N.Y. producer high on Low

Duluth band could be on cutting edge of 'dream pop' scene

Dominic Papatola, Duluth News-Tribune. January 14, 1994

Three artists from the area are discovering that it's good to be Low.

Low is a fledgling band of Generation X musicians that some in the industry say could be on the cutting edge of "dream pop," perhaps the next generation of alternative music.

The Duluth-based band signed its first recording contract with Vernon Yard Records, a division of major label Virgin Records. The trio's first album, "I Could Live in Hope," is scheduled to hit record stores nationwide next month.

It should be a heady experience for 25-year-old Al Sparhawk, 26-year-old Mimi Parker and 18-year-old John Nichols. The band, after all, is only a few months old. They had played a single gig in Duluth when a record producer expressed an interest in having them cut an album. Their third gig was in New York City and their conversation these days is peppered with talk of tours and follow-up albums.

But the band is named Low for a reason. The group could be the poster children for the laid-back.

It's not an affectation. The members of Low are as nice people as you'd ever want to meet. They just don't fit the hyperactive, self-promotional stereotype of people in the music business.

Quite the contrary.

Parker, the drummer, is the most high-energy member of the group, and to call her subdued would be an overstatement. "We are actually excited," she said during a recent interview, leaning back in her chair and sounding as if she were ordering a short stack of pancakes in a diner.

Sitting next to her, Nichols had folded his arms on a table and laid his head down. Sparhawk sat at the end of the row, placidly.

"This is just the way we are," Parker said.

Parker's husband, Sparhawk, is the guitarist and lead singer of the group and the most talkative member of the trio. He explained that he, Parker and Nichols dormed Low last May when the musicians — each of whom had floated from band to band — each happened not to be working with a group.

After putting together a few songs, the band played a gig at the Recycla-Bell, an all-ages hangout in Duluth's Endion neighborhood, and recorded their five original tunes in Sparhawk and Parker's one-room apartment.

Their music is mellow, quiet and — at least to some ears — sounds a chord of alienation. The languid laid-back tunes are sort of like the Cowboy Junkies on barbiturates. A fan once described Low as "a college band for people who actually graduated from college."

Even Sparhawk was pressed to put a label on his band's quietly assertive music.

"Our music has moods," he said. "We do a lot with the gray areas. None of our stuff is political, none of it is violent, none of it is your basic love (story) or anything like that. A lot of what we deal with is the really, really deep-inside-you stuff."

The band's demo tape immediately caught the attention of Shimmy-Disk, a New York-based record producer known for its successful underground, college and alternative bands.

Shimmy-Disk's owner, who goes by the single name Kramer, said he knew within the first four lines of the first song on Low's demo that the band was something special.

"I've produced 200 records in the last three years," he said. "I've gotten more calls about Low than I have about any of them."

Kramer said the band's quietude is what separates it from the pack.

"This is a band with the guts to be completely and utterly serene, in complete disregard of everything fashionable and trendy," he said.

Kramer invited the band for two trips to New York to cut the 11-song album and to play a couple of club dates. While there, the band hooked up with Liz Brooks, the director of artists and repertoire at Vernon Yard.

"It's very rare that you get a demo or a first recording by a band that is something that you listen to for pleasure," Brooks said. She signed the band to a contract that guarantees them two albums with Vernon Yard, as well as an option for up to five more.

The music business, especially for alternative bands, is a craps shoot, filled with maybes and could-bes. But Brooks said Low has the potential to cut across many categories of listeners, from the college-age underground crowd to the adult alternative set.

But was she surprised to find such a band coming out of Duluth?

"Everything about Low surprises me a little," she said. "They produce a very developed, very mature sound. Places like New York and L.A. are picked clean and that part of the country lends itself to a simplicity of style."

Since that second trip to New York, things have happened rapidly for Low. Shortly after getting home and signing the recording contract, the trio embarked on a tour that took them to Seattle, San Francisco and Phoenix, among other cities. They played clubs, colleges and one very hip laundromat.

The experience, said bassist Nichols, "is kind of strange. I actually expected to be busing tables for years and continuing in college. This sort of side-tracked that."

"It's almost scary," added Parker. "It was at the point where we would say things — imagine silly things — and the next week, they'd be happening."

Suddenly, the collective imaginings of Low — making a music video, going on tour in Europe, don't seem quite so silly.

At the end of this month, the band will return to New York to start an eight-week touring string that will have them playing club dates down the East Coast and into Florida.

After that, Sparhawk said, he hopes things become a little less laid back.

"I still want to play 'Saturday Night Live,'" he said, allowing a rare smile.