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Memory collector
By Johnny Ray Hustonjohnny@sfbg.com
Sweet leaf – Kelley Stoltz adds a new meaning to the phrase one Sunday afternoon in his Mission District apartment. Just back from a tour in Australia, Stoltz lacks the jet lag one might expect from a 19-hour leap across time zones, but he has the tan that comes with days spent in the country's 108-degree, ozone-depleted summer. We're talking about a song ("Prank Calls") on his new album, Below the Branches. Specifically, I'm asking about a line that refers to Yoko Ono. The question leads to a story about Stoltz and his girlfriend spray-painting some leaves to give to Ono, which in turn leads to the story's root: Each autumn, Stoltz's mom sends him some leaves in the mail from Michigan so he can have that "autumnal feeling of melancholy" that season-free San Francisco lacks. Somewhere near the start of relating all this, Stoltz – knowing I'm from Michigan too – gives me a leaf to take home with me. He's that kind of sweet guy. Branches, leaves ... four years in the making, and Stoltz's debut long-player on Sub Pop after his last, 2002's Antique Glow (Jackpine Social Club), earned high praise from Mojo to Melbourne, his new 13-song collection incorporates a hardcore vinyl collector's wide range of influences into an organic, natural sound. In fact, as its inner sleeve notes, Below the Branches was made using "100% green-e certified renewable energy." The sun and air power the amps, SM-57 mics, and Tascam 388 tape machine that build Stoltz's pop, even if he refers to Branches as his "carpet" album in relation to the "wood" LP that is Antique Glow – a comparison drawn from the floors of the respective apartments where he recorded them. The carpeting, and the fact that he now lives above a Laundromat, allows Stoltz to make noise at home – a type of freedom that few San Franciscans enjoy. That freedom couldn't happen to a more gifted big dreamer. Beginning with the sounds of an orchestra tuning up ("The discordant notes sound so beautiful, and there's a feeling of anticipation," he explains. "It sounds like life to me"), Below the Branches solidifies Stoltz's position as a formidable songsmith and producer, as a conductor in charge of his influences. Even more than Amy Linton of the now-defunct Aislers Set, here is a writing-and-recording whiz who – with the help of coproducers Kevin Ink, Sean Coleman, and Desmond Shea – is quite capable of being his own Phil Spector and Brian Wilson (not to mention Ian McCulloch). While we sit on the couch in Stoltz's living room, with some Duchamp, Harry Crews, and Albert Goldman's Lennon bio on the bookshelves to our right (and a few bare branches outside one window), I ask Stoltz about his formidable powers as a mimic – in this case, his talent for vocal impersonation. His answer is a funny trip back to only-child territory. "When I was eight, I was a huge Pittsburgh Pirates fan," he says. "I would go outside and dress up in a uniform. I'd convinced my parents to buy me chewing tobacco because it was more authentic. I would talk like a baseball announcer, like Vin Scully." He then launches into a perfect version of Scully: "Stoltz looks in, 3-2 count. The 6'4" specter of Kent Tekulve is wheeling like a unicyclist on a teeter-totter." On Below the Branches's gorgeous "Ever Thought of Coming Back," it isn't the voice of Scully but that of Carl Wilson – and the overall sound of Beach Boys godhead Brian Wilson – that Stoltz manages to conjure. Likewise, on Crockodials (Beautiful Happiness), Stoltz's recent self-produced cover of Echo and the Bunnymen's first album Crocodiles, he does a note-perfect instrument-by-instrument impersonation of his Liverpool heroes; one could argue that some of Stoltz's facsimiles outdo the originals. "Ultimately, it's still me alone in a room in a fantasy land," Stoltz says, when asked about these Rich-Little-of-rock feats. "But now it's real." The road from fantasy to reality – and more important, to a commanding overall sound that is very much Stoltz's own – has not been an easy one. Stoltz is a bit of a late bloomer. In late-'80s Michigan, I used to sell overpriced British import records to him at the record store where I worked. Back then, I was a Morrissey fanatic, while he was a Bunnymen fan, but we both had "Mac the Mouth" hairdos. Stoltz began playing music around the time when he was mowing lawns for those Bunnymen import discs; he formed a band called Distorted Reality – how '80s is that? – back in eighth grade. But to hear him tell it, the realization that "to create something, you had to learn how to play" took a while. It involved some aimless teen nights drinking gin in parking lots outside of Little Caesar's pizzerias, an early-20s "Norman Bates type of situation" living with his cool grandmother (after a gone-broke venture as an intern for Jeff Buckley in New York), and some time jamming with friends at the Detroit-area rock hall the Magic Bag – on the nights the place was closed – for him to build the confidence to venture west. Along with friend and sometime bandmate Gus Walgren, Stoltz first rolled into the Bay Area in early 1996 – in fact, their dying car sputtered right up to the Berkeley dwelling of fellow ex-Detroiter Brendan Benson, then flush with the pride of his first album on a major label. "I remember sitting in his living room and listening to the masters the day they arrived," says Stoltz. "I was envious and kind of amazed – and inspired. But I realized I had a lot of playing to do and an education to get." The playing began later the same year, when he first landed some gigs at the Mission District's Tip Top Inn. The education continued with days spent buying vinyl at places like the Salvation Army in order to sell it elsewhere. A whole wall of Stoltz's apartment is devoted to crates of albums – it's an altar of vinyl – and Stoltz ends my visit by using his low-tenor to imitate "Beige" from Ken Nordine's hilarious Colors, a record-collector favorite. He has the gregariously authoritative personality of a teacher, and in fact for five years he had a gig schooling kids at an elementary school out in the avenues. "At the end of the day, I was too tired to pick up the guitar and be creative," he remembers. "I realized I had to put a move on, or I'd be that frustrated 50-year-old guy who says, 'I coulda – I had poetry in me.'<\!q>" No doubt about it, Antique Glow and Below the Branches offer proof of the poetry. Guitar-based, the former took roughly two years to make, and as Stoltz would agree, it has more of a grab-bag feel, containing (his words) "a blues tune, a garage tune, a finger-picking song, and a goofy carnival tune." Piano-based, Below the Branches has more of a unified feel – an achievement, considering its long genesis, which involved editing nearly 100 songs down to the final dozen-plus-one. From the spare, dawn-kissed beauty of the ballad "Mystery" to the "la la"s and chirps (taken from a vinyl field recording) of "Birdies Singing," the album has a tone of optimism in the face of despair. For example, "Birdies Singing" stems from the first sounds Stoltz heard after a long night of panic attacks during which he thought he'd finally ruined his eardrums. The music-mad man who heard the birdies sing one fine morning after a long night of playing too loud has amassed a large local following. But when the prodigal son has gone home to Detroit to play live, the results have been less than stellar. Stoltz has played two gigs in Michigan, including an ill-attended show where most of the audience consisted of his family, and the bartender introduced him with the words "Kelley Stoltz – she's on now." Thanks to Below the Branches, that type of response should soon change. Whether you're in San Francisco or the Motor City, Kelley Stoltz is on now – on your stereo if you want to hear a great album. KELLEY STOLTZ Tues/7, 6 p.m. Amoeba Music 1855 Haight, SF Free (415) 831-1200 www.amoebamusic.com With Whysp and the Moore Brothers Feb. 17, 9 p.m. 12 Galaxies 2565 Mission, SF $8 advance, $10 door (415) 970-9777 www.12galaxies.com www.electriccity.org www.subpop.com
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