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Article published Oct 12, 2007 Slider Pines bring roots-rock goodness to The Corner Lounge
By Steve Wildsmith of The Daily Times Staff
Thomas Wolfe once wrote that “you can’t go home again,” and while Slider Pines singer Joey Shanks might disagree, he will give you this — going home again can certainly be weird.
A native of Memphis, Shanks spent the last few years living and playing music in the Dallas area before picking up stakes and heading back to the Volunteer State. Going back home, he told The Daily Times this week, filled him with a sense of deja vu that was both comfortable and unfamiliar, all at the same time.
“Memphis is the kind of place where, when you’re from there, everybody wants to imagine that it’s ‘Mystery Train,’ but it’s more like Sears and Chili’s, and then they drag Elvis out every summer,” Shanks told The Daily Times this week. “I like Elvis, but they won’t let him stay buried there, and then I see musicians like Alex Chilton and Chris Bell (both of Big Star) going unnoticed, and people who don’t know who Big Star was. I have mixed feelings about the place.
“It’s a complicated Southern town, an place where white people and black people disagree on a lot of things, and it’s a little uncomfortable just beneath the surface. I’m not unique in having mixed feelings about my hometown, I admit — but it was strange to go back home.”
Fortunately for fans of the roots-oriented rock ‘n’ roll played by the Slider Pines, that strangeness gave birth to the band’s most recent album — “Road, Avenue, Railroad,” a nod to the geographical layout of Memphis, Shanks said.
“To me, that’s kind of how the city is laid out from the river — you’ve got Union, and then the railroad, and to the south of that is Poplar,” he said. “It’s just a long, big city built around a railroad, and thematically on the record, I was just trying to grow up. I would say the majority of those songs are about that. I guess anytime someone moves back to the place where they grew up, they start retracing their footsteps, and it sets the wheels in motion.”
“Road, Avenue, Railroad” is an earnest rock record, a slab of angst and discomfort wrapped in guitar and Mellotron. The band draws on such inspirations as The Drams (formerly Slobberbone) and The Old 97’s, Shanks said, but comparisons can also be made to indie rockers the Ike Reilly Assassination and any number of other straight-ahead bands that don’t try to paint themselves into a corner. Songs like “Fast Track” are full-steam ahead, hard-driving rockers that seem to capture the turmoil of a guy driving back through a rainstorm, windshield wipers slapping across the glass, to confront the ghosts of his past; “The Missing Street Sign” is a slice of jangle-pop that’s a nod to early R.E.M. and Big Star; “Wolf River” is an introspective number that calls to mind arena-rockers Boston, if Ryan Adams had written songs for them.
In other words, Shanks said, it’s a cornucopia of the influences he grew up on.
“I had a good time growing up in Memphis, and I loved the city,” he said. “I felt really lucky to have good, nonconsolidated radio stations, and it was nice to know that my heroes, if they weren’t from Memphis, definitely wished they were. I grew up really loving the Athens (Ga.) sound of the mid- to late-1980s, and you could always count on Star 103 getting the lead out at 9 p.m. every Saturday. My first concerts were R.E.M. and AC/DC, and I don’t think I’ve changed much since then.”
After moving back to Memphis, Shanks said he wanted to expand his musical horizons and find collaborators outside of the scene he was so familiar with growing up. Those collaborators came in the form of Andy Lester on bass and keys and drummer Bill Spellman, two transplants to Memphis with similar musical interests.
“I lived here before and played with people here before, so I tried to look for people outside of my circle to play with,” Shanks said. “We all met through friends of friends, and we were all really committed to the idea of being a three-piece.
“I don’t consider us a Memphis band as much as I do a Dallas band, even though we’re not really from either place. The Drams, The Old 97’s — those are people we’re familiar with. But I could never really get a handle on the Memphis scene. Even when I was living there, I just didn’t seem to fit into it. What we’re doing now is really great, though, and I’m loving it.”