Some bands we find out about from television, others from radio, others from word-of-mouth, while others seem to just fall into our laps – or, more to the point, our mailboxes. Pushing Red Buttons was just such a band.
I had no knowledge whatsoever of this NYC-based rock group until the lord and patron saint of MusicTAP, Matt Rowe, sent me a copy of their self-titled second LP for review. That was about a month ago and the album has since become one of my most exciting, most unique discoveries of 2003. Why? Well, I’d tell you but in an ongoing effort never to repeat myself, I shall direct your attention instead to my review from September 17.
OK, now that that is out of the way and you’ve gotten a little more familiar with these guys, we’ll get back to the article. It’s with much pleasure that the founder, vocalist/keyboardist/guitarist of PRB, Mr. Steve Herrig, was able to facilitate an interview with me the other week via email. Let’s now dive deep and get some more info on just how such a unique, especially in 2003, band like this came to be and where they’re headed from here.
Steve Herrig
MusicTAP: If you remember my review for PRB, you’ll note that the very first sentence read, “I thought this was going to be a stoner rock band.” Were you looking to give some sort of retro psychedelic-chic image with the inlay or did that just sort of happen?
STEVE: I never really knew there was a category of music called “Stoner Rock” until recently but the “Stoner Rock” tag doesn’t seem that far fetched to me; I guess that’s the kind of music I listened to as a kid. I mean, I was a big pothead growing up but I was never a fan of like…The Grateful Dead or someone like that. I was more into the Yes, Todd Rundgren, 10cc “Stoner Pop” (?) thing. Certainly I hope everybody likes the CD and I do think the more stoned you are the better the CD may sound – then again if you hate the CD, nothing will enhance it enough.
MT: What else do you guys do besides PRB?
STEVE: I work for a Film/TV Company (City Lights Pictures) in NYC as their CFO. We’re Co-Producing the new John Waters film being shot in Baltimore right now plus we have projects with Laurie Anderson, David Byrne, Steve Buscemi, etc. in the works. But really the Film business doesn’t mean that much to me personally. I like music.
Rich Gaglia (guitar/vocals) is a big indie producer in NYC and also has a band, Psych, that’s pretty great. Rich and I are really the “team” in Pushing Red Buttons.
Rich Chapple (bass) has his own 7-piece jazz-fusion band [called] The Ballast. He is a really great young bass player. I just saw him the other night out here play with a “Ghetto-Trance” band with this wild singer, Anthony Davis. Really cool stuff…I’m glad to have Rich with us in Pushing Red Buttons.
John DiGiulio (drums) is a major session player. He’s played with Natalie Merchant, The Turtles, The Psychedelic Furs, The Marlowes and a whole bunch of other people that escape me right now.
Plus some of our guests…Kasim Sulton plays with Meat Loaf and is currently on a world tour. [He] also played with Todd Rundgren, Hall & Oates, Patti Smith, Mick Jagger, etc…so he’s a busy guy who really liked our songs and was willing to join up for the CD…we were thrilled.
The nice thing is when we all get together, we are Pushing Red Buttons and I like that!
MT: Recording started for the new album (tentatively titled “Love Jihad”) in July 2003, only two months after album #2 hit the streets. Why the breakneck pace?
S: We started pretty fast again and now we’re slowing down the pace a little. We released the “Down” CD (the first PRB under their previous moniker Norman Fell –ed.) in July 2002 and the Pushing Red Buttons CD in May 2003. I guess that’s quick but while the “Down” CD was waiting to get finished I wrote the songs for the second CD so we just kept going. That’s what I thought I’d continue to do, just keep going. I had two new songs right away and just wanted to see if we could push ahead and also the fact that we‘re not a gigging/touring band per se gives me a lot of time to write. Also, I think the fact that I’m the oldest guy in the band, I feel a greater need to move quicker. Both John and Rich (Chapple) are young guys and Rich (Gaglia) is just slightly older than they are so, I’m just in more of a hurry.
MT: You mention on your site that it’s going to be more guitar focused and less keyboard driven. Can you give us more info about what to expect from “Love Jihad“? Will you be handling all of the writing duties?
S: Well, “the plan” is to have less keyboards this time around than the last two CDs. That was something Rich [Gaglia] and I discussed. Although I’m not really a great guitar player, we thought it would be a good (if not a crazy) idea for me to write all the songs for this next CD on the guitar. This way I won’t write the same “type” of songs next time around. So far it’s worked out – we have 7 new songs that we’re doing the demos for now and we hope to have 12 or 13 total for the CD. Now this plan may be a complete disaster because much to my surprise, more people like the new CD than hate it! So, I’m venturing away from something that kind of “worked.”
I don’t know if I’ll be able to convey some great “Love Jihad” message out there, because I’m usually writing tongue-in-cheek (with mixed results granted) but so far it sounds really good. I do think the overall “tone” of the next CD will be conceptual; I like to write titles first and then write songs to the title so it does have a built in “concept” to it. That’s what I did for the last CD; all the titles were written before the songs were. “Danny’s Private Life” was the exception – that was an old song – almost 10 years old that I originally wanted my friend, Phil Solem (who was/is one-half of The Rembrandts) to do…but it never happened so I had it sitting around and somehow lucked out and got Kasim Sulton to sing the song.
I hope to write some new songs with Rich and the gang, but they also play in other bands too besides PRB and they seem content with what I’m writing. I do think this next time around I won’t be writing as “happy” or “goofy” things. We’re not really a “happy” band – I guess we were trying to be ironic at times and it comes close to being comical or goofy so, I really don’t expect the next one to sound like this recent CD…considering the state of the world we could use a “Love Jihad” right now and I hope to write music that could go with that uprising if or when it ever happens.
MT: I believe you have not toured up until this point. When can we expect PRB to come and perform (and when are you hitting the clubs in New Jersey)?
S: As far as touring goes, I’d like to get the next CD out and then start doing some gigs. I like the idea of having three CDs plus Rich’s band (Psych) material to draw from. I think that will allow us to hopefully do a set of pretty cool songs – and we won’t have to play covers! But certainly being in New York City, if we gig, we’ll be in New Jersey. You can still smoke in those bars so I’ll play in New Jersey anytime!
We’re not really a ‘happy’ band
MT: Your music often sounds upbeat and happy but a lot of the lyrics are a lot more serious than that. They often, on PRB, seemed to focus on holding onto, or letting go of, false beliefs we all tend to carry in our lives, like in “Squares” where a person needs to realize that what they feel is hip or cool and what isn‘t might not necessarily be how it really is. How has your life experiences prepared you to write like this?
S: First off, thanks for getting all that. That’s pretty much what I was trying to convey lyrically. I don’t know if I feel I write all the time from life experiences, but the songs I write do have some sort of meaning to me. “What’s Good for You?” is about a drug dealer I knew years ago out here. Every time I was around him I thought I was gonna die; there was just so much bad karma floating around this dude that I thought I‘d accidentally take a bullet meant for him.
“It’s a Really Happy World” was a Partridge Family rip-off that I just wanted to do to see if I could do it. The odd thing about that song is it has become a “love it or hate it song” and has evoked a lot of comments from people and really we were just doing a song about how we’re all going to die with this “happy” music thrown in. In some funny way (for me) the whole song leads up [to] me singing, “it’s a really happy world for me and you and all you HEE HAWS too.” I just wanted to get that in there – I did it again in “Squares”. And I don’t even know for sure what it means! Whereas “Danny’s Private Life” was about not really knowing my co-workers all that well. So, they do have a meaning to me but not always a life experience tied to it.
MT: I could see PRB as something of a concept album of sorts, with all of the different emotions and beliefs working with each other with the radio tuning serving to connect them all. “The Voice of Reason” as one last attempt at bringing rationale to the fore and “The Sum of Things” sort of serving as an epilogue to the whole tale. Was it your intention of laying the album down like this or am I just reading too deeply into things again?
S: Once again, thanks for getting that. I told Rich [Gaglia] that I wanted the first line of the CD to be “I’m not saying all your sins have been forgiven” and have the last line of the CD be “there’s no excuses/they’re just no use no more.” So, everything leads to that final line. What comes in between are all these “situations” and clearly “The Sum of Things” has the singer being very weary of the world at the end.
MT: I had read somewhere on your site that you had worked with Prince before he’d released his first album. What was that like?
S: I really think I was one of the lucky ones. There are a lot of people that leave the Prince camp pretty unhappy or under some “non-disclosure agreement.” I met him early on and saw him fairly often (because I played in a band with his cousin) and got to jam with him quite a bit. He was a monster musician that just moved from instrument to instrument. He also hadn’t really developed his persona yet so he was a pretty average guy when I was around him. He was always nice but also very quiet. So, I have no complaints but then again, I didn’t see him much after the “Controversy” album but I knew everybody that was working for him and of course heard all their stories. There’s a million Prince stories out there, I’ve got a couple that I can’t say without implicating people. But the Prince thing wasn’t that big of a deal as the grunge scene dominated Minneapolis from 1983-1990. That was just more fun.
MT: Looking back, how do you feel about where your direction in life has taken you since?
S: I think everything that’s happened to me previously has led up to me being more relaxed about this band than I was when I was younger. I’ve seen a lot and I work in the Film/TV business in New York City so I continue to see a lot. I’m not as worried about “making it” as I am about writing some songs that people like and I have these really talented good guys I play with so I can live with everything else that’s happened in my life so far.
MT: Who put together your web page (If you didn’t check it out after reading the review, shame on you! Go now.(www.pushingredbuttons.com) – ed.)? If there is a more concentrated collection of random images that all actually make sense in conjunction with one another on the web, I have yet to find it. Any particular reason for the layout or do you just like a lot of busy images?
S: Aah…the website. Well it’s my website, and it didn’t start as a Pushing Red Buttons website. It was going to be a website for my friend Ron Parker, who is lead singer of the band The Fuckin’ Shit Biscuits back in Minneapolis. I’d shot a ton of video/film and photographs of the band over the years and we were going to show it all on the website, but the website never happened so I had all these images (4000+) of all these people I knew and had met over the years that once I started doing the music again I just incorporated the band in with all the additional images, and yes…I do understand it may seem confusing to figure out who these people are, but they’re really just my friends.
I shot a lot of videos for bands in Minneapolis in the ‘80s and early ‘90s so I had a lot to work with – unfortunately some things I don’t have access to that I’d love to put up on the site that aren’t really related to the band. That said, we do provide a lot of info about the group. But, it is “busy” looking website and I do apologize to people because I‘m really not a web design guy.
MT: The “Under the Influence” page is a riot! Seriously, it was one of the first conversations my brother and I had concerning your music. Strangely enough, two bands that stuck out in our heads are not on either list. For me, I could definitely hear Ben Folds Five in a lot of the piano-heavy sections while Dw. heard a band called Jellyfish, which I am not familiar with. Thoughts? Also, what are your thoughts on why the “name the influence game” seems so popular in relation to your band?
S: I think it’s just a reviewer doing their job. They have to try and relate us to something musically as a reference point for the reader. For a band, it’s great when someone references correctly and frustrating when someone is off base (for whatever reason) with their musical reference. Kasim mentioned to me Ben Folds Five when he heard the demos of a couple of the songs. I thought that was because the demos were just vocals/piano/midi drums. I don’t know a lot about Ben Folds Five but I haven’t ever had a bad reaction when I’ve listened to them. So, I think I should take it as a compliment.
Jellyfish is really a band I liked a lot. I love some of Jason Falkner’s songs like “Afraid Himself to Be”, which Kasim did on his own solo album. I’ve been as surprised as anybody that people are trying to determine who we sound like when we’re really not trying to specially sound like anybody in particular – we’re just doing what we want to. We just hope people like our music.
There have been some really “out there” suggestions on whom we sound like, such as The Manhattan Transfer or ShaNaNa! Some reviewer in Canada recently suggested we sound like Katrina and the Waves (“Walking on Sunshine”) without the hit song! So, go figure. At the same time some people have suggested we sound like somebody like The Beatles or Elvis Costello and deep down inside we know we aren’t them and we are just flattered to be even put in the same sentence with them. I had seen a review of us in some Italian music magazine where we got the same 8 of 10 rating that Queen’s “Sheer Heart Attack” got and I thought, “Well…I remember my friends worlds being rocked by that Queen album – how can our Pushing Red Buttons CD conceivably be in that league?” So, I don’t know. We have a lot of musical influences but I personally like all these old Tin Pan Alley songwriters like Bacharach/David, King/Goffin, Laura Nyro, etc…and I know nobody will ever compare us to Laura Nyro!
MT: Thanks a lot for the album and the interview! If there is anything else you‘d like to add, please do so!
S: We just wanted to say thanks to MusicTAP for being so supportive and giving me a chance to talk about our band!
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