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Local band The 3 Heads releases new album at Six Rivers
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From The Times-Standard, Friday, Feb. 7, 2003
Local band The 3 Heads releases new album at Six Rive...From The Times-Standard, Friday, Feb. 7, 2003
Local band The 3 Heads releases new album at Six Rivers
Shane Mizer for The Times-Standard
If the old saying is true that “two heads are better than one,” then local acoustic rock band The 3 Heads are a force to be reckoned with.
Having recently returned from the recording studio at Big Bang Productions, the 3 Heads are please to announce their latest CD release “The World Was Ours.” Already enthusiastic fans have been eagerly tracking down members of the band to obtain copies of their second CD. But the wait is over- The 3 Heads are officially launching the album this Friday night at Six Rivers Brewing Company.
Since 1994, the 3 Heads have been contributing to the musical landscape of Humboldt County. Their debut “Beyond Hairball” released in 1998 by Booya Records simultaneously demonstrated the band’s knack for crafting well-polished pop songs as well as their ability to satirically mock heavy metal and rap genres.
During their earlier performances, the band’s sense of humor manifested itself through the use of silly props like wigs, masks, and clever stage names. When the band picked up their instruments and started to play they were magically transformed into colorful characters like Toughboy, Hymlik, Stingray, and my personal favorite, Shane Shredder.
Behind their rock star personae, the 3 Heads are the combined talents of Heath Francis on vocals, guitar and drums, Pat Cleary on vocals and guitar, Jaime Matteoli on lead guitar, and Daren Salter on Bass. However, with Salter away at school, the 3 Heads were forced to enlist bass guitarist Fisher to fill in the missing link. Joe Barney, formerly of “Wonderland Avenue” has also joined the band to relieve Francis of having to both sing and play drums at the same time.
I caught up with songwriters Heath Francis and Pat Cleary for an interview. We walked around the street of their hometown Eureka and discussed the latest album.
“Everything we’ve done on this album has been a result of teamwork,” Francis said, citing examples of Matteoli’s innovative lead guitar licks and Salter’s invaluable bass arrangements. Matteoli is an engineering student at Humboldt State University and his brother Mario plays for “The Weary Boys.”
Cleary explained the stylistic differences between their two albums, “The first one was kind of a comedy, whereas in this one, we got more into the songwriting.” Cleary’s reluctance to describe “Beyond Hairball” as an outright farce stems from the fact that artistically it wasn’t. Many of the songs on “Beyond Hairball” are heart wrenching ballads that feature Francis’s gifted vocals and helped pave the road the musicians would take in “The World Was Ours.”
“The album represents the last three years of ours lives written down and put to music,” Francis sincerely said.
Francis has been singing professionally since he was 11 years old. His very first live audience performance was at the age of 5. He comes from a family of talented professional singers. Heath’s sister, Sabrina Francis, appeared on Nashville’s television program “Be a Star” and was lead singer for the recently disbanded local group “Recent Future.” It’s safe to say that singing is in the Francis’ blood. Cleary said his confidence to sing comes from his close ties to the Francis family.
A few copies of “The World Was Ours” have already been circulating around town and the band has received instant positive feedback. Many are asking when the band will make the move down to Los Angeles to search for a record deal. Francis said they do have future plans to relocate but did not give an exact time on when this would occur.
I asked Francis and Cleary which songs off the new album are getting the most praise. They agreed that three of the ten tracks have especially generated much fanfare, which include “Times Running,” “Been So Long,” and “World Was Ours.”
In “Times Running” and “Been So Long” beautiful male vocal harmonies are wrapped around tight acoustic guitar strums and subtle arpeggios. In “World Was Ours,” Cleary takes on lead vocals in spirited reflection of youth’s trials and tribulations. Yet “Until She Left” is by far the band’s greatest accomplishment on the album. The song is superbly well-suited for highlighting Francis’ incredible vocal range and his ability to weave deeply provocative lyricism with dramatic intensity.
The 3 Heads will be making their CD available at The Works in Eureka and Arcata, The Metro CDs and Tapes, and Sam Goody. Don’t miss the 3 Heads tonight for the “The World Was Ours” CD release party at the Six Rivers Brewing Company in Old Town.
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(Re)introducing the 3 Heads
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(Re)introducing the 3 Heads
Jarad Petroske / The Times-Standard
Article Launched: 12/21/2006 04:3...(Re)introducing the 3 Heads
Jarad Petroske / The Times-Standard
Article Launched: 12/21/2006 04:30:55 AM PST
Something is brewing in Los Angeles right now. No, it's not Nicole Ritchie on the wrong side of the highway, or Britney Spears' lack of lady-like unmentionables, but it is just as serious -- in a kick butt sort of musical way.
The 3 Heads are coming to Indigo and it's one of, oh say, about two shows taking place during Christmas week, so if an injection of rock is necessary for proper function like it is for me, this might be your only chance.
The story of the 3 Heads is traceable back to Lamaze mats back in 1976 Eureka when band mates Pat Cleary and Heath Francis' mothers met while pregnant, before giving birth to their musical progeny a mere three days apart.
”There's not a story in my life that Pat's not involved in,” Francis said in a telephone interview, him in L.A., me tethered to the desk at the Times-Standard.
Cleary and Francis started out like many kids with exposure to recording equipment do: Recording, in Francis' words, white-trash rock with vulgar lyrics laced with enough bodily noises to make any 12-year-old boy split at the seams from inappropriate laughter. Francis at the same time was working on a career as a vocalist, playing weddings, performing the National Anthem and appearing
with his sister, Sabrina Francis who, according to Heath, performs the best version of “Ava Maria” he's ever heard.
As Cleary and Francis continued to work at their garage recording career, they ventured out to a few house parties, winning the favor of the audience with their exuberant live shows. “We sounded awful, but I think the energy and the stage presence made people get excited,” Francis said.
The 3 Heads first formed in earnest when Francis and Cleary added Jared Fisher on bass. Fisher had been playing with the now defunct Jackson Brothers (whose members went on to form Austin's Weary Boys, who just played a great show at Ferndale's Fireman's Pavillion last week), and as a fan of Francis and Cleary's work was quick to join up when they were without a bassist and Fisher was without a band.
In between the garage sessions, the group was actually getting good at their instruments and sometime around 1998/1999 the 3 Heads began appearing on flyers around Humboldt County.
Francis' mother, Babetta (of Babetta's Restaurant) let the band take the stage at her eatery and on came the rise to the top of Humboldt County fame -- bringing in 400 people per show, that is. The band took that sign as the impetus for a move to L.A. “In Humboldt you have the chance to be the big fish in the little pond and that gave us the needed push.”
Since the relocation, the group has been steadily pumping out new music, the latest being 2006's great “Holiday” EP, which is laced with inspired melodies and a touch of soul whenever Francis could get it in there. He revealed his fondness for Stevie Wonder in our interview and I told him I'd pick up “Songs in the Key of Life” as soon as I had a chance. The band also cites U2, Neil Young, Tom Petty and a laundry list of great rock 'n' roll figures among their influences and it becomes evident upon listening to their work (which anyone with an Internet connection can do at www.the3heads.com. “Holiday” and 2003's “The World Was Ours” are available on iTunes for
purchase).
After touring successfully through Oregon and California, including gigs at L.A.'s Roxy and the Viper Room, the group is riding a wave of success but notes, with a hint of humility, that sometimes L.A. makes you feel like a rock star and sometimes makes you wonder if it's ever gonna happen. Maybe fame on the level of Spears and Ritchie isn't what they're shooting for, but something close would be nice. “Making it to me, would be to play music and have that be the only job I'm doing and whether that's indie or major label I don't really care. I've always wanted to be the song people can't stop playing in their car,” Francis said.
In the meantime the band is looking forward to their return to Humboldt with Saturday's show at Indigo. “When we play in Humboldt we feel like we're playing in front of people who want to see you succeed. Humboldt wants to feel like they're part of it,” Francis said. “We're really excited about it.”
Jarad Petroske is the editor of Norther Lights. Contact him at jpetroske@times-standard.com
http://www.times-standard.com/entertainment/ci_4878755
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3 Heads play the Pitcher House
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Entertainment News - April 26, 2007
3 Heads play the Pitcher House
by Mark McDermott
The 3 Heads ...Entertainment News - April 26, 2007
3 Heads play the Pitcher House
by Mark McDermott
The 3 Heads have several decidedly unusual qualities for today’s music scene.
Here’s one: they have two lead singers who can outright sing and frequently join in the kind of sweet harmonies that haven’t been heard much since the days of Crosby, Stills, and Nash or maybe even Simon and Garfunkel.
Another: they switch between electric and acoustic, veering smoothly from fuzz-toned rocker to north country balladry (you might call it the Humboldt County Sound, as the band originally hails from Eureka and admit, somewhat sheepishly, that some of their songs were written by the sides of rivers).
And how’s this: this is a band genuinely unafraid to occasionally sound, well…pretty. They construct songs with honest-to-god hooks and loping, melodic guitar lines that are topped off by swirling harmonies and lyrical content more likely to sway than smash.
But if you really want to know what is out-of-the-box freakish about this band, it’s this: lead singers Heath Francis and Pat Cleary have quite literally been together since before they were born.
“It’s true,” Francis said in an interview last week. “Our parents met in Lamaze class. Really. We were born three days apart.”
Which, as a nearby overlistener in a local coffee shop where this interview took place noted, meant that the two were actually “Brothers from other mothers.”
This from-the-womb quality actually has musical significance. There’s a reason harmonizing isn’t as prevalent as it once was in pop music: it’s not easy to do, and the reality of the music world today is that most bands have neither the longevity, the training, or, bottom line, the musical chops to pull it off.
“Our music is based on vocals and lyrics and harmonies,” Francis said. “Pat has a different style of singing than I do, so we really have to nail it, because our vocals are so different if it’s even a little off it sounds weird.”
“We had to work at it,” Cleary said.
Any comparison to CSN or other 1970s bands pretty much ends with the harmonizing, however, since the band’s musical sensibility is filtered through a more modern Brit Rock sound – think Cold Play and the Verve – that includes a heavy dollop of U2 thrown into the mix.
The song “Space Out” from the bands “Holiday” CD contains long, graceful vocal wails in the background that sound almost like Bono is making a guest appearance. The ambiguous lyrics could also be taken from a page of U2, perhaps if they’d been born in Northern California circa 1970something:
Yeah I see your blank stare
Underneath it all
And I feel your body shake
underneath it all
For a moment you've lost your place
while the children rush to play
And you hesitate
those decisions you need to make…
The 3 Heads are actually four in number and include bassist Jared Fisher – who also made the exodus from Eureka – and drummer Aaron Gutierrez. The band has been together since 1998 (although Cleary and Francis, who co-write, produced tapes when they were 10-years-old with a drum set and lots of mumbled lyrics). They decided to take on the LA music scene four years ago.
It hasn’t been easy. Los Angeles is one of the few places where bands find themselves having to pay to play in many venues, something that shocked a band that had achieved rock star status in Humboldt. They have persisted, and slowly clawed their way to good gigs, including Hollywood venues such as the Viper Room and the Roxy, a local acoustic gig at the Shore, and the incomparable grunge of the Pitcher House.
“We can play dirty rock and roll and turn around and play acoustic at a coffee joint,” Francis said. “Sometimes we’re better that way, but we’re good with both ways. We’re versatile.”
Their song “Undertow,” penned by Cleary, documents the difficulty of transitioning from the country to the big city, where the rivers are made of concrete and the prevalent harmony is the vibe of the 405:
“Caught in this undertow, slow motion don't let go
Body twists, and turns, inhale, lungs burn
Pull me up and don't let go, slow motion seems to slow
Bright lights, concrete, bad air, stale heat…
Traffic jams, baggy pants, loose change, tattoos
Strong hands, farmer’s tan, fine line, cast to you…”
Both this song and the album’s opener, “Special,” are infectious pop songs that have genuine radio-friendly grooves. The 3 Heads have sometimes worried that their “down-to-Earth” vibe is woefully out of place in Los Angeles – or even in the South Bay, where the presiding spirit of punk rock doesn’t exactly cotton to country boys harmonizing – but in the end it seems likely this band will endure. ER
“You really have to love it,” Francis said. “Me, personally, I do it because I like to sing for people. It’s not for any other reason. I like to perform our songs – it’s kind of like self-giving – and there’s no better feeling than someone coming up and saying we dig one of your songs and can’t stop playing it. You know, Pat and I are both music fans first, so you just kind of want to be that CD that people play.” ER
See www.3heads.com or visit the 3 Heads on MySpace.com The band plays the Pitcher House Friday night, April 27, at 8:30 p.m.
http://www.easyreader.info/archives/storypage.php?StoryID=20031424&IssuePath=news2007/0426/
