indeed, the group--which also includes second female lead vocalist Alison Winston, second guitar/bouzouki player Pete Veru, drummer and percussionist John Peckman and Drew Glackin on regular and fretless bass, lap steel,guitar and mandocello--takes on a decidedly Middle Eastern flavor, thanks to the Greek heritage of founder and chief songwriter Veru. But Feathermerchants also owes a heavy debt to modern rock groups like Dead Can Dance, the Sundays and the Innocence Mission.
"It's turned into a Middle Eastern Sundays," says Veru, who had originally taken out an ad in the Village Voice seeking musicians for a "Sundays meet Dead Can Dance meets Throwing Muses" style band. Adds Chapdelaine, "Now people say we sound like Jefferson Airplane, Dead Can Dance, Sundays, 10,000 Maniacs--we get all sorts of different comparisons. It's all different from each song to the next, like each song is different."
The songs on Feathermerchants, as the heavily Kerouac-influenced Veru points out, are structurally and lyrically sophisticated with an "overriding theme that pretty much everything is cryptic; I can count the literal songs I've written on two fingers." Musically,he notes, the songs have complicated key changes, again owing to his Middle Eastern and European influences; "Runaway," for instance, was written around its Greek bouzouki riff, while Chapdelaine's "Black Dog Smile," uses bagpipes.
"I knew the bouzouki before I even knew what a Fender Stratocaster was!" continues Veru, a Fort Lee, New Jersey native who grew up listening to the Greek version of the instrument (Chapdelaine plays an Irish bouzouki) when his parents dragged him to christenings and Greek-American cultural events. "But I actually became more interested after I heard the Turkish bouzouki style, because the Greek style is more European, the Turkish more Middle Eastern. So that's one of the pillars of the band--and Dead Can Dance; I'm a huge fan and have studied all their records, and the reason why the band's Lisa Gerrard is so good is that she lived in Melbourne,Australia, which has the largest Greek and Turkish populations outside of Athens and Istanbul."
Feathermerchants' history is as atypical as it's influences. A junk bond salesman on Wall Street, Veru didn't begin playing until he plunked his first note on a $150 Washburn
guitar at age 29. But from that instant on, Veru, who now owns 130 guitar-family instruments became obsessed with fulfilling his lifelong dream of being a musician.
The band's first incarnation included current members Veru, Winston (who co-wrote "Water and Dreams" lyrics with Veru), a temporary drummer, Chapdelaine and Glackin, Veru's former roommate at the University of Hartford, who had moved from guitar to bass (and lap steel and mandocello) in order to make way for Chapdelaine, a guitar legend in Hartford and recent Emmy award winner for writing and producing the music for the PBS Making of Amistad documentary. Besides playing at the Seattle International Film Festival, Feathermerchants also played the Intel New Music festival gig at Brownies, in which they outpolled the aforementioned heavies (and outdrew the critic darling likes of The Loud Family, Jolyn Daniel, and Neilson Hubbard combined)--trailing only Dash Riprock Postpartum, and the German death metal act Lesion.
With enough songs ready, it was time to record Feathermerchants, with Chapdelaine producing with Veru in Hartford. By now drummer John Peckman, from the Hartford band Eight to the Bar, was on board, but for Veru there was a necessary ingredient lacking.
"It was still missing the female Middle Eastern element, so I ran another ad in the Voice, and low and behold, Erin O'Hara called," continues Veru. "She was the leader of the Sinead O'Connor/Hothouse Flowers-type band EO--which I had seen 10 times! She was also a performance artist who fronted the band Mambo-X, which opened for 10,000 Maniacs. She came to Hartford, sang a few things, and Jim and I looked at each other and didn't have to discuss it. OHara could provide those Middle Eastern chops!"
So Feathermerchants now had two female lead singers in place for the album. Then, when Veru discovered that his guitar teacher had played with Hassan Hakmoun, the Moroccan star was approached. "He called immediately after he got our tape, and loved working with us so much that he fired everyone who was working on his record and hired Jim," says Veru.
John Fay, drummer for Canada's top group The Tragically Hip, also guests on Feathermerchants, playing drums on "Crazy Girl." The album was mastered by the renowned Greg Calbi (Paul Simon's Graceland, Springsteen's Born To Run) with very few changes from producer Chapdelaine's finished product.
"When I started the band I was the best musician in the rhythm section--and there should be no band where that is the case," laughs Veru. "But now I'm where I should be--surrounded by great musicians. Not counting Erin and Alison, this isn't a face band. We're older, and trying to keep the mystical, musical vibe."Have you performed in front of an audience?We've played in Cambridge, MA, Hartford, CT and of course Brownies, a NYC East Village rock club. In September of 1997 we sent them a 3-song demo tape and they booked us for their weekly try-out night. On a cold, rainy, Tuesday night 125 people showed up to hear us play. Needless to say, the club owner was quite pleased with the turn-out. So now Brownies is the only club in New York where we play.
In June of 1998, we played at the Seattle International Film Festival in order to help promote a movie that featured one of our songs on its soundtrack for the independent feature film, Above Freezing. The song is called "Water and Dreams," which was released as a single to Triple A Radio.
Your musical influences
The Sundays, Dead Can Dance, Throwing Muses, Kristin Hersh, Jules Shear & Innocence MissionWhat equipment do you use?
Greek and Irish Bouzoukis,lap steel, percussion, electric Sitar, mandolin, djembe (hourglass shaped drum), fretless bass, old guitars and amps.Anything else?
Check out our website at www.Feathermerchants.com
New York, NY
USA
ID
877
Contact
Sorry, this artist currently doesn't accept email messages.
Comments (1)
Nice song, good sound. I liked it. Don (Emily Patterson Band)
