the peachbones

Locals The Peachbones have been playing out since 1998 (several of the group’s members have been playing together under other names for much longer), releasing their debut, Big Ohio, that same year. In the intervening seven years, they’ve changed bass players and recorded a new full-length, Revenant, self-released earlier this year.

The 11-song record is a mix of dark hues and Midwestern rock crunch, with the odd synthesizer whine finding its way into the claustrophobic combination as well. Beginning with “Tattered Souls,” a slow-burning piano ballad that shows singer Matthew Hoover’s chops, Revenant reveals the band’s talent for supple country mourn.

“Daydream Listening” balances electric guitar solos with pedal steel (courtesy of Columbus’ finest, Barry Hensley), while “Ghosts” is a mesh of guitar reverberations and piano that’s fittingly haunted and sad. Another standout, “Call Back,” continuously escalates from a similarly stark mix until it unfurls into a howling climax. The band’s punchier moments, like “Scattered,” are less distinctive than these, but they are scarce, making for a solid sophomore album. - Columbus Alive

The Peachbones, a local Ashland band, have released a brand new CD entitled “Revenant.” The band consists of Matthew Hoover, Ron Copenhaver, Donne Copenhaver, Andrew Ditlevson and Nevin Poland. Hoover plays guitar and sings, Ditlevson plays bass, Poland plays keyboard and acoustic guitar, Ron Copenhaver plays guitar, and Donne Copenhaver plays drums.

The band started in fall of 1994 when Hoover and the Copenhaver twins met on the Ashland University campus. The three began playing together. After six or seven years and a few other members coming and going, Ron recruited Ditlevson out of a side band project. The group began playing together and began doing shows outside the Ashland area. Poland is the newest member (four weeks) and was brought in to create live synth sounds like those featured on the band’s new CD.

“We are more a band now than we’ve ever been,” Hoover said.

The band’s sound comes from each member’s varied taste in music. Hoover enjoys Ryan Adams, Nick Drake and Wilco, while Ditlevson prefers classic rock such as Pink Floyd, the Who and the Rolling Stones. “We’re a better band because we don’t listen to the same stuff,” Hoover explained.

The new CD, “Revenant,” took a year to release, but the group had the most influence on this CD. The band chose the title because it means to come back from a long journey.

“Revenant” is available at cdbaby.com, amazon.com, the Friendzy coffeehouse and the Common Grounds Cafe. Tour dates are to be announced. For further information on the band and to check out tour dates, visit the band’s Web site at www.thepeachbones.com - The Collegian/ Ryan Kovalaske

The Peachbones
Big, Ohio
self-released

Of related interest: The Outlaw Josey Wales, Evan Williams whiskey

Those who tell you they like “anything but country” should give The Peachbones’ new album a listen. Oh, they’ll tell you it’s not really country—it’s alt-country or post-country or country-tinged rock. Perhaps, but The Peachbones are at least toeing the Mason-Dixon Line. The Ashland band’s music can be just as easily enjoyed by those who wear cowboy hats when they go out on dates as it can by people who just like horses, drinking and old Clint Eastwood movies. It’s Midwest rock that wishes it was a little more West.

A deceptively reflective mood is set early on, but the band wakes up midway through the album with White K and Have You Fallen, finally rocking out on Punchdrunk, a Bernie’s crowd-pleasing kick in the pants with a pop chorus, giving it a fast and fun but never furious feel.

Been Had finds the lads looking West a little harder (vocalist Matthew Hoover even sings about “horses 20 hands high” that have “the devil in their eyes”) before they finally wind down again with the title track, a fine entry into the soundtrack-to-your-life file of local music. Hands off that CD player, buddy—you’ll want to stick around for two shit-kickin’ hidden tracks. Where were all these barn-bashing guitars and “Woo-hoos!” during the rest of the album?

—J. Caleb Mozzocco
http://www.columbusalive.com/2002/20020613/061302/06130215.html - The Columbus Alive

For a band that made waves in roots rock throughout Ohio, the Peachbone's new album, Revenant, opens with almost stunningly new ambition in the opening seconds of the first track, Tattered Sails. Gone are the previous conventional alt-rock devices; leaving only a bare an honest love song that exists outside of time and lays the foundation of an album filled with wonderful seaside imagery. On their second full-length effort, Hoover's lead vocals maintain equality with the music that lets his conviction and presence co-exist with great delicacy over songs that range from ballad glory to ballsy rock. The entire album, The Peachbones achieve rock-out jams that never resort to generic garage band tactics. Lyrically this album comes light years further with personal honesty that refuses even a drip of the current emotional sentimentality so many other bands use as a crutch. The songs are constructed with a range of loneliness- sometimes violently exhaustive, other times, thoughtful and pensive but always with a sense that the outcome is yet to be determined. In Big Like the Sea, a song in almost psalm-like form, the band yields what the entire album promised: a marriage of energetic slow-rock and the poetry only a ballad would have time for. The lyrics maintain the anxiety of being alone but being with others; being in a world that is hard to trust, perhaps due to one's own actions. The accessible lyrics seem hopeful we will all overcome the largest waves that loom. With the confidence this album exudes, it seems the Peachbones already have. - www.amazon.com