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After tasting success with the now defunct
Refreshments, Roger Clyne is back with a new outfit,
The Peacemakers.
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Although he doesn't always see it, Roger Clyne is the first to admit it: he has matured. It shows in his songwriting, where the co-founder and frontman for the Peacemakers has reduced the smirk factor considerably without threatening the inherent but infinitely more subtle humor than which he plied as a member of the Refreshments four years ago. It shows in his ability to gracefully continue with his band's direction in the face of the defection of guitarist Scotty Johnson to the Gin Blossoms reunion. And it shows in the statement he hopes comes through on his latest album.
"For the first time, I've made a record with an overt conscience, but I kept the fun part," says Clyne of his new attitude and new album with the Peacemakers, Sonoran Hope and Madness. "I really wanted to do both and I think we've done it. I think the heart of the album has to do with conscience and humanity. In a world that keeps going faster, in spite of how many time saving devices we invent, it seems we lose ourselves in the rat race on the golden treadmill. We lose things like family relationships and friends. We have such a consumer society that it seems like that disposable mentality has crossed over to people. It's something that we all know is wrong but we don't have time anymore to recognize. I wanted the record to be implicit in bringing that up, that we are in control of our destiny."
In less capable hands, expectations that lofty would come crashing back to earth in relatively short order, but Clyne has the energy and conviction to sell his philosophies and the talent to press his musical abilities into similar service for the same ends.
"The old saying used to be 'Necessity is the mother of invention.' Now it's the converse, that invention has become the mother of necessity," Clyne continues. "We feel like we can't do without these things. They take up more space and cause more worry. I don't think it's the big burdens that weigh us down, I think it's the trivialities of modern life that can drive us crazy. The record is about slowing down, and listening to your conscience. I believe that we all have an inherent idea of right and wrong and good and bad and fast and slow, and I'll bet if we all got together and talked about it, they'd be real close. So I hope the record can find that middle ground or at least bring up a dialogue that can find that middle ground."
That might seem like an unusually tall order, but Clyne is used to accomplishing big things with a little time. After a short stay in a band called the Mortals, Clyne helped form the Refreshments in Tempe, AZ in 1993; the band released their highly acclaimed indie debut Wheelie the following year, which attracted the attention of the majors. Mercury won the contract in 1995, and released the band's fairly successful major label debut Fizzy, Fuzzy, Big and Buzzy in 1996, which spawned the college radio/MTV hit "Banditos."
In 1997, the band's manager encouraged them to supply some music to Mike Judge, the braintrust behind Beavis and Butthead, who was developing an animated series for Fox TV and was looking for a theme song. The band decided to send a recorded version of an instrumental piece that they traditionally performed at soundchecks. Their song was chosen from among several hundred entries, and remains the theme song of King of the Hill after five seasons. 1997 also saw the release of the band's second album, the ambitious and largely misunderstood The Bottle and Fresh Horses, which found little support at Mercury, and the Refreshments quickly found themselves out of a label deal.
After being dropped from their label and unable to handle the stress of staying together without support, the Refreshments called it a day in early 1998. Clyne and Refreshments drummer P.H. Naffah, vowing to keep their music experience alive, decided to hit the desert for a little soul-cleansing isolation with full packs and acoustic guitars. Their two-week jaunt resulted in a fresh outlook and batch of songs that formed the basis for the debut of the Peacemakers later in 1998.
Clyne and Naffah began playing happy hours as an acoustic duo in Tempe and the surrounding environs and eventually attracted the attention of Johnson, guitarist James Swafford, and bassist Daryl Icard. Once the full band was in place (Icard and Swafford were eventually replaced by Steve Larson and Danny White), Clyne and the others decided that the major label route was not the road to take, and so he and Naffah formed Emma Java Records in order to release their own records, beginning with Honky Tonk Union in 1999.
With the recent release of Sonoran Hope and Madness, Clyne and the Peacemakers have notched their third album in as many years -- their second album, Real to Reel, was a live affair intended as a giveaway to accompany Honky Tonk Union and wound up being so popular that they had to legitimately release it -- and the evolution between the two studio efforts is quite striking.
One of the big changes is the manner in which the Peacemakers have coalesced as a unit. The band followed the release of Honky Tonk Union with a tour that lasted "forever ... it seemed like," says Clyne with a laugh. The result was an outfit that became very comfortable together on stage and, ultimately, in the studio. Perhaps the most significant difference has been in Clyne's songwriting, which has evolved from the tongue-in-cheekiness of his Refreshments' output to the Arizona-via-Bakersfield swing of Honky Tonk Union to the resonating desert hillbilly charm of Sonoran Hope and Madness.
When Clyne considers his evolution over the past decade, he doesn't see too many seams between the pop crunch of the Refreshments and the Southwestern rocky tonk rave-up of the Peacemakers. "To me, it all makes sense," he says honestly. "I don't see any curves on the trail. I've been a fan of a lot of different kinds of music all my life, everything from Willie Nelson to Camper Van Beethoven. I think that comes through in all the records that I've made, from Wheelie through Sonoran Hope and Madness, with differing degrees of weight on each side of the spectrum, depending on which record you're listening to."
Whatever path he's taken to arrive at this spot, Clyne is convinced that he's where he needs to be -- in his career, in his songwriting, and within himself. Clyne credits his satisfaction to the fact that the band retained its independence and resisted the temptation to feed from the major label trough (the band markets its own wares through its web site at www.azpeacemakers.com). "We had the benefit having our own timetable and that helped," says Clyne. "We didn't have anybody but ourselves giving us pressure to make the best record we could. The clock was not ticking. We didn't have any time crunch at all ... (but) it had to be just right. I drove those guys nuts, and me too, to some extent but I wasn't willing to let it go and be just good enough."
ROGER CLYNE AND THE PEACEMAKERS perform Sunday at the Southgate House.
