Monkey Business
Local alt-bluegrass/country outfit Pinmonkey started just for fun, but have gotten the attention of Music Row
by Noel Murray
Pinmonkey started as sort of a lark, an excuse for a handful of Music Row writers and session men to relax and play some bluegrass-inflected country-rock. But in the last six months, they’ve started taking it seriously—something none of them ever expected would happen. The quartet had been jamming together and started playing regular, well-received sets at Billy Block’s weekly Western Beat Roots Revival at Exit/In. As their momentum built, they cut some demos. Then, drummer Rick Schell says, “Chris Knight’s manager Rick Alter heard our recordings and wanted to know, 'Is this a band or just a Sunday-night get-together-and-drink thing?’ ”
The guys felt they had something, so they decided that maybe they were a band after all. They set about putting together a CD; recording at home on a 16-track digital machine, Pinmonkey cut a mixture of originals and covers of songs by some of their favorite singer-songwriters, including Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, and Duane Jarvis. Schell says that they “nearly had it done around mid-October, then several labels sat up and took notice.” They heard from Capitol, Sony and MCA, and went through a process that Schell calls “sniffing and retreating.” In the midst of all this, they played for RCA label chief Joe Galante in his office, and “11 weeks later, we were signed and recording [our second album]. He had the right vision for the band. Right now, we’re about halfway through our RCA record.”
This may sound like a standard story arc for a talented fledgling band—play around, get noticed, sign a deal—but for a fairly straightforward country act coming out of the local clubs, it’s practically unheard of. Despite being the spiritual home of country music, Nashville is more of a songwriters’ and music-biz town than a place for performers to break out. Some of Pinmonkey’s initial tentativeness in identifying themselves as a “real band” arose from concerns about what that might mean for their careers. Were they really willing to commit themselves to a proposition that—if recent history is any indicator—was destined to lose?
That they’ve succeeded so far is a testament to a possible change of attitude at the mainstream country labels, in the wake of the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack and relative newcomers like the Dixie Chicks. Whatever the reason, Pinmonkey’s gamble paid off quickly, before they had a chance to second guess themselves. “Barbed Wire and Roses,” the first single from their upcoming record, has been released to radio in advance of an anticipated August release date for the full album. And the band have been touring heavily to promote themselves, persevering through a bus fire on April 16 that totaled their vehicle and destroyed much of their wardrobe (but left the equipment untouched). An indie act might’ve been devastated by the catastrophe, but Pinmonkey’s label got them back on their feet within hours.
As for the disc-in-progress that preceded all the hubbub, it’s no longer in progress. Pinmonkey’s self-released Speak No Evil has been in the racks for the past couple of months, offering 10 jaunty, spacious country songs with a feel more suggestive of an outdoor folk festival than a smoky honky-tonk. It has a surprising amount of oomph for a home recording project, to which Schell credits the miracle of digital recording and the mixing of Kevin Beamish, who’s worked with the likes of REO Speedwagon and Bon Jovi. Nevertheless, the band is cutting the RCA record analog. As with their debut, the new disc will have “about 40 percent originals” and the rest of the material borrowed from outside songwriters. One song, Gwil Owen’s anthemic ballad “Augusta,” a highlight of Speak No Evil, makes a return appearance in a new version.
The smooth-’n’-sweet sound of the record comes from the band’s background as industry pros. Schell says he’s had an assortment of jobs in bands and on his own, and he says he’s “come close to record deals in the past, but I’ve done better working for myself, freelancing.” He met Pinmonkey’s frontman, Michael Reynolds, because “we had the same lawyer”; Reynolds had been plying his trade as a songwriter and doing all right on his own. Bassist Michael Jeffers and his brother, multi-instrumentalist Chad Jeffers, grew up in a music biz family and had been carrying on the tradition before they hooked up with their current bandmates.
As a group, Pinmonkey had planned to emphasize their rock side, but the music came out more like Pure Prairie League. “We started sneaking in Rolling Stones grooves,” Schell recounts, “but the bluegrass harmonies were undeniable. Reynolds’ voice just comes out bluegrass.”
Adding to the stylistic confusion is the band’s name, which sounds like the ideal moniker for a funk-rock act or a collective of snarky indie-rockers. “Pinmonkey” came from the head of the Simpsons-addicted Reynolds—“that’s Homer’s dream job,” Schell explains. Though a change has been considered since the band became a serious proposition, they’ve decided that it would be silly to drop a name that induces such double takes when listeners finally hear what the band sound like. To keep mixed-up modern rock fans happy, Pinmonkey have worked up a bluegrass cover of the Sugar Ray hit “Fly.” “A good song is a good song,” Schell explains.
It’s this philosophy that has led Pinmonkey to rely more on songs they admire than on songs they write themselves. Schell says, “I’ve been involved in the Americana scene pretty much since I moved to Nashville. I was aware of all these great songwriters. I knew there were songs out there that could have a wider acceptance. Although for Speak No Evil, we tried to pick songs that mainstream Nashville would shun. But we were wrong.”
In fact, Schell says that he and his bandmates have been fairly stunned by the rapidity with which they’ve risen from lark to label. “It all came extremely naturally, and none of us really tried.” That said, Pinmonkey intend to stay close to the recreational spirit in which they were born. “Being on a major won’t compromise us too much,” Schell insists. “The difference is that, basically, we spent next to nothing on Speak No Evil, but now we have a budget.”
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