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“Every show we play, we have somebody come up and say, ‘Y’all think about having a singer?’ or ‘When are y’all gonna get a singer?’,” says Ampline founding bassist Kevin Schmidt in the atmospherically lit control room of Candyland, the band’s homegrown studio. “After we’ve got done playing, we’ve had guys run home and get a guitar, come to our van and not let us leave. It’s like, ‘Here’s my song, I want you to hear it. Take me with you.’ ”
“A lot of people hear us and think, ‘These guys’ problem is they just don’t have someone with a good voice,’ ” says guitarist Mike Montgomery. “But it’s not that.”
Such is the plight of the lyrically/vocally-challenged trio. It seems no one can believe they consciously choose to do without a flamboyant word howler at the front of the stage to convey heartfelt messages or pronouncements on the state of the world over the band’s raucous Prog/Punk/Rock soundtrack.
“I used to tell people he was dead,” Schmidt says of Ampline’s fictional “frontman.” “Mark St. Carpenter.
He died.”
Another urban myth exploded. Ampline’s vocalist didn’t die, nor did he depart over creative differences, internal conflict or to start a solo career. There simply never was one.
“We were all writing songs in the beginning and nobody really started singing,” Schmidt says. “The song structures ended up being so spread out over the board that we almost couldn’t find a way to sing. I think subconsciously I always wanted an instrumental band. I grew up listening to The Ventures from my dad’s music, and things like Iceberg and Don Caballero. I kind of wanted it, but I didn’t think it would ever really work.”
It’s not only working, it’s flourishing. With the impending mid-November release of the band’s magnificent second album, Rosary, on Shake It Records, Ampline had better get used to fielding questions about their “late” singer and their curious status as a viscerally powerful instrumental outfit.
Schmidt started Ampline in 1998 as a quartet with a fluid lineup that found the band shifting from four-piece to three-piece on a regular basis. After Schmidt found guitarist Jeff Albers and thistle drummer Rick McCarty, Ampline seemed stable as a trio. With the eventual help of thistle guitarist/engineer Montgomery, Ampline began work on The Choir, their debut album, on a darkly auspicious day five years ago.
“It was the day the towers came down,” Montgomery says of the band’s 9/11 start date. “It was definitely heavy. No one knew what was going on at that point.”
Although Montgomery’s initial role was technical, he began helping Albers come up with guitar parts and, by the time the album was finished, he’d become a full-fledged Ampline member. The Choir was released by the band in 2002 and immediately received glowing reviews.
That was four years ago, and much has transpired since The Choir‘s release. Ampline toured relentlessly after that as a quartet and even began thinking in terms of a second album, when the decision was made to build their own studio. They spent a year and a half putting up walls, wiring and installing equipment in their Reading Road rehearsal space to create Candyland. Just as the project was underway, Albers announced he was leaving the band.
“We had to relearn how to be a band with just three of us, without that piece of the puzzle,” McCarty says. “We kind of had to slow down to write. The songs we have are not conventional songs. One of us doesn’t come to practice and say, ‘Hey, this is our next song.’ They’re all completely organic in the way they’re put together. The writing process is completely democratic, so that takes a little bit more time.”
With Albers’ departure, the now-we-are-three learning curve, the long construction time involved in assembling the studio and the members’ other responsibilities (Schmidt plays with local band Covington, while Montgomery and McCarty are active with thistle and The Light Wires and also run Tiberius Records), there was precious little time to think about the next album. The studio process was the biggest roadblock.
“At the same time as it was giving people a giant new tool, it took the wind out of everybody’s sails because we all play in other bands and we all had this practice space, then the practice space was gone,” Montgomery says. “Everyone thinks, ‘God, you guys dicked around for four fucking years,’ but it took a lot longer to build this place than we thought.”
As soon as they were able, the trio began working methodically on new material, given the luxury of time afforded by having their own studio and not worrying about the meter running. As the rapturous Rosary started to take shape, Ampline came to the conclusion that they were already stretched thin by the events of the past three years and that dealing with the minutiae of putting out a new record might be more than they could handle.
“Everything that we’d done in the past — with Ampline and our other projects — we all put out on our own label,” McCarty says. “We made a concerted effort when we finished the record to find someone to put it out, and that alone took eight months.”
“We talked to labels that we thought would be a good fit and they’d say, ‘We really like the band, the only thing is we’d really like to hear vocals,’ ” Montgomery says with a laugh. “Well, that’s not gonna work.”
Enter Shake It’s Darren Blase, whose handshake-is-the-deal ethic suited Ampline’s low-key profile perfectly. With the particulars of releasing the album in Blase’s hands, the band is free to concentrate on touring — which currently is on hold until Schmidt recovers from his recent carpal tunnel surgery — and promoting Rosary.
They’re naturally anxious to get back on the road to play the new album, a powerful blend of Progressive and Jazz time signatures, Rock anthemics, Post Punk fury and Pop melodicism, all boiled down to their most elemental structures and performed by three instrumental dervishes.
And although Ampline doesn’t have a vocalist, they do utilize vocals to a certain extent. They might not be discernible as lyrics, but the band likes to include voices as musical textures, sometimes as a subliminal clue as to where the music is about to take you.
“I enjoy that because it’s like another instrument,” Schmidt says. “It’s amazing to me how you can put forth one word or one thought and it causes the listener to think and then the music controls their thoughts. We’ve been running projected film behind us, and I think that also works really well. But we do like to approach vocals like it’s an instrument.”
And Ampline is quick to point out that their no-vocalist status isn’t a political statement or manifesto-ed stance.
“If somebody asks me, I say we’re a Rock band,” McCarty says. “I don’t feel the need to convey that, right off the bat, we’re a band that does not sing. It’s not part of the description. We approach our music like a Rock band and put it forth like a Rock band.”
“Even though Ampline is known as an instrumental band, no one ever said, ‘We pledge allegiance that there will never be a word uttered,’ ” Montgomery says. “There was never an intent to take part in a movement. When there’s something to say, we’ll say it.” ©
This article appears in Sep 13-19, 2006.