Stillhouse : Through The Winter : News

Articles

Jan 2006 - Rome wasn't built... - Independent Weekly

Jan 2006 - This Week In Music - Dallas Observer

Nov 2005 - No Depression Article

Nov 2005 - Miles Of Music Review

Oct 2005 - David Menconi on the best of rock - The News and Observer, What's Up

Sep 2005 - Notes on the Raleigh Music Scene - Independent Weekly

Aug 2005 - Music worth leaving the house to hear this week - Independent Weekly

Jan 2006 - Rome wasn't built... Finally, Stillhouse does its deed.

The beer--watch the beer. If something doesn't change in the next five seconds, it's going to be everywhere--spilled on the floor, spewed from mouths, sprayed from noses. This is too funny.

Dave Wilson is leaning against a table in Mitch's on Hillsborough Street on a Saturday afternoon, halfway staring into his half-empty glass of Bass Ale from the half-empty second pitcher. He's in the middle of a monologue about the travel habits of his absent bandmate Johnny Irion, and his other bandmates--bassist Jay Brown, drummer Zeke Hutchins and steel guitarist Greg Readling--are about to lose their liquid.

"Johnny wants to rock. Real bad. He's stuck in a folk revolution that's going nowhere. He married into an acoustic guitar, and he's fucked. So he will fly at any expense from any part of the fucking globe to rock for two hours with us and go home," Wilson says, trying to grit away the smile and pretend this isn't funny, just as he lets Zeke join in on a chorus of "two hours" and "go home." "But I understand. If I had made the same commitment in my life, I'd be on that plane, too, man. God."

Such a rant is funny in isolation. But considering the context, it's hilarious.

Brown, the bassist in Stillhouse and Tift Merritt's backing band, picks up on a thought that started before Wilson's bit, explaining, "You have to have a calendar to be in this band, and there has to be a lot of Blackberry wireless communication to make this happen."

"We could all just have a hole in our calendar and go on vacation. But, lately, it's been like if there is a hole, we say, 'Oh, let's do this,'" Hutchins, three seats away, elaborates.

Post-sip, Wilson continues: "I need a break from the acoustic guitar myself. I fucked myself just as bad as Johnny did."

To wit, Wilson is the lead vocalist and lyricist for Stillhouse, though he pulls the same duties in Chatham County Line, a rising bluegrass band that has toured Europe and released two well-received albums of traditional, gather-round-the-mic music with a freewheeling-rock bent.

For Irion, Stillhouse is rock 'n' roll escapism from the stringent itinerary he keeps with wife and collaborator Sarah Lee Guthrie, literally the third-generation heiress of American folk as presented and preserved by grandfather Woody Guthrie and father Arlo. Guthrie and Irion spend most of the year on the road, and Readling casually refers to them as "real road dogs" with a respect that implies he doesn't understand how they're able to stay on the road so much and stay sane. And that comes from no stranger to the road. Readling has toured as a former member of Merritt's band and as the bassist in CCL. Sometimes, dreadnoughts get old.

For Wilson too, Stillhouse is the same electrified utopia. But they can still rib Irion.

"He spends more getting here for a show than we all make on it," Hutchins laughs.

Such a commitment to a band with one independent record out is not surprising, though, especially given the pitfalls and roadblocks that have already slowed Stillhouse's progress. Their first album, Through the Winter, was released last October--only seven years after the band formed through impromptu jams in 1998.

But pitfalls and roadblocks isn't exactly accurate: Along the way, Tift Merritt & the Carbines--of which everybody in the band has been a member, except Irion--have achieved critical acclaim, a measure of popular success and a Grammy nomination; CCL grabbed a premier spot at this year's Merlefest and have recorded for the BBC. If Stillhouse has taken a backseat, it understands why.

Because of the relaxed, do-it-when-possible nature of these five joking, toast-prone buddies, it's remained important for everyone involved. It's music that's a hobby for otherwise-occupied musicians, and it shows on record. Through the Winter is a relaxed affair that takes an apparent litany of B monikers--The Beatles, Buffalo Springfield, Badfinger, The Band--and rolls them into one loose-fitting, all-encompassing, low-pressure pleasure. In fact, because Stillhouse has always been such a come-as-you-can franchise, it almost didn't occur to them they had a real record.

It was Ryan Pickett, a sound engineer with a studio in Durham who records bands when he's not on the road with My Morning Jacket, who urged them to stick with Stillhouse. When Pickett would come off tour, he would listen to Stilllhouse takes and work on early mixes, sending them off to the band's members. After some cajoling, Stillhouse finally followed Pickett to a makeshift studio at Jim Denny's home in Rougemont for a three-day session, set on finishing a record.

"We were at a good place making the record. It was a good state of mind for recording," says Readling, the most reticent of the bunch.

"Ryan is like one of us. He's doing it in his free time just because he wants to get together with us and do it. It's not an official role," Hutchins says of Pickett, who is--it seems--something of a sixth member. "It's fun for us all."

While CCL was touring through the Midwest in July and Merritt was living in Europe, Hutchins and Brown went on the road with Guthrie and Irion and finalized the logistics for releasing Through the Winter.

"It's like painting a picture. First you draw in an outline and you fill in some colors, and it may not be working, so you start over," says Wilson, just back from a European vacation with CCL and Hutchins. "Two-and-a-half years later, you might have a finished product. I mean, some label could buy this record from us and ask us to re-record these songs. But we'd just take their money and make another record."

The search for a label hasn't been the most active quest imaginable, primarily because none of the members knew how much time they could commit to an upstart band. Especially when other projects are winning awards and selling records.

"We couldn't make any promises about how much we could support it or tour, so we decided we would put it out ourselves," says Hutchins. He polished his D.I.Y. stripes when he and Brown spent an afternoon blow-drying shrink wrap around the first pressing of 500 discs.

But no one in Stillhouse is content to let the stuff sit on the shelf. They're having fun writing songs and making music. But, if a label wants to act on it, Wilson says he could use a new suit.

"We're going to keep putting it out ourselves until somebody snaps to attention and says, 'Here's a few thousand dollars. Go buy some outfits.'... It's just about having a good time," says Wilson, who is giddy that the band is already getting attention from the BBC and will play a festival in Holland in April. "It's a hobby, like fishing or hunting. Yeah, we're hunting for a hit."

Again, watch the beer.

Grayson Currin - Independent Weekly

Dec 2005 - Stillhouse, Still On The Side

In the dog days of January 2004, Tift Merritt's backup band was at loose ends - hanging around Raleigh, North Carolina, while Merritt was out in Los Angeles making her Tambourine album with George Drakoulias. But before they'd become Merritt's country-rock Carbines, they'd been a rock band called Stillhouse. So guitarist Dave Wilson, drummer Zeke Hutchins, bassist Jay Brown and keyboardist Greg Readling spent a lot of time that month in their practice space; "getting our ya-ya's out," Hutchins says with a laugh.

At one of those informal jam sessions, Wilson hooked up a microphone to an old two-track tape deck and hit "RECORD" just for the heck of it. Nobody gave it much thought at the time. "But when we were listening to it later," Hutchins recalls, "it sounded as good as it felt. That's when we started talking about how we should make a record, if we ever had the time."

Going on three years later, Stillhouse finally has a record out. Produced by Hutchins' long-ago Queen Sarah Saturday bandmate Ryan Pickett, Through The Winter (Vella Recordings) is a solid collection of spare songcraft that recalls 1980s-vintage rootsy guitar-pop bands such as the Rave-Ups. It's a dark and moody record, with more than one tune sung from beyond the grave (most notably the album-closing revenge epic "Sold American" - not the Kinky Friedman song - in which a farmer goes up to Washington, D.C., to "pay my taxes in powder and lead" after his son is killed in Vietnam). In a nod to the album's genesis, a picture of that old Akai tape deck is in the credits. It's a relic in more ways than one; Wilson says you can't find tape for it anywhere anymore.

It's a minor miracle that Through The Winter exists at all, because finding the time to do it was almost impossible for everyone involved: Even after Wilson and Readling left Merritt's band later in 2004, they had to juggle work on Stillhouse between records and tours with their bluegrass band, Chatham County Line. And various people from the Stillhouse orbit were also playing occasionally with Thad Cockrell, Caitlin Car, and Johnny Irion & Sarah Lee Guthrie, among others.

"Ryan was out on the road with My Morning Jacket, too," Hutchins says. "Finally, we said, 'Hey, we need to make our record!' We could've said forget it, we're all too busy. But Ryan especially kept pushing. Whenever he had any time at home, he'd work on mixes. Then he would send them out to Jay and me; we'd listen in the van and call back with comments. Overdubs went the same way, whenever Ryan and at least one of us was in town."

From the results, you'd never know that Through The Winter was assembled piecemeal. It helps that Wilson writes a lot of songs for both Chatham County Line and Stillhouse, so he had plenty of material to draw from. But there's no telling when or if a second Stillhouse album might emerge, or even whether or not Stillhmuse will tour this go-round.

"Good question," Wilson says. "Not at all, probably, if I want to keep my relationship and other stuff going.- Especially if we try to include Johnny [Irion], Zeke and Jay, that can only happen sporadically. And I'm having a great time playing acoustic guitar with Chatham County Line, getting our stuff on the radio, getting known.

"Stillhouse is kind of like a hobby, which music used to be. Only now it's a job. But it gets to be a hobby again with Stillhouse."

David Menconi - No Depression

Oct 2005 - David Menconi on the best of rock

...Speaking of straight-ahead rock, Stillhouse's new album "Through the Winter" (Vella Recordings) started out as a way to kill time. Tift Merritt's backup band was at loose ends last year while she was off making her "Tambourine" album, so they did a lot of jamming as the their rock alter-ego Stillhouse. Guitarist Dave Wilson decided to record a couple of those jam sessions just for the heck of it, and danged if the results weren't right fine. So the band started working on its own album in between tours and recording with Merritt, Chatham County Line and the myriad other projects various Stillhouse members are involved with. Despite its piecemeal origins, "Through the Winter" is a satisfying collection of atmospheric roots rock with a couple of literally killer songs ("Sold American," "It's the Shame"). Stillhouse unveils the album Wednesday at Raleigh's Pour House (www.the-pourhouse.musictoday.com).

David Menconi - The News and Observer

Sep 2005 - Notes on the Raleigh Music Scene

Back in the Stillhouse : the roots rock outfit that gave rise to Chatham County Line before dropping their regular Raleigh schedule due to commitments with The Line and Tift Merritt--is back at it again. Dave Wilson (who plays guitar and sings in both CCL and Stillhouse) says the band's sound is stronger, harder and louder this time around, relying more on "Live Rust" chaos and volume than "Harvest" country. Greg Readling, one of the best steel guitar men anywhere, has moved to the Wurlitzer and Hammond in the band's latest incarnation, backed once again by Zeke Hutchins on drums and Jay Brown on bass. Johnny Irion--former member of Dillon Fence and Queen Sarah Saturday--occasionally joins the band, adding what Wilson affectionately terms "a Buffalo Springfield feeling." Stillhouse is sporadically working on a new record with Ryan Pickett (who was also in QSS with Hutchins and Irion) in his home studio.

Grayson Currin - Independent Weekly

	Press Photo download press photo Articles Jan 2006 - Rome wasn't built... - Independent Weekly Jan 2006 - This Week In Music - Dallas Observer Nov 2005 - No Depression Article Nov 2005 - Miles Of Music Review Oct 2005 - David Menconi on the best of rock - The News and Observer, What's Up Sep 2005 - Notes on the Raleigh Music Scene - Independent Weekly Aug 2005 - Music worth leaving the house to hear this week - Independent Weekly Jan 2006 - Rome wasn't built... Finally, Stillhouse does its deed. The beer--watch the beer. If something doesn't change in the next five seconds, it's going to be everywhere--spilled on the floor, spewed from mouths, sprayed from noses. This is too funny. Dave Wilson is leaning against a table in Mitch's on Hillsborough Street on a Saturday afternoon, halfway staring into his half-empty glass of Bass Ale from the half-empty second pitcher. He's in the middle of a monologue about the travel habits of his absent bandmate Johnny Irion, and his other bandmates--bassist Jay Brown, drummer Zeke Hutchins and steel guitarist Greg Readling--are about to lose their liquid. "Johnny wants to rock. Real bad. He's stuck in a folk revolution that's going nowhere. He married into an acoustic guitar, and he's fucked. So he will fly at any expense from any part of the fucking globe to rock for two hours with us and go home," Wilson says, trying to grit away the smile and pretend this isn't funny, just as he lets Zeke join in on a chorus of "two hours" and "go home." "But I understand. If I had made the same commitment in my life, I'd be on that plane, too, man. God." Such a rant is funny in isolation. But considering the context, it's hilarious. Brown, the bassist in Stillhouse and Tift Merritt's backing band, picks up on a thought that started before Wilson's bit, explaining, "You have to have a calendar to be in this band, and there has to be a lot of Blackberry wireless communication to make this happen." "We could all just have a hole in our calendar and go on vacation. But, lately, it's been like if there is a hole, we say, 'Oh, let's do this,'" Hutchins, three seats away, elaborates. Post-sip, Wilson continues: "I need a break from the acoustic guitar myself. I fucked myself just as bad as Johnny did." To wit, Wilson is the lead vocalist and lyricist for Stillhouse, though he pulls the same duties in Chatham County Line, a rising bluegrass band that has toured Europe and released two well-received albums of traditional, gather-round-the-mic music with a freewheeling-rock bent. For Irion, Stillhouse is rock 'n' roll escapism from the stringent itinerary he keeps with wife and collaborator Sarah Lee Guthrie, literally the third-generation heiress of American folk as presented and preserved by grandfather Woody Guthrie and father Arlo. Guthrie and Irion spend most of the year on the road, and Readling casually refers to them as "real road dogs" with a respect that implies he doesn't understand how they're able to stay on the road so much and stay sane. And that comes from no stranger to the road. Readling has toured as a former member of Merritt's band and as the bassist in CCL. Sometimes, dreadnoughts get old. For Wilson too, Stillhouse is the same electrified utopia. But they can still rib Irion. "He spends more getting here for a show than we all make on it," Hutchins laughs. Such a commitment to a band with one independent record out is not surprising, though, especially given the pitfalls and roadblocks that have already slowed Stillhouse's progress. Their first album, Through the Winter, was released last October--only seven years after the band formed through impromptu jams in 1998. But pitfalls and roadblocks isn't exactly accurate: Along the way, Tift Merritt & the Carbines--of which everybody in the band has been a member, except Irion--have achieved critical acclaim, a measure of popular success and a Grammy nomination; CCL grabbed a premier spot at this year's Merlefest and have recorded for the BBC. If Stillhouse has taken a backseat, it understands why. Because of the relaxed, do-it-when-possible nature of these five joking, toast-prone buddies, it's remained important for everyone involved. It's music that's a hobby for otherwise-occupied musicians, and it shows on record. Through the Winter is a relaxed affair that takes an apparent litany of B monikers--The Beatles, Buffalo Springfield, Badfinger, The Band--and rolls them into one loose-fitting, all-encompassing, low-pressure pleasure. In fact, because Stillhouse has always been such a come-as-you-can franchise, it almost didn't occur to them they had a real record. It was Ryan Pickett, a sound engineer with a studio in Durham who records bands when he's not on the road with My Morning Jacket, who urged them to stick with Stillhouse. When Pickett would come off tour, he would listen to Stilllhouse takes and work on early mixes, sending them off to the band's members. After some cajoling, Stillhouse finally followed Pickett to a makeshift studio at Jim Denny's home in Rougemont for a three-day session, set on finishing a record. "We were at a good place making the record. It was a good state of mind for recording," says Readling, the most reticent of the bunch. "Ryan is like one of us. He's doing it in his free time just because he wants to get together with us and do it. It's not an official role," Hutchins says of Pickett, who is--it seems--something of a sixth member. "It's fun for us all." While CCL was touring through the Midwest in July and Merritt was living in Europe, Hutchins and Brown went on the road with Guthrie and Irion and finalized the logistics for releasing Through the Winter. "It's like painting a picture. First you draw in an outline and you fill in some colors, and it may not be working, so you start over," says Wilson, just back from a European vacation with CCL and Hutchins. "Two-and-a-half years later, you might have a finished product. I mean, some label could buy this record from us and ask us to re-record these songs. But we'd just take their money and make another record." The search for a label hasn't been the most active quest imaginable, primarily because none of the members knew how much time they could commit to an upstart band. Especially when other projects are winning awards and selling records. "We couldn't make any promises about how much we could support it or tour, so we decided we would put it out ourselves," says Hutchins. He polished his D.I.Y. stripes when he and Brown spent an afternoon blow-drying shrink wrap around the first pressing of 500 discs. But no one in Stillhouse is content to let the stuff sit on the shelf. They're having fun writing songs and making music. But, if a label wants to act on it, Wilson says he could use a new suit. "We're going to keep putting it out ourselves until somebody snaps to attention and says, 'Here's a few thousand dollars. Go buy some outfits.'... It's just about having a good time," says Wilson, who is giddy that the band is already getting attention from the BBC and will play a festival in Holland in April. "It's a hobby, like fishing or hunting. Yeah, we're hunting for a hit." Again, watch the beer. Grayson Currin - Independent Weekly Dec 2005 - Stillhouse, Still On The Side In the dog days of January 2004, Tift Merritt's backup band was at loose ends - hanging around Raleigh, North Carolina, while Merritt was out in Los Angeles making her Tambourine album with George Drakoulias. But before they'd become Merritt's country-rock Carbines, they'd been a rock band called Stillhouse. So guitarist Dave Wilson, drummer Zeke Hutchins, bassist Jay Brown and keyboardist Greg Readling spent a lot of time that month in their practice space; "getting our ya-ya's out," Hutchins says with a laugh. At one of those informal jam sessions, Wilson hooked up a microphone to an old two-track tape deck and hit "RECORD" just for the heck of it. Nobody gave it much thought at the time. "But when we were listening to it later," Hutchins recalls, "it sounded as good as it felt. That's when we started talking about how we should make a record, if we ever had the time." Going on three years later, Stillhouse finally has a record out. Produced by Hutchins' long-ago Queen Sarah Saturday bandmate Ryan Pickett, Through The Winter (Vella Recordings) is a solid collection of spare songcraft that recalls 1980s-vintage rootsy guitar-pop bands such as the Rave-Ups. It's a dark and moody record, with more than one tune sung from beyond the grave (most notably the album-closing revenge epic "Sold American" - not the Kinky Friedman song - in which a farmer goes up to Washington, D.C., to "pay my taxes in powder and lead" after his son is killed in Vietnam). In a nod to the album's genesis, a picture of that old Akai tape deck is in the credits. It's a relic in more ways than one; Wilson says you can't find tape for it anywhere anymore. It's a minor miracle that Through The Winter exists at all, because finding the time to do it was almost impossible for everyone involved: Even after Wilson and Readling left Merritt's band later in 2004, they had to juggle work on Stillhouse between records and tours with their bluegrass band, Chatham County Line. And various people from the Stillhouse orbit were also playing occasionally with Thad Cockrell, Caitlin Car, and Johnny Irion & Sarah Lee Guthrie, among others. "Ryan was out on the road with My Morning Jacket, too," Hutchins says. "Finally, we said, 'Hey, we need to make our record!' We could've said forget it, we're all too busy. But Ryan especially kept pushing. Whenever he had any time at home, he'd work on mixes. Then he would send them out to Jay and me; we'd listen in the van and call back with comments. Overdubs went the same way, whenever Ryan and at least one of us was in town." From the results, you'd never know that Through The Winter was assembled piecemeal. It helps that Wilson writes a lot of songs for both Chatham County Line and Stillhouse, so he had plenty of material to draw from. But there's no telling when or if a second Stillhouse album might emerge, or even whether or not Stillhmuse will tour this go-round. "Good question," Wilson says. "Not at all, probably, if I want to keep my relationship and other stuff going.- Especially if we try to include Johnny [Irion], Zeke and Jay, that can only happen sporadically. And I'm having a great time playing acoustic guitar with Chatham County Line, getting our stuff on the radio, getting known. "Stillhouse is kind of like a hobby, which music used to be. Only now it's a job. But it gets to be a hobby again with Stillhouse." David Menconi - No Depression Oct 2005 - David Menconi on the best of rock ...Speaking of straight-ahead rock, Stillhouse's new album "Through the Winter" (Vella Recordings) started out as a way to kill time. Tift Merritt's backup band was at loose ends last year while she was off making her "Tambourine" album, so they did a lot of jamming as the their rock alter-ego Stillhouse. Guitarist Dave Wilson decided to record a couple of those jam sessions just for the heck of it, and danged if the results weren't right fine. So the band started working on its own album in between tours and recording with Merritt, Chatham County Line and the myriad other projects various Stillhouse members are involved with. Despite its piecemeal origins, "Through the Winter" is a satisfying collection of atmospheric roots rock with a couple of literally killer songs ("Sold American," "It's the Shame"). Stillhouse unveils the album Wednesday at Raleigh's Pour House (www.the-pourhouse.musictoday.com). David Menconi - The News and Observer Sep 2005 - Notes on the Raleigh Music Scene Back in the Stillhouse : the roots rock outfit that gave rise to Chatham County Line before dropping their regular Raleigh schedule due to commitments with The Line and Tift Merritt--is back at it again. Dave Wilson (who plays guitar and sings in both CCL and Stillhouse) says the band's sound is stronger, harder and louder this time around, relying more on "Live Rust" chaos and volume than "Harvest" country. Greg Readling, one of the best steel guitar men anywhere, has moved to the Wurlitzer and Hammond in the band's latest incarnation, backed once again by Zeke Hutchins on drums and Jay Brown on bass. Johnny Irion--former member of Dillon Fence and Queen Sarah Saturday--occasionally joins the band, adding what Wilson affectionately terms "a Buffalo Springfield feeling." Stillhouse is sporadically working on a new record with Ryan Pickett (who was also in QSS with Hutchins and Irion) in his home studio. Grayson Currin - Independent Weekly
© 2005 Stillhouse : Vella Recordings 5912 Dodson Crossroads, Hillsborough, NC 27278

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