Adam
Schmitt - Demolition
Highly
anticipated 3rd album from one of melodic pop's most esteemed
artists. Great new album featuring tracks spanning the 8 years
since his last offering on WarrnerBros./Reprise. A very welcome
return!!
Polished, melodic pop essential for fans of Tommy
Keene, Matthew
Sweet, Michael
Penn, Jon
Brion, Erik
Voeks, Jason
Falkner,
etc.
Adam Schmitt has been a staple of the Champaign-Urbana scene,
playing with bands such as The Farmboys, Pop The Balloon, the
Elvis Brothers, Diamond
Star Halo, Robynn Ragland, and others
in addition to his many guest appearances on songs he's engineering
for outside projects.
Are you interested in recording at Adam's Mixolydian
Studios in cozy Urbana, Illinois or in having Adam master some
recordings
you've already made?
Give us a call and we'll put
you in touch with him! He's recorded a slew of records by the
likes of Tommy
Keene,
Velvet
Crush, The
Blackouts, The
Beauty Shop, Robynn Ragland,
Lanterna, Toothpaste
2000, The
Great Crusades, Three
Hour Tour,
Honcho
Overload, Angie
Heaton, Hum,Titanic
Love Affair, Steve
Pride, Weird
Summer, and Erik Voeks and mastered many of these
and more by The
Action, Brendan
Gamble, Permer,
Måns Wieslander, etc.
Adam
Schmitt began the 1990s with two records on Warner Brother/Reprise
and great national press from the likes of Rolling Stone,
Billboard, Hits, Trouser Press Record Guide, Request, etc. Everyone keyed on
the shy, 23-year-old wunderkind angle. After Warner Brothers passed on the opportunity
to release a third CD, Schmitt retreated to his home studio - much of the gear
was purchased with his recording and publishing advances - to record other acts.
Many of those albums comprise the early Parasol record label catalog. In between
his engineering/production sessions (including tracks/albums for Tommy Keene,
Hum, Robynn Ragland) Schmitt continued to write and record his own demos. He
had a standing offer from Parasol label head, Geoff Merritt, to release anything
he wanted.
In late 1998 Schmitt set about compiling songs for what was to be his third album,
the prospective Parasol Records release, “The Race of All
Races.” The plan: as he transferred songs from his 24-track analog tapes
to his new ADAT machines he would “clean up” a few tracks. One quick
fix led to another and soon enough it was 1999 and Schmitt had re-titled the
album “Treefalling.” More production jobs intervened, new songs were
written, and pressure to deliver an adequate follow up to his critically acclaimed
major label releases mounted.
At the end of 2000 Schmitt released the self-imposed pressure. He decided to
go back to his original set of songs, give 10 of them a fresh mix, and release
them under a new title, “Demolition.” And here it is. 10 songs written,
recorded and mixed at Schmitt’s home studio between 1993 and
2001. And if “Demolition” goes well, we know that there are seven or
eight more volumes where this came from.
A Message From Adam:
Dear Parasol E-Mail (and Web) Friends,
Hi! This is Adam, just wanting to say a huge thanks for your kind words and support
of 'Demolition'. I'm very glad to finally have the album released and out on
Parasol, and I hope you all continue to enjoy it! Most of the songs on 'Demolition'
were written and recorded a few years ago, and a couple are even older than that.
Since I was recording at home for fun, I always just thought of the tracks as
demos, hence the (funny?) title. Much inspiration was eventually drawn from Pete
Townsend's Scoop in convincing me to release 'Demolition'- that and a couple
weeks of re-recording! There are still many recordings I left unused, enough
for maybe a 'Demolition' Volume Two...we'll see. I'm also hoping to do mixes
on some new recordings for another album altogether, and there's still that Diamond
Star Halo album to finish up (Bob & Brian-are you reading this? Phone Home!)
In any case, I think there
should be more soon (sic)... Thanks again, everyone!
Take Care-
Love, Adam
Fufkin.com
has a great review/article about the new
CD. Read it
here.
Amplifier interview of Adam Schmitt, Vol.
26, page 30-Brian Baker
No matter how you consider it, eight years is an impossibly long time. For a
musician, given the ephemeral nature of listeners' memories and the media's infatuation
with the newest next big thing, eight years between releases is artistic suicide.
That's the rope from which pop impresario Adam Schmitt finds himself dangling
upon the release of Demolition, his first album since
1993.
When Schmitt last had an album in the spotlight, Bill Clinton was in the first
year of his presidency, Friends was still a year away from becoming a television
phenomenon, and gas was $1.15 a gallon. Illterature was a worth, if somewhat
darker, successor to Schmitt's brilliant 1991 pop manifesto, World So Bright,
but both albums had been released on major uberlabel Reprise and Schmitt's future
seemed bright enough to warrant shades.
And then, nothing. Long after Reprise disavowed knowledge of Schmitt's
actions, rumors of demos and possible release dates swirled around the
internet, and
months stretched into the eight years that it took him to finally finish
Demolition. "These were songs that were originally going to come out on
Parasol in early 1999," says Schmitt from his Champaign, IL home on the
eve of Demolition's release. "I decided if I didn't like this album,
so the whole thing was shelved and I was trying to record all new songs."
Until spring of this year, Schmitt continued that strategy until work on the
new songs stalled. That's when he revisited the songs he worked on throughout
most of the 90s.
"I was slow in making progress on the new ones. So I went back to these
songs," says Schmitt. "I didn't know if it was an album or not,
but at least the songs were finished. I figured, 'We may as well go ahead
and put
this out.'"
Schmitt admits that he's too close to his own work to be objective about
it, which is one of the reasons for the long gap between releases. "I've reached
the point of no return when it comes to judging my stuff with an kind
of impartiality," says Schmitt with a laugh. "I'm generally pretty
down on what I wind up with. I hope that people like this. I don't know
if it's what they'll be expecting or it it's a departure or if it fits
in with
the other
two.
Although he is notoriously focused on details, Schmitt hasn't spent the
last eight years slaving over Demolition in his basement studio like obsessed
mad
scientist. Much of his hiatus has actually been given to slaving over other
people's recordings as a producer and engineer, an endeavor that devoured
nearly four
years before Schmitt took a breath and realized how much time had passed
since Illiterature. On the positive side, the greatest product of hi production
work
has been the sonic education that comes with each project, although that
has created its own problems. "Creatively, I always learn something new with
every single band I records," says Schmitt. "I know that winds
up somewhere in my train of thought when I'm working on my own material.
In a
funny way, that
may have hampered me in terms of completing my own record quickly. I'll
learn some recording technique with a particular band that I'm recording,
and then
want to apply that to what I'm doing. Then I'm at the mercy of myself,
being the artist and producer and engineer at the same time. I think it's
harder
for me to get perspective on that when I'm working on
my own material."
Whether he's producing or recording, Schmitt is most assuredly a product of his
Champaign upbringing, a veritable breaking ground for pop greatness. Schmitt
came of age watching the seeds of power pop being sown liberally by the likes
of the Vertebrats and Paul Chastain's the Nines and Bob Kimball's Weird Summer.
When Schmitt himself entered the fray, he went through a couple of starter bands
(The Farmboys, Pop the Balloon) before landing the gig that changed everything.
In 1987, Schmitt became the fourth member of the Elvis Brothers, a staple of
the vibrant Illinois pop scene. Schmitt's membership came after the Elvis' first
two Epic albums and before the band's self-released epic Now Hear This in 1991.
When Schmitt's home demos drew the attention of Warner Brothers and resulted
in a solo contract, the Elvis' severed ties with Schmitt. Upon the release of
World So Bright, the acclaim from the pop community was swift and glowing, with
Hits dubbing it the best debut album of 1991, and many critics including the
album in their annual Top 10 lists.
For 1993's Illiterature, Schmitt assembled a stellar band to translate his latest
batch of songs, including John Richardson on drums, Brad Quinn on bass, and Tommy
Keene guesting on guitar. The album was sweet yet more refined than its predecessor,
but it inspired similar accolades from peers and the
industry.
With Demolition, Schmitt continues to explore a slightly darker, more serious
vein in his music. Even though Schmitt wrote and recorded the songs in
Demolition over a period of eight years, there is still a sense of unity
among the tracks
that overwhelms the space between them. The title of the album refers to
the deconstructionist process that spawned the project as well as being
a play
on the original "demo" aspect of the songs. "There is certainly the
pun itself, which is that these are demos," says Schmitt. "And
I destroyed them, by sweating over them and putting so much time into them.
There's
the darker
side of some of the songs, which is reflected in the title. And there's
the idea that the technology has caught up with the people who make music,
to the
point
where a great many records are recorded at home, and not in a 'real studio',
and that's what used to be considered 'demos'. Now it's just par for the
course. So that's sort of what Demolition means to me:
the end of demos."
If there's an upside to Schmitt's reticence about releasing the material
on Demolition, it is the existence of the new album he began in early 1999
to
supplant the Demolition
sessions. Now that Demolition is out of the way, Schmitt is ready to return
to the album that was almost his third release. "The album is about 15% done,
and if I can just find another month, I'd be
able to wrap up that one as well," says Schmitt. "The sound runs
the gamut. Some of it is more acoustic than Demolition, but some of it
is as close
as a band as I can sound."
If by some miracle Schmitt were able to finish the album by the end of summer,
there is an outside chance that Parasol could release the album before year's
end. That would mean that Schmitt's interminably long hiatus would ultimately
result in two new albums this year. Realistically, though, he targets only 2002
for his next album. Adam Schmitt has taken some lessons from his eight-year absence
from the public eye. He was pledged to devote less time to producing and engineering
others and more to his own work, and he vows not to take another impossibly long
break. Of course, that's an easy promise to make with a nearly completed album
in the can. The proof of Schmitt's power pop conviction with come with the speedy
release of his fifth album. In other words, before
2010.
Praise
for
Adam Schmitt:
"...the finest debut of 1991..."-Hits
"...a beguiling melange of gorgeously arranged songs."-Rolling
Stone
"If you've got a soft spot for pop guys like Tommy Keene and Matthew Sweet,
you'll see the sparkle in this."-Request |
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