 "Photo: Ryan James")
It seems like just another normal day when I meet The Stinos, the latest band to form on the UCD campus, at Cimarron coffee shop, former home of The Daily Grind. The afternoon soon turns into a surprising primer on various educational topics such as scamming guitar lessons and wireless signal, atheist cats, roadkill, half-naked pillow fights, mercurial demons, the prophetic nature of song lyrics and the nightmarish qualities of metronomes - and that's just the stuff I can print. The Stinos are energetic and good natured, even when I inadvertently risk their lives for an ill-advised photo op on a freezing outdoor patio, and when bassist Neil McCormick calls drummer Scott "Bowman" Aller a "massive tool," well, you can still feel the love.
Though forged from the same crucible that created The Fray, The Stinos have a completely different sensibility. Their potent blend of rock, funk and indie percolates with enough energy to raise one of the 15th-century mercurial demons referenced in the title of their debut CD, Alchemy & Apathy, which was released Feb. 25. The disc opens with the dull-razor cynicism of "Take Care," a tune that proved to be uncannily prescient for lead singer Justin Harned, and closes out with the driving rhythms of "Fix Myself," a hypnotic tune that showcases the strength of the band's collaboration.
Harned still laughs when he talks about writing "Take Care," a song about infidelity. "We wrote this song "Take Care," and it meant absolutely nothing to us. I was like, 'I don't really have anything I feel like writing about.' We were just like, 'Well, let's write about driving home and finding out somebody's cheating - your girlfriend's cheating on you, and this guy's leaving her house right then. You're just like, 'I'm outta here. I wish you all the luck in the world, but I don't want to talk to you.' Like, just, 'Eat shit.' [Laughs] So we write this song, and it means nothing for the four months that we played it, and then I had this, well, I guess it would be kind of [an] affair with this girl recently, for three and a half, four weeks. It didn't last that long, but when she broke it off, she wrote me a letter and she used my lyrics from that song to tell me. It's pathetic - like, who does that?"
Although the band didn't officially form until last December, its origins can be traced back four years to Harned's attempts to cadge free lessons out of his new neighbor, Brad Jones, who happened to have a steady gig teaching guitar. Harned had a guitar he bought at a pawn shop and never learned to play. He would wander over to Jones' apartment seeking tips, sometimes five or six times a day. "I figured if I just asked him for like, five, ten minutes of information at a time he wouldn't be like, 'That's gonna be 15 dollars.' It worked, because he lived right across the hall. I'd go over, we'd burn one, and I'd get my free lesson, and then I'd go home."
Jones had been playing guitar since age 9, and studied under country guitarist Dave Rudolph. While working at a music store in Boulder, Jones came across a book on jazz guitar authored by UCD professor Paul Musso. An appreciative email he sent Musso resulted in a meeting and Jones' subsequent enrollment at UCD. In 2006, he and Harned started talking about forming a band. While playing with the Claim Jumpers, UCD's resident jazz ensemble, Jones met Aller and McCormick, and The Stinos were born.
With the exception of Harned, all the band members are current or former UCD students. Lead guitarist Jones is taking some time off from his jazz guitar studies, due to the rigors of balancing textbooks with life on tour. Along with The Stinos, Jones plays with Boulder Acoustic Society, a band that tours frequently. "I tried to take every class that I could humanly do that was online," Jones says. "I tried to do everything - take tests in the back of cars on laptop computers, parked in front of Best Buy because they had wireless signal for me."
Jones tells the story of driving around Liverpool, Nova Scotia, desperately searching for a wireless connection so he could email his Music Business II final exam. "Eventually I found this little teeny computer shop…and I drove right up with the bumper of my car almost to his back door and then I got a wireless signal and I was able to sit there, for like five minutes - sitting out back of this place with this unsecured signal so I could email my test back."
Despite the difficulties, Jones plans to finish his degree eventually, and he has nothing but praise for UCD's music program, sentiments echoed by Aller and McCormick. Ask about favorite instructors, and the names fly. Aller mentions John Fishell as a great influence, and McCormick refers to Bill Clark as his "surrogate grandpa." "He taught me how to play jazz," McCormick says. "He lent me his bass pickup and his amp, like thousands of dollars of equipment. He just let me have it for the semester. He's a really cool guy."
Paul Musso gets props from Jones for giving him a good "crackin'." "He was really hard on me for some time there, and for all the good reasons," says Jones. Universal love goes out to Drew Morell, who inspires the kind of reverence usually reserved for sunglass-wearing, stadium-shaking guitar gods. "Anybody who hasn't taken a class with Drew Morell, do it. He's brilliant, and he's a gem. No matter where he works he would rise to the top. That guy's cool," testifies Jones.
The Stinos are definite believers in a strong work ethic; just ask Harned. "We had 21 straight days of practice, before recording [the CD], with a metronome. Three hours to six hours a night," he says. "I dreamt of the metronome," says McCormick. "I would hallucinate I was playing."
If you doubt their commitment, just ask for their five-year goals. Jones says, "I hope to have this to the point business-wise where we can survive off it and musically to the point where we're all really amused with the artwork we're making as well as the career that we've made for ourselves." McCormick wants The Stinos to play Red Rocks; Aller wants to still be rocking out or somehow involved in the industry. Harned makes it clear: "In five years I want to be losing track of how many Grammys we've won together as a group. We have to be together in five years. Because I'm never going to be in another band. No, I don't ever want to be in another band. I'm dead serious. If this band doesn't work, then that's all I really have to do with a music career. I wouldn't take another lead singing job. This is it. This is what feels right."
Catch The Stinos performing an acoustic set at Cimarron Thursday, March 15 at 12:30 p.m., or visit them online at www.myspace.com/stinobean for details on upcoming shows and retail locations where you can find their new CD.
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