With its effervescent, pop-tinged indie-rock, Bowery has hit the re-set button with a new lead singer and a new EP that gets released this week. (Podcast, video)
Fortuitous Meeting: Phill Kulas and Heather Palaszek of Bowery. (Photo/Anna Sink)
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Trace the re-birth of Grand Rapids indie-rock band Bowery to a chance encounter at a local music store.
Local Spins Live Duo: Kulas and Palaszek (Photo/Anna Sink)
On the verge of giving up on the award-winning band after its former lead singer left to raise a family, guitarist and chief songwriter Phill Kulas was working at RIT Music one day about a year ago when vocalist and budding percussionist Heather Palaszek strolled in to buy a new drum key.
“About that time I was thinking, ‘I’m done.’ We were so close,” Kulas recalls of conversations with the “stripped-down” trio that was left of Bowery, which had won people’s choice awards at the 2010 Jammie Awards show for its 2009 debut album, “Our Love is a Ghost.”
But a brief chat with Palaszek changed all that, eventually breathing new life back into the band, which also features drummer Scott Hickok, bassist Todd VanTongeren and keyboard player/multi-instrumentalist Joel Ferguson.
THE NEXT STEP: HITTING THE RE-SET BUTTON
“I found out that he had a band with a missing singer and I was thinking, ‘Oh gosh, if I don’t say something now, I might really regret this,’ ” says Palaszek, a Grand Valley State University grad and experienced choir singer who performed, traveled and competed for years as a member of the college’s Euphoria a cappella group.
“So, I just kind of put it out there. ‘I can sing, I’ll try out for your band.’ (Later) we met up and went to the practice space and the rest is history. I’ve been with Bowery for a year and I love it. … For me, Bowery was really like the next step that I had always wanted. I had been singing my whole life and I felt I love this enough and am good enough at this to continue with singing.”
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Hitting “the re-set button” has allowed Bowery to complete the first album of a two-part project: “The Without You, Part One” officially gets released Thursday night during a CD-release show at The Intersection, an event that symbolizes the chutzpah and fortitude of a band that didn’t call it quits.
On Wednesday, Kulas and Palaszek demonstrated the group’s versatility by performing an unusual duo acoustic version of that new album’s second track, “Everything Starts to End,” on Local Spins Live at News Talk 1340 AM (WJRW). Although Kulas sings lead on the rocking album track, Palaszek took over those duties on Local Spins Live for a “stripped-down, tuned-up” rendition with Kulas on acoustic guitar.
Check out their in-studio performance in a video below, with a full podcast of Wednesday’s show here.
Phase II of Bowery represents a more rocking edition of the group, which began as an acoustic duo – Kulas and singer Shanee Laurent – with a haunting, softer approach that eventually morphed into a full band that performed regularly across the region and earned praise for its distinctive sound. But the demands of motherhood and a new family eventually led Laurent to leave Bowery.
RETURNING TO THE STUDIO AND GETTING THE WICK BURNING AGAIN
Bowery, ‘The Without You, Part One’
“I love both versions of the band for different reasons,” says Kulas, who concedes that the transitional period between the two was a difficult one as remaining band members wrestled with whether Kulas should just serve as the lead singer. Kulas insists: “That’s a different band. I didn’t want to do that.”
After Palaszek joined the group, Bowery was able to return to Ferguson’s Planet Sunday Studios in Grand Rapids and complete the first half of “The Without You” project, which I described in a recent REVUE Magazine review as “lush and edgy, pop-hued indie-rock” with “infectious, can’t-get-it-out-of-your-cranium hooks.”
“It definitely is more rocking than our first record,” Kulas says. “It still has some of the weird, edgy elements that a few of the tracks featured on the first one. The main thing on this one is there’s quite a bit more female vocals. I’m sort of stepping back a lot vocally. Heather’s done such a phenomenal job in fronting the band.”
Bowery
Palaczek concedes it’s been an adjustment to shift from singing in choirs and a cappella groups to fronting a rock band.
“There’s a huge performance aspect to it,” she says, noting she also had to “adjust” the way she sings. “It’s very, very different being the front focus. There are more elements you have to think about like performing and relating to an audience and being in the spotlight and being in the spotlight.”
The current plan is for Bowery to wrap up “Part Two” and release that CD next spring. Kulas said band members decided to release the project in two eight-song segments to help “get the wick burning again. Being away from playing for almost a year-and-a-half really slowed our roll quite a bit.”
Kulas and Palaszek
That has band members pumped up about Thursday night’s EP-release show, which Kulas describes as a “full production with backing tracks and midi lights” that allows Bowery to display the nuances of its elaborate music.
Officially, Thursday’s 6:30 p.m. concert in The Stache (the front room of The Intersection) is headlined by Detroit’s The Company We Keep with Bowery, Between Brains and Child Bite also on the bill. Bowery is expected to take the stage at 7:30 p.m.; tickets are $5.
Bowery also performs at Mulligan’s Pub in Eastown on Dec. 14. Get more information about the band at its Facebook page and at its Reverb Nation site.
Kulas and Palaszek of Bowery. (Photo/Anna Sink)
Email John Sinkevics at jsinkevics@gmail.com.
Copyright 2013, Spins on Music
