Singer/Songwriter

'Bitter/Sweet' closes the past, opens the future

.......By Andres S. Hughes (South Bend Tribune Staff Writer) November 23, 2003

 

Basically...
'Bitter/Sweet' closes the past, opens the future for South Bend band

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One day in 1982, Kathy Childs of Geffen Records called Doug Cowen at home in South Bend. Geffen had received the 45 rpm single Cowen and his band, the Basics, had submitted to the label. Childs had listened to it. "My heart is going 'hummana-hummana,' " Cowen says now as he recalls the phone call. This was the call every local musician with a demo tape and a dream hopes will come, Cowen thought at the time. A recording contract, a national tour, a shot at the top 40 all loomed in the future now. Childs brought him back to earth. " 'We wanted to encourage you. We're going to pass on it,' " Cowen says Childs told him. "She said, 'I'm going to be blunt with you: It was amateurish and imitative, but we like it. We see a lot of potential here.' " Childs and Geffen Records were right: There was a lot of potential there, and 21 years later, "Bitter/Sweet," the album the Basics released this fall is anything but amateurish or imitative. It's a smart collection of tuneful originals that have the mature sound of seasoned musicians who know what they want to say with their music. Moreover, the band -- Cowen on guitar, Charley Neises on bass and Ben Hahaj on drums -- recorded the album at their own No Barn Studios for a fraction of the cost and none of the compromises a professional studio would have imposed on them. The songs on "Bitter/Sweet" range in style from the pulse-quickening power-pop melodicism of "In a Crowded Room" and "Ignore the Daylight" to the raging, rough-edged rock of "Bittersweet Road" and "Does the Bottle Burn?" The hurt at the heart of the understated "So Lame" smolders with a dark heat that flares up on the chorus, while the keening "Baby Bleu" evokes wide-open optimism in the face of past disappointment. "I think we've finally come to a point where we sound like ourselves," Cowen says. "I sing more now like myself than I ever have. It's definitely me." The Basics may have named their record company Nineteen/82 Records as a homage to its beginnings, but just as definitely, the band is operating in 2003. "It's great being in this day and age," Cowen says. "A couple of weeks ago, I got a sale from somebody in Canada, somebody in Connecticut and somebody in England. It's a worldwide market. Maybe they were scrolling on CD Baby, or maybe they heard it on a radio station near them." Plus, in August, the band signed a licensing representation agreement with
Summer Salt/EMI, a company based in Burbank, Calif., that places songs in movies and on television programs. "If this had happened to me 15 or 20 years ago, I would have been jumping up and down," Cowen says of the Summer Salt/EMI agreement. As it is, he says a moment or two later, "I am now."

 

'Unfinished business' Cowen formed The Basics in 1981 because he needed a band to help him record a pair of songs he'd written. The four young musicians -- original lead guitarist Randy Simpson left the band in 2001 and now

plays in Rogue's Gallery -- rented studio time and recorded the single Geffen received, "Girls Come Out"/"I Wanna Love You." Eventually, the band built a local following on the basis of originals and covers, but by 1983, the Basics had broken up. In 1999, the band reformed, and two years later, Cowen, Neises and Hahaj began work on "Bitter/Sweet." All three speak of the album as "unfinished business" from the band's first go-around. "We had done the 45 and a bunch of other songs at studios around town, but we never put them all together on an LP, which would have been the thing to do," Neises says. "Now that putting out CDs is so easy, I felt that was the thing to do when we got back together." A lyricist who became a bass player out of necessity, Neises says playing music has always for him been about writing songs. "My ideal was the Beatles circa 'Sgt. Pepper,' when they were holed up in the studio for months at a time making a record that they never bothered to go out and perform," he says. "I didn't want to join a band, but when (Cowen) said we were going to record and do a 45, those were the magic words." In 1982, Cowen and Neises wrote one song together that the Basics played then. For "Bitter/Sweet," they co-wrote six of the album's 12 songs. "Sometimes, it's perfect, and it sounds like one person came up with the lyrics and melody together," Neises says. "Sometimes, he uses my lyrics as the raw material and will do some shaping to fit the meter and the melody. We don't invest a lot of ego in the writing, so we're able to come up with something good." Writing with Neises, Cowen says, was one of the "turning points" and joys of recording "Bitter/Sweet." "I still love my old songs, even the ones that are popsy and cutesy, but it's almost as if I'm writing a lot of music now that I used to think about writing," he says. "I've always been weak on the lyrics, but Charley writes these great lyrics. Charley comes up with these lyrics that have a dark content, whereas I used to write songs that were maybe too light." With a deadpan delivery, Neises says his lyrics cover "depression, despair, the darkness of the human condition. You know -- love songs."

 

Like building a house

In addition to drumming on the album, Hahaj engineered "Bitter/Sweet." "I spend way, way more time behind the board than I do playing my parts," he says. "I may spend a total of half an hour per song playing the drums, but I may spend 30 or 40 hours mixing it and recording it and getting it to the point where it's done." With Hahaj serving as the engineer on equipment they own, Cowen says, he doesn't feel the pressure of time constraints or to compromise the quality of a recording that he felt in the professional studios he's rented over the years. "When you're on the clock, you've got to come through," he says. "You have to get your parts down, or you've wasted a lot of money." "A recording session now is more like a practice because it's just us," Neises says. "I can hear the terror in some of those tracks" from 1982. At the moment, Hahaj doesn't want to play any gigs, and that's just as well for the Basics: The local bar scene, where the band is known, historically doesn't react well to or encourage original material. "A couple of years ago, I was dying to get out and play the original stuff." he says. "It just wasn't happening; we ended up being a cover band, which was fine, but I really enjoy" recording. Gigging, Neises says, is like camping, whereas making an album is permanent. "Recording is like building a house in your spare time: 'I have a few hours tonight, so I'll work on the house,' " he says. "You get into all the small details of everything you do. You have to live with every decision you make." Cowen, however, says he's "been itching" to play live again and is "almost certain" he will. If so, Hahaj says he'd be happy to serve as the sound engineer instead of as its drummer at gigs. Two decades after hearing from Geffen and RCA, Cowen can laugh now at his naiveté regarding how the music business works. "It was like, 'If I get signed by RCA Records, man, I'm on my way,' " he says. "I didn't know that if you get signed, that doesn't mean you'll make it." Still, Cowen says, the interest those two labels paid toward the Basics 20 years ago paid off as a confidence booster. "Even when we were amateurish and mimicking our idols, they encouraged us," he says. "Maybe they heard something." Wonder what Kathy Childs would say if she could hear "Bitter/Sweet" now?