UNSUNG HERO: I just listened to the CD four times in a row. When I opened up the package, I assumed: solo album, Badlees, it’ll be a guy strumming an acoustic guitar, singing songs about his dad—
PETE PALLADINO: BORING!
And so begins the Unsung Hero interview The Badlees’ Pete Palladino, who just released his first solo album, ‘Sweet Siren of the Reconnected’ (P&P Records). From Pete’s first comments, and from the first moments of the record, one thing’s for sure: it’s not your typical solo disc. Not even close.
A New Jersey native, Palladino moved to Central Pennsylvania in the mid 80s, to attend Susquehanna University. In his senior year, Pete met a band who took him on board and christened themselves The Badlees. Over the next twelve years, the band would become a regional sensation, recording and releasing their folk & county-tinged rock, one of the area’s first bands to put their music on CD. Their independent releases took them to the next level, but at a cost. The Badlees’ uncommon success ended in what would become a common, unfortunate story. In 1994, who could have known?
In 1995, their independent release, ‘River Songs’, saw a re-release on Polydor Records, an imprint of Polygram’s A&M. The disc’s local success translated on a national scale, selling what Palladino figures as close to 200,000 copies as the band toured the country, supporting bands such as the Allman Brothers, Bob Seger, and the Robert Plant/Jimmy Page reunion. Poised to make a run at platinum, The Badlees would record a new disc, only to find themselves stopped dead as Seagram absorbed Polygram, and 300 bands found themselves waiting for news on their status as signed recording artists.
Getting dropped would have been the best thing that could happen to them, but it didn’t work that way. Palladino explained during the interview: “We had a record done for Polygram, and they just froze the whole release schedule, put us on hold. And that one-month hold turned into one- and-a-half years of just sitting around waiting for word of whether they were going to put the record out, whether they were going to drop us, let us go do an independent record. And it just became ridiculous, to the point that we lost all the momentum we had gained with the ‘River Songs’ record.”
In the meantime, the label gave the band the go-ahead to release two independent discs, and ‘Up There Down Here’ would see finally release in 1999, on Miles Copeland’s Ark 21 Records. But without active record company support, the band found itself unable to afford offers to tour with major bands. The Badlees would continue their homegrown success, but the damage was done.
The band’s future may be in question, but the relationships in that unit remain. As with the other Badlee spinoffs Echotown and The Cellarbirds, ‘Siren’ is a family affair: Badlees guitarist and studio ace Bret Alexander reteams with Palladino, manning the boards and playing all things stringed. Unofficial Badlees sixth member, songwriter Mike Naydock co-wrote nine of the album’s eleven tracks. But Pete’s behind the wheel, writing & co-writing, singing, playing guitar, even designing and typesetting the CD booklet. A full band plays on nearly every track as the singer truly takes the spotlight for the first time.
From the disc’s beginning to its end, we’re in Pete’s house. Palladino plays tour guide, story teller, and big brother, delivering fact, fiction, and advice, usually sounding like he’s addressing the listener personally. The albums starts off with a bang and winds down gracefully, songs like “Elena on the Wall” and “Home at Last” standouts on a disc that doesn’t lose momentum for a minute, “Fourth of July” plays like bang-crash fireworks, and with “Sweet Song of the Reconnected” and “Ever Come to Mind,” the disc cools off, the smoke clears, and Palladino takes us home, to a basement apartment on a summer night: “And if I ever come to mind/ I hope you enjoy the rewind.”
Palladino and crew draw minimally on the Badlees’ sound, many of the songs fast-paced rockers, with a few surprising background elements. The feel-good ballad “Fate Could Be a Beautiful Thing” moves along steadily, beat and acoustic guitar obscuring atmospheric keyboards until the chorus starts, and the electric guitar kicks in, only to quickly fade under a swell of 80s synths. Telling what songs the bagpipes, flamenco guitar and bongos flavor would ruin the surprise, and might distract from the album’s overall vibe: across all eleven tracks, Palladino shares blue-collar, smoky-room, moonlit-night rock poetry, heavy on the harmonies.
Just before taking a well-deserved vacation to wind down from a long chapter of his life and move on to the next one, Palladino called Unsung Hero to talk about his musical endeavors past, present and future. And so we join Pete in progress, discussing his solo project, the history of The Badlees, and why both true solo moments and bagpipes grace the disc, but not much...
PP: To me, think Lenny Kravitz. Lenny Kravitz is still a solo guy, but it’s very much a band thing. I might do an acoustic record at some point, but that’s not what I want my thing to be. I’m a big fan of really produced pop music like Del Amitri, Fountains of Wayne and all that stuff. I always want to approach it as “Yeah, these are my songs,” and I’m writing these songs, but I’m surrounding myself with really great players.
UH: Your entire adult life has been as a member of The Badlees. What did you do before?
PP: I grew up here, in New Jersey. The reason I wound up in Pennsylvania, is I went to a school out there called Susquehanna University in my senior year. They were all out from different schools. We met at a recording studio. I was actually playing in the band my senior year, which was an odd kind of senior year. I wound up having this dual life of being a college senior, then my night life was spent in bars, cutting my teeth, learning to be in a band.
UH: Straight from school to the band.
PP: I’ve been lucky that this is how I’ve made my living. As every actor and musician and artist, I was a waiter for a little while, and a ton of temp jobs. But my professional life has always been that of a musician. I’m very, very lucky.
UH: So what’s the status of The Badlees? Are they still together?
PP: Yeah. Today. We’re deciding what to do. We don’t know what to do. It’s like any relationship that lasts for twelve years and that’s a working relationship. You need a break... Basically, we’ve put this thing on pause. It’s not even anything as official as breaking up or not breaking up.
UH: In The Badlees, you were just one of songwriters.
PP: In The Badlees, everybody was a creative force. We were lucky that everybody wrote. There were five of us in the band, and everybody wrote songs. And the way it worked in The Badlees was, may the best song win. What that translated to in reality, in order to have a clear, cohesive focus of what the band was, is that translated to 90% of the songs on the record were Bret’s. And that was probably good in one aspect, because it was more of a direction, of a vision than having five different guys who come from five completely different backgrounds writing songs. You don’t want to sound like you don’t know what you’re doing, that you don’t have focus as a band. But what wound up happening is that there was really no creative outlet for the rest of us.
UH: How long coming was the record?
PP: It’s been a writing process for a bunch of years. However, I’d say 90% of the record was written toward the end, as I started to figure out what it is I do well: I write three-minute pop songs. And I sort of figured out toward the end of writing. A lot of the songs I wrote toward the end ended up being on the record.
UH: Even if it’s a temporary split, it sounds amicable. For one, Bret produced.
PP: It was great. There was no struggle for power... It’s not even a power issue. I trust Bret’s ears in the studio. I trust Bret’s ability to produce records. But it’s different when you’re in The Badlees. It is a democratic process. So your ideas get sifted through a blender, and everything else that’s five guys, so it never really winds up being exactly the way you see it. And the way I approached things with Bret is I said “I have really strong ideas on parts of this record. Other parts of this record, I want you to do your thing. We kind of laid out the lines before we started working together. So there was really no struggle there... It was very easy. We had a really good time making the record. I don’t know if we would have had such a good time making a Badlees record. I’m not really looking forward to that.
UH: So what were you able to do with this disc that you haven’t been able to do?
PP: The constant struggle of things between Bret and I is [that] I view things from a real pop background, which is pretty evident and obvious on the record. And the reason The Badlees worked is it wasn’t necessarily all my vision of a pop thing, it wasn’t all Bret’s vision of the singer-songwriter eclectic thing. So it was kind of meeting somewhere in the middle. I think that’s why ‘River Songs’ did worked so well: It was accessible, yet there was some cool depth there. Towards our last couple records, ‘Amazing Grace’ and ‘Up There Down Here’, creatively, I’m barely on those records. Barely. And so it wasn’t my vision of what I saw myself doing. We all get into this because we want to create—well, that’s not true; we get into this when you’re 19 years old because you want to meet girls—but beyond that, once you start to discover what it is you do, the reality of being an artist, and trying to make a living doing this, you want to feel vital. You want to feel that your ideas are coming to life.
UH: The disc has some creative moments that you really don’t see coming, like “Sweet Siren of the Reconnected.” The first time I listened to it, I stopped the disc and played it again, like “What was that?”
PP: That’s the one people either love or hate. And that’s great. When I wrote the song, I was working on it with my co-writer, Mike Naydock. It started out as a little pop song, a real delicate, pretty demo that I had in mind. And we abandoned that idea when we started recording, and just said “Let’s just experiment and see what happens.” So I think on the basic level, there is a little pop song there. Yet in the presentation of it, it’s cleverly disguised among some odd sounds. It was a cool experiment.
UH: The keyboards on “Fate Could Be a Beautiful Thing” are a nice touch.
PP: I’ve always been a big fan of that stuff, the real retro stuff. And so we stumbled upon the sound, Bret pulled up the sound for something else, and I was like “That’s it.” I love that. I’m a big fan of Fountains of Wayne, which also draws heavily on vintage keyboards, The Cars, and stuff like that. It was perfect. What a great texture. “Fate” is one of my favorite songs on the record. That’s probably the song I’m most proud of, both on a song level, as well as sonically.
UH: What are some of your other favorites?
PP: I really like “Home at Last.” I really like “Elena.” I’m really proud of the whole record. I’m really more interested in what other people think. Because I’m so close to it... I’m just excited to listen to it through the ears of other people, to see what strikes them as a great song, or surprising... We set out to make a real ear candy record. Yet underneath it all, there’s these great lyrics that I owe completely to my co-writer, Mike Naydock. Mike’s sword is his lyric writing.
UH: With The Badlees, you opened up for some big acts. What are some of the experiences that stand out?
PP: Probably the most memorable moments. One of the most memorable moments was Greg Allman asking me to sing “Stormy Monday” with him, then going out and doing that at a sold-out Atlanta show. That was completely overwhelming. On the Seger tour, he had Kenny Aronoff playing drums on that tour, and we made friends with Kenny. So every night, we were behind Kenny Aronoff, standing in the corner, behind his drum kit. And he would do this solo at one point in the show, and it was an unbelievable perspective, because we were five feet behind Kenny’s head, and just to see a stadium from that perspective and watching Kenny Aronoff do his thing. I grew up listening to Mellencamp, so I knew who he was. Believe me, I probably said four words to Bob Seger, and I spent the rest of the time with Kenny.
UH: On the business side, what are your plans now?
PP: I’ll entertain any offer that comes along, and I’l talk to anybody, but I’m not in a hurry to give it all away unless it’s a step forward. There’s a giant middle ground between superstars and those of us that are able to go out and make a living playing music. And I believe that unless there’s a good shot that you’re going to be able to go to the superstar status—it’s not only you; it’s the people you surround yourself with—unless you’re confident with those people who can take you to the next level, you’re giving away an awful lot based on speculation. And I just don’t want to do that. I’ve spent too much time to have folks give me two weeks in the sun, and if it doesn’t grow legs on its own, they’re off of it. Then where are you?
UH: What are the plans for the live shows?
PP: I just started auditioning folks for my band. Which is going to be a very, very interesting and hilarious process. I’ve already decided if any drummers show up at my house and start taking out more than one kick drum, they can take off right there. It’s gonna be fun. I’m just going to put together a band to go out and tour, and be a chameleon... Right now I’m doing a lot of shows that are just myself solo, myself and one other guitar player. And it really depends where we’re going and what is called for.
UH: So what’s the next step?
PP: I’m really excited. I’ve never been more excited than I am for the past two years of my life and for starting this whole thing. Once I do get this thing together, once I get the structure together, it’s a whole lot easier to do the second record. I do have a rough timeline for the next couple years of my life. That does include maybe another record next summer. So we’ll see. I’m going to constantly keep people surprised and try to just keep myself challenged artistically, and stay active. •UH•
>>Relevant Info:
www.petepalladino.com
management@petepalladino.com
bookings@petepalladino.com
info@petepalladino.com
