Some bands form so the kids who were once the class freaks can at last get their ends away with girls. Others get together so that the members can avoid ever having to do any real work for a living. For some it's one big exercise in ego massage or ramming some kind of message down the world's throat. New York-based, shaggy haired rock tykes Longwave formed for a much more simple reason -- because it felt right. And with that sort of natural birth and organic attitude comes a sound that is relaxed, and yet emotional, classically simple and yet imbued with dark-edged introspection. Put simply, this is a band that makes music because they love music, and that's worth much more than any notion of stardom or the easy life.
Ostensibly, the four personalities that make up this talented and ambitious unit have little in common. Singer/guitarist Steve Schiltz grew up in Rochester, upstate New York, fighting against the traditional local lifemap of birth-school-work in the Kodak factory-death. He did this by immersing himself in music - first Springsteen, then Nirvana, then U2 - teaching himself to play the guitar his father had bought for him and learning to write songs. He joined a covers band and earnt $300 a week playing Motown and disco standards. "I learnt 60 songs in something like two days," he says. "It improved my playing a lot." Just down the road from him in Rochester, drummer Mike James had been tub-thumping since he was four, and was turned on to David Bowie, The Doors and Kiss through his uncle. Steve and Mike met at high school, and had their first jam session attempting to play a cover of 'Back In Black'. "I just remember thinking his drumming was too loud," says Steve. Mike also ended up in the covers band.
Meanwhile, guitarist Shannon Ferguson was busily raising a little hell in California, listening to Michael Jackson and being expelled from school at the age of eight for basically being a pain in the arse. His first band was set up purely to write songs about a kid he and his friends used to bully called Mark Fox. They called it The Mark Fox band. And Cuban-American bassist Dave Marchese grew up in the Queens district of New York, getting into one fight a week at school whilst soaking up the punk-rock blasts of The Clash, Ramones and The Sex Pistols. "I grew up surrounded by hip-hop but I wasn't really interested. It just didn't speak to me the way The Clash did," he explains.
Longwave came together in the summer of 1999. Steve had moved to New York and having just been for an audition for a band, he saw an advert in the rehearsal space that just said 'Dave Marchese - BASS'. He was intrigued by its absolutely-no-bullshit design and so rang the number. Dave had been playing with three bands he didn't even like 'just to not not be playing' and so was glad of something more meaningful to get involved with. "It was great," he says, "because I was really into lots of bands like Television and stuff like that, and Steve's songs sounded a little like that without him ever having heard any of those bands, so it was still coming from the heart." "I just wanted to sound like 'The Unforgettable Fire' by U2," laughs the frontman. "I still do!" The two young musicians soon found themselves their first drummer and began work knocking Steve's catalogue of bedroom songsmithery into shape.
Shannon had also moved to the Big Apple from his native California, just because many of his friends had. He had set up a small recording studio, and it was here that the fledgling Longwave line-up began recording their first demos. After the first three songs were cut, they fell into the hands of Rob Sacher - owner of a Lower Manhattan venue called Luna Lounge and a label called Luna Sea Records. He heard the potential and offered to put out an album for them if they paid for it themselves. At first they said no, but then studio owner Shannon was brought into the fold on second guitar, and the band became a much more serious proposition. They relented on their decision, and recorded their first album 'Endsongs', which came out in the US in September of 2000. "It was like we sound now, but the arrangements were a little more timid and I'd never sung before so I wasn't as confident," says Steve.
Having stayed in Rochester playing with the covers band, sticksman Mike James had gone on to form his own punk band in which he was playing guitar and singing. He stayed in touch with Steve, though, and his band opened for Longwave twice. Then, the bass player of his band moved to LA suddenly and Longwave's drummer bailed out of a tour with only a few days notice. Steve called up Mike, and he filled in on the tour. Mike's friend then came back from LA and there was some to-ing and fro-ing within the punk band before Longwave sacked their erratic sticksman and Mike agreed to join permanently. "Jeremy, our first drummer, didn't want to be in a band, you could just tell," elaborates Steve. "Mike did, and we needed to be firing on all four cylinders."
While the drummer situation was being sorted, Longwave had found themselves a manager in Jim Merlis, founder of top publicity firm Big Hassle, whose clients had included the band's friends The Strokes along with Nirvana, Hole, Blur and Garbage. So keen was he on these four rag-tag musicians that he set up a management offshoot to his company - Big Hassle Management - and asked ex-House Of Pain and Cypress Hill manager David Leinheardt to help look after them. The band had also recorded a new EP featuring sparkling new songs 'Exit' and 'Tidal Wave' with the expressed intention of finding themselves a serious record deal.
Within a week of Mike moving to New York and taking his place on the Longwave drum stool, the band got their big break. The Strokes' manager called and offered them a support slot. Initially they were only offered three gigs, but after seeing Longwave play, The Strokes gave them the whole tour. With the extra publicity came label interest - first from Joe McEwen at RCA Records, and then from eastwest Records in the UK.
The band's manager, Jim Merlis, asked them who they would like to produce their next album. They told him Dave Fridmann without hesitation - as a result of his work on The Flaming Lips classic 'The Soft Bulletin'. In a fantastic coincidence, Fridmann was the only producer Merlis counted as a friend and so the band were soon packed off to his Tarbox Road Studio in upstate New York - not far from Steve and Mike's home town. Meanwhile, eastwest put an offer on the table and Longwave accepted. The result of this frenzied bout of activity is Longwave's quite stunning second album, entitled 'The Strangest Things'. It is a record that shuns today's scene-motivated garage rock and nu-metal sounds in favour of something much cooler, calmer, more individual. A record which unites the arty, post-punk vibes of '80s indie and new wave with the anthemic bent of '90s angst rock and adds into the mix Steve Schiltz's deep, warm vocals and emotional lyrics. Imagine a mix of Radiohead, early-U2 and even Psychedelic Furs and you're in the right ballpark. Frankly, it's a deliciously focussed and classy record.
It's also a record that deserves to make this confident, friendly foursome very famous indeed, but typically the showbiz lifestyle is not something the band actively pursues. "There's a lot that goes into becoming a full time professional band," says Steve. "In a way we've made the record and our job is done already and all we can do now is hope it sells enough to allow us to make another and be a full time band for as long as we want to be. Working with Dave Fridmann made us think about the Flaming Lips a lot and they've made a number of major label records now without playing huge stadiums and without changing their sound. That's pretty inspiring and that kind of success would be incredible for us. To be honest, I'm just glad I'm not working for Kodak. Anything on top of that would be more than incredible."
-- Ashley Bird, November 2002
Source: http://www.longwavetheband.com/
