Band Started by Poway High Classmates Causing L.A. Stir

The caravan of San Diego bands making tracks in the music-industry wasteland grows longer.

One local quintet generating strong word of mouth in L.A. is Blacksmith Union, whose members were classmates at Poway High School just a few years ago. The initial lineup of guitarist-vocalist Paul Painter, guitarist Chris Hoffee and drummer Bill Graham came together in the spring of 1990. Bassist Tony Roth was added in early 1991, around the time the band released its independent CD (also cassette format), “Dependants Finest Moments.”

Lots of unsigned bands regionally distribute their own albums, but few meet with the consumer response that greeted Blacksmith Union’s maiden effort, which is on sale at such area stores as CD Sounds, Off the Record, the Record Shop and Tower Records. According to Mark Wilson, owner of the CD Sounds store on Miramar Road, interest in the recording actually preceded its January release, almost unheard of for “indie” recordings.

“I got an advance copy, and was playing it in the store, and four different customers asked me what it was,” Wilson said Monday. “Now, I sell about 100 copies of it every month. We’ve been open for four years, and only a few (national) artists have sold that well here.”

Wilson believes that Blacksmith Union’s mix of bluesy pop and acoustic music, and its emphasis on relatively substantive lyrics, account for the recording’s popularity. “(‘Dependants’) appeals to people who are not interested in Top 40 fluff, and that pretty much describes our customers,” he said. “Word has gotten around, and a lot of the people who come in asking for the album don’t even realize it’s not on a major label, that this is a local band.”

If Tyler Crawford has his way, Blacksmith Union’s success won’t remain regional for much longer. Crawford works for the Santa Ana-based Nightstar Inc., the management wing of a company that handles Donny Osmond, among others. Several months ago, he agreed to manage Blacksmith Union.

“I was at a studio where our company was shooting a commercial for Power Burst, a Gatorade competitor,” Crawford recalled Monday, “and one of the grips at the shoot handed me Blacksmith Union’s CD, which he highly recommended. I thought, ‘Great, another guy whose cousin has a band.’ But I listened to it, and it was one of the best things I’d heard in a long while. I checked them out at a Bacchanal gig in February, and they were even better live than they were on the CD.”

Crawford is taking a long-term approach to promoting the band’s career, eschewing some of the usual routes to a major-label record deal. Accordingly, a recent Blacksmith Union gig in the main room at Spice--the Hollywood Boulevard club that’s a well-known industry hangout--was not arranged as a record-biz showcase.

“It was just a gig,” he said. “I don’t want Blacksmith Union to be perceived as just another band in the L.A. rat pack, so we’re taking it slowly. We want to create a buzz in the industry first, and then worry about a record deal.”

In the meantime, however, Crawford has inked a deal with an international record distributor to get “Dependants” wider exposure. “We’ve sold about 1,000 copies of the album so far,” he said.

In recent weeks, Blacksmith Union has opened separate local concerts for recording acts School of Fish and Material Issue. Watch this space for announcements of future gigs in the area.

In a sense, Blacksmith Union would like to get to where Asphalt Ballet is now.

The hard-rock quintet, which features San Diegans Danny Clarke and Julius Ulrich (guitars), Terry Phillips (bass), and Mikky Kiner (drums), and Louisiana-born vocalist, Gary Jeffries, signed last year with Virgin Records. Asphalt Ballet should be delivering its self-titled debut on Sept. 17. Producing is Greg Edward, who has spun the controls, either as engineer or as producer, for such heavies as John Cougar Mellencamp, U2, and R.E.M.

The video for the album’s first single, “Soul Survive,” will be shot Tuesday at the Bacchanal, beginning in the morning. The closed shoot will be followed at 7:30 p.m. that evening by an Asphalt Ballet performance at the club, and part of the live show will be incorporated into the video. Admission to the concert, sponsored by “Classic 103” radio (102.9-FM), is $1.02 , with proceeds going to Children of the Night, a charity to aid homeless children.

REWIND: The appearance of a rock band featuring a local musician recently injected some much-needed life into the Fox television network’s “Totally Hidden Videos,” a mostly lame series that re-works the old “Candid Camera” premise (use of the word “totally” in the title is a giveaway).

In the only watchable segment of the Aug. 3 program, Dweezil Zappa and his band hoodwinked several different delivery men into performing for the invisible camera. The messengers were summoned, individually, to an L.A. sound stage, where they were told that the band couldn’t finish shooting its in-progress video unless someone sat-in for inexplicably absent guitarist, “Mike.”

The missing picker, of course, was Mike Keneally, ex- of the local band Drop Control and former contributor to the San Diego Reader. After several fish had bitten the bait and made lovely fools of themselves playing unplugged guitars, an “angry” Keneally burst through a side door and demanded an explanation. “First of all, take off my damn hat,” Keneally growled at one unwitting victim, seizing his trademark purple-and-green chapeau from the poor chap’s head.

Laffs and embarrassed smiles all around.

GRACE NOTES: The avant-pop-art band Transvision Vamp is booked into SDSU’s Backdoor for a Sept. 11 gig. Tickets go on sale Friday at 3 p.m. at all TicketMaster locations. . . .Tickets are on sale now for a country double-bill that brings Randy Travis and Alan Jackson to the Sports Arena on Sept. 15.

CRITIC’S CHOICE: HOT BLUES GUITARIST SET FOR SMOKEY’S

Blues guitarist Kenny Neal’s latest album, “Walking On Fire,” is so hot, it sweats. A much-lauded performer since he burst onto the scene in 1988, the Louisiana-bred Neal plays electric blues with the angry-cat passion of the late Freddie King, the economical eloquence of B.B. King, and the slack funk one expects to hear in the blues dens of Chicago. Then he switches to acoustic blues and puts you away. He sings pretty good, too. For my money, Neal blows Robert Cray off the map. He’ll perform Thursday at Smokey’s on San Diego Mission Road (three blocks east of the stadium).