The brothers and close friends of The Seventies returned to the Cincinnati scene with a rejuvenated outlook

It worked well for the Gibb brothers, maybe not so well for the warring Gallaghers and Everlys, and the Osmond boys had great success before prepubescent Donny took off for greener pastures and television stardom with little sis Marie. For better or worse, mixing music and brotherly love is one of Rock & Roll’s great traditions. Enter the Brothers’ Roesch (rhymes with mesh) of Cincinnati’s The Seventies, who comprise three-fifths of this self-described Indie Pop band with Rock & Roll roots.

Originally from Loveland, older brothers Mikey (drums) and Dave Roesch (bass) initially got together in the band Mickey in the mid-’90s. Las Vegas native and band spokesman, Puck Dunaway (keyboards, backing vocals) was recruited to be the frontman through a want ad. Mining the BritPop catalogues of the Stone Roses and the Smiths for inspiration, the band was a fledgling attempt at Rock & Roll stardom that counted future Seventies’ guitarist Jack Berning as an early fan. A band move to Manhattan exposed the trio to fresh, new styles of music; in particular underground American Indie acts such as Beck and Apples in Stereo. However, Dunaway feels that swimming in the vast talent pool of New York City also forced the trio to really question if their band was any good.

“The answer, ultimately, was ‘No’ ” he laughs.

The trio’s residency in New York did provide the young group with their first face-to-face encounters with Rock & Roll royalty.

“You see every Rock star there ever was in New York — David Byrne, Michael Stipe, Jarvis Cocker and Simon Le Bon — just going to clubs and doing their thing,” Dunaway recalls. “I think we all went through this stage where we were a bit star-struck but, after a while, it was really no big deal to see someone ‘famous’ at all. Truth be told, the most interesting people you find in New York are working in delis or they’re selling cigarettes behind a counter. Those are the people that have real stories and give New York its charm.”

Meanwhile, back in the bosom of the Midwest, the youngest Roesch — Matt (lead vocals, guitar) — had taken up playing and songwriting on his own. With New York offering nothing but dead ends, Mikey and Dave moved back to Cincinnati to work on music full-time with their younger sib while Dunaway returned to finish his degree. A chance run-in for the brothers with Berning (who had been living in Austin, Texas) led to a debut show at Cody’s Café as a quartet and a new moniker: The Madisons. Kismet intervened once again — Dunaway was working as Cody’s promoter and talent booker. Quickly aligning himself with the quartet, the band evolved into The Seventies, a title Dunaway qualifies as “a Rock & Roll name (with) an element of danger.”

Likened by some as an eclectic amalgam of the Pixies, middle-era REM, the Auteurs, Beck, Blur, The Zombies, Ocean Blue and (strangely enough) Harry Nilsson, the band admits that it’s currently hard at work refining the Seventies’ sound. Live, they are a precarious mix of Garage Rock recklessness and simple but sweet Pop structures. Since their debut in January, the group has been road-testing material in clubs with their eye on a late summer EP release.

“We want to put out a really cool-ass lo-fi Indie type recording for our first EP ­ (something in) the vein of Belle & Sebastian or the White Stripes,” Dunaway says. “I think our place is somewhere in-between the lo-fi Indie Art Rock bands and the straightforward Rock & Roll Pop bands. I really believe we can hold both audiences.”

Residing in a band of brothers and close friends can be a warm and fuzzy experience, however, Dunaway says it does have its fiery moments.

“You ever see brothers fight?” he laughs. “We all have that exchange with one another that we don’t hold back if someone has something to disagree about. A lot of times feelings get hurt but at the end of the day it seems to work itself out.

“(Well), most of the time,” he adds.

This article appears in Apr 17-23, 2002.