The image of fresh, clean, colorful laundry billowing in the wind from a line high over the serene waters of a mountain lake is sure to conjure up feelings in each of us. For some, it might be a carefree feeling of freedom and peace and for others, it may be a feeling of lonesome yearning for something that isn’t there.
The specific image that matches this description is a photograph that was taken by Martin Gray in the Loch Ness region of Scotland. He had grown up there and was visiting to take pictures that reminded him of his “younger, more carefree days.” Gray is lucky enough to count among his friends the Scottish Pop music stalwarts The Trashcan Sinatras. They had recently given him a copy of their newly completed Weightlifting, the first new record they had recorded together in eight years.
“Martin showed us the photo because he felt it was reminiscent of the sound of the album. We liked it so much we asked if we could use it for the sleeve,” said John Douglas, lead guitarist for The Trashcan Sinatras in a recent interview with The Marquee.
Whether it is Gray’s image on the cover that attracts people to the album, or the word-of-mouth buzz that the band and their record label, SpinART, have generated, it doesn’t matter. What matters is the fact that The Trashcan Sinatras are enjoying a rebirth both here in the United States and abroad.
The road to this point in the band’s career has been long, and the past eight years have probably been the longest of their lives. “We ran into some serious financial trouble, bad advice from tax people and the like,” said Douglas. “It is really the classic rock and roll story.” The Sinatras record label Go Discs! was swallowed up by a major corporation and the band got lost in the shuffle. “Decisions are made on numbers in this business. It makes sense to some degree, but is kind of cold when you are an artist,” said Douglas.
Down on their luck, the band retreated and laid low, hoping for better times ahead. “We were playing the odd show here and there, and then we got invited over to Japan by a Japanese band for a couple of dates,” recalled Douglas. “That was a nice ray of sunshine.” On the other side of things, the band was enduring significant hardship in other realms. “We had this great 24 track recording studio in our hometown that we actually ended up living in for a while, but we lost that also,” said Douglas.
Having eight years of down time and remaining a band through such trying events is a true testament to how much creative energy is flowing through The Trashcan Sinatras. They continued to play music together and each member continued to bring song ideas to the table. They were not wallowing in self-pity but rather forging forward with the very project that had brought them to this unexpected low point.
|
|
The fact that they kept the band alive and kept creating music proved to be a very inspired decision. As things on the business end settled down, they had time to take stock of where they stood as a band. Realizing that they had more than an album’s worth of songs that they had been playing together for several years, they began shopping around for a place to record them, and a label to release them.
“We ended up recording Weightlifting at a studio called Riverside that is run by a guy called Duncan. It is a great little place that sits in a little valley just on the south side of Glasgow and there is a little stream beside it,” said Douglas. Once the band got into the studio, things fell into place. “Over the eight years of not doing much we had the time to carefully arrange the songs and agree on which ones were good for the record.”
The result is a wide variety of tunes that swing from the upbeat and appropriately titled “Welcome Back,” to the beautifully poetic and almost ethereal ode to lost love, “Usually.”
Weightlifting is very much a new beginning for The Trashcan Sinatras, as it has introduced them to a host of new fans who are now scrambling to pick up the band’s back catalogue. “It is great to be playing a gig over here in the States, where 60-70 percent of the fans only know the new album and are singing along,” said Douglas, adding: “We aren’t going to blow the roof off the place or anything, but we are playing our full band electric sets on this tour.”
photo captions:
Scottish pop music stalwarts, The Trashcan Sinatras recorded their most recent album Weightlifting at a studio in on the south side of Glasgow. The serene setting provided the perfect backdrop for the band’s melancholic pop. The Trashcan Sinatras will play Lion’s Lair on May 5.
The Trashcan Sinatras’ Weightlifting is a new beginning for the band who suffered through eight years of hardships, battles with record labels and financial devastation. With that strife hopefully behind them, the band is now looking at broadening its fan base on both sides of the Atlantic.
Spectate if you Gravitate:
• Travis
• Aztec Camera
• George Harrison
Originally appeared in the marquee magazine |
