Co.Townes

Warren-based band Company Townes — or Co. Townes for short — drew inspiration from its local roots to create the country rock/Americana songs on “Canyon,” their debut album that will be released Dec. 10.
“All of our music stems from home, local places, history and growing up in Pennsylvania,” explained Sara Aiello, one of the band’s five musicians.
Company Townes started as a three piece group with Sara and Jody Aiello — husband and wife — and Eric Morelli. A little over a year ago, the bandmates were talking with friends Nate Blick and Andy King and decided, “Let’s see what the music sounds like in a full band.” That experiment led to the band’s current five-member line-up.

That line-up includes Sara Aiello with vocals and harmonica, Jody Aiello with vocals and rhythm guitar, Morelli with vocals and lead guitar, Blick with drums and King with bass guitar. Morelli lives in Kane, and the other four reside in Warren.
Company towns, Sara Aiello explained, were old towns established when a company brought industry to an area, but the towns might later be abandoned by companies when the “oil runs dry.” She noted that towns such as Warren, Titusville — where she is from, Franklin and Westline were built with the oil industry in mind.
Members write all their own music and lyrics, she noted.
An album release event will be held starting at 9 p.m. Dec. 10 at the Westline Inn in Westline. The event is open to the public, and Co. Townes will treat the audience to a live performance of the entire “Canyon” album. The show will be followed by a meet-and-greet with the band.
The album was recorded at the Thomas L. Kane Memorial Chapel, which is listed in the National Registry of Historic Places.
Aiello explained the group has played multiple times at the chapel in the past, having been invited to play at the annual birthday party for Gen. Kane thrown by the Kane Historic Preservation Society. Band members have befriended people at the Society’s ArtWorks at the Depot and the Art in the Wilds Committee, too. The location seemed ideal for the recording project for several reasons.
“It’s neat because our music is all about town history,” she said, talking about how the chapel connected with the soul of the band’s music.
The chapel is dedicated to American Civil War Gen. Thomas L. Kane, who was a founder of Kane and who donated the land for the church.
Band member Morelli — also a recording engineer — brought his equipment to the chapel, and Co. Townes recorded from April through June. Morelli “spent the whole summer editing and producing, then we sent it away to get mixed at the Bomb Shelter studio in Nashville.”
She was pleased with the sound produced by playing in the chapel. “It was just beautiful sounding,” according to Aiello, who added the sound was “just exactly what we needed.”
Andrija Tokic mixed the album, then Grammy-nominated mastering engineer John Baldwin mastered the album.
She explained the band wanted the album to sound both “old-Western” and “modern and gritty.” The historic chapel left its imprint in the music, too. “You can really hear the chapel,” according to Aiello, who said there are echoes in the sound from the structure.
She’s happy to be holding the release event at the Westline Inn, which not only is “one of our favorite places to eat” and “one of our favorite places to play music,” it also has its own history.
According to the Westline Inn’s Facebook page, the inn was originally the home of the Day family, built in the late 1800s. Ralph B. Day had a chemical factory in Westline.
Today, the inn gets “a lot of great music coming through there. We’re really big into supporting local businesses.”
“We’re all very outdoorsy guys and girl,” Aiello said. She talked about the band’s love for places such as the Kinzua area and noted they even have a song about the historic area. On the album is a song called “Cornplanter.”
Cornplanter was a Seneca chief who was granted territory in the late 1700s that was later flooded in the 1960s in the creation of the Kinzua Dam.
Band members offered more skills to the finished album, too, besides their musical abilities.
Aiello, an art teacher in the Kane Area School School District, designed the foil image of the cowboy and horse on the album’s cover, and the album jackets were printed locally at Laughing Owl Press in Kane — where Morelli works.
“We thought we’d use all our talents,” she said.
Aiello said the group isn’t out to make it big in the music industry; they just want to make music.
“We’re just a bunch of friends that just always hung out to play music together,” said Aiello, who said the musicians all have other careers. “If if ever became not fun, we just wouldn’t do it. We didn’t want to make it a job.”
They’re still having fun, and they hope to play more festivals now that they are releasing the album.
By the Dec. 10 release date, the album will be available on CD, records and at sources such as iTunes and Spotify. Merchandise will be available at the release event. The band plans to have a photographer and videographer there, too, so fans can see videos and images on YouTube and the band’s social media sites afterward.
More about the musicians can be found at cotownes.com or on the band’s Instagram, Facebook and Twitter pages. - Bradford Era

An attic find and local history come to life on ‘Canyon’
While cleaning out her grandparents’ attic, after her grandfather’s death, Sara Aiello found a box. Inside, was a poem, written by her great-great uncle, about a cowhand, driven to make his way home after receiving a heartsick letter from his love.
That long lost piece of paper, scratched with lines most likely written in the early 20th century, became the lifeblood of the compelling tune, “Headin’ for the Canyon,” on the debut album of the band Aiello is a part of, Company Townes. Aiello said it felt like her heart stopped when she found the poem, and the song came together quickly for the group of friends turned bandmates.
The album, “Canyon,” will be released Dec. 10.
Aiello (a 2005 graduate of Titusville High School, and daughter of Titusville couple Mark and Julie Mehlenbacher) and her bandmates have careers separate from their music, but, with regular weekend gigs, the band has become something of a side job.
For her full-time work, Aiello is an elementary and middle school art teacher in Kane. (The Canyon album cover art was created by her.)
Her husband, Jody, sings and plays rhythm guitar for Company Townes. The other band members are Eric Morelli, vocals and lead guitar; Nate Blick, drums; and Andy King, bass. Sara sings and plays harmonica, helping shape the band’s country-rock-blues sound.
After listening to the early releases on the band’s website, cotownes.com, “Headin’ for the Canyon” was no fluke. The solid vocals, music, and lyrics carry over to the more hard-driving, “Straight to the Top,” and the quieter, lover’s plea, “Wilted Flowers.”
With the exception of the poem lyrics for “Headin’ for the Canyon,” all of the other nine songs on the album were written by the Sara, Jody and Morelli.
The band worked on the album for about a year, and started recording this spring. It was Morelli who recorded and produced the work.
Recording was done at the Thomas L. Kane Memorial Chapel, a historic, small, stone church in Kane. The chapel was built in the late 1870s, and dedicated to Thomas L. Kane, a town founder and Civil War general. The church helped harness the sound the band wanted, and was also a way to weave in more local history — something the band does with many of the tracks. One song is a reflection on Cornplanter, war chief and diplomat of the Seneca people, and the flooding of land that had been given to his heirs by the government to make the Kinzua Dam in the 1960s.
The album’s polished, professional sound can be attributed in part to mixing by Andrija Tokic, who’s worked with groups like “Alabama Shakes,” and mastering by Grammy-nominated John Baldwin.
You can hear the album played straight through on Dec. 10, at the Westline Inn, in Westline, between Kane and Bradford, at the official album release. On that day, you can also download the album, at cotownes.com.
Album release
You can hear the band play the full album, Dec. 10, at the Westline Inn, in Westline, between Kane and Bradford.
Can’t wait that long?
If you don’t want to wait until the Dec. 10 album debut to hear Company Townes live, they’re playing tonight, at The Empty Keg, in Edinboro, and Saturday night, at The Draft House, in Warren. - Titusville Herald