Fools for the Radio
Mike Plume Band takes it on the road
PREVIEW
MIKE PLUME BAND
Sunday, September 8
Original Joe’s in Kensington
Talk about beginner’s luck. Most people’s first original band never makes it out of the garage, let alone out of the city. Edmonton’s Mike Plume Band has not only produced six albums together, including one before they officially formed in 1995, but they have also been nominated for a new and overdue category at this year’s Canadian Country Music Awards, Roots Artist or Group of the Year. And their most recent album, Fools For the Radio, places them solidly in a tasteful niche with co-nominees Jimmy Rankin, Natalie MacMaster, Scotty Campbell and Great Big Sea.
Fools For The Radio is a spirited affair that comes out swinging like the doors on a honky-tonk where the parking lot is stacked with muscle cars blasting rock ’n’ roll radio. There’s something about the album’s polished grit that somehow kisses ’50s greaser rock on the cheek while wiping the cowshit off its boots at the same time. Catching up with Plume via a late-night phone call after he hit the clubs in his new home of Nashville, a friendly chat reveals the reasons for such mastery. Plume pins some of it on location, including his spontaneous move to the home of quality songwriters about four years back.
"I don’t even know how it ended up happening, but one day I sort of did the math and realized that so many of my songwriting heroes seemed to live in Nashville. It’s a fantastic town for songwriting, and it has almost nothing to do with the starched Wranglers and shirts that we have grown to know and loathe in the country music scene."
Plume works every day at writing songs, a task his new wife Jenny Orenstein also puts effort into on a daily basis. It’s a long way from Plume’s beginnings, when he spent the ’80s screwing around in Edmonton cover bands before heading down to Texas to record in the early ’90s.
"I recorded the first record in Texas because I had some buddies down there and I thought, ‘That’ll look good in the liner notes – recorded in Dallas, Texas.’ The reason it was the Mike Plume Band was the guy doing the graphic design asked the name of the band. There’s almost not a day that goes by where I don’t wish I didn’t name it that, but if I had named it anything else, I probably would have been fired by now."
In spite of the name, Plume points out that the songwriting chores are shared among members. One of them, drummer Ernie Basiliadis, has played with Plume since 1985.
"That’s like half the Stones’ career. We’ve been around together," Plume says.
And while he speaks fondly of the group’s beginnings, playing Edmonton’s Sidetrack Café on a regular basis before being booked into that city’s well-respected folk music festival, he is happy that living in Nashville puts him within a 10-hour drive of everywhere, from Toronto to Tampa Bay.
"In the end, it doesn’t matter where you’re from – it doesn’t matter if you are from Edmonton, Nashville or New York City. Eventually, everyone there has seen you, and you have to take it on the road. You eventually have to leave." |
