FROM HABLO ENNUI:
Is this country rock, country that rocks, or rock that is soaked through with twang? This can’t really be alt-country or insurgent country, as it doesn’t have that academic gloss or extreme retro vibe that would make the label stick. I do know that there is some shit kickin’ going on, and even a bit of ass kickin’.
Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, explaining everything while clarifying nothing, let me tell you more about Kingsizemaybe. The frontman is Gary Eaton, who has a nice lived in sort of voice. His wife Shelli plays bass, and she can sing too. As an added twist, you get Robbie Rist in a cowboy hat. Not only does Rist twiddle some production knobs with Mr. Eaton, but he plays guitar and sings some backing vox.
There seems to be one criteria for a Kingsizemaybe song -- it has to be fun. Even if the song is a lament, a song that might head towards Cry-in-your-beer Avenue, there’s a spark and energy here that keeps it from being depressing.
Songs like “Keep Your Eyes on the Road” are simply irresistible. Adam Maples lays down a speedy shuffle beat, while Robert Lloyd provides great color with an organ and a mandolin. The tune has a great lead guitar breakdown. This is just a breathless twangy rocker.
“Big Maybe”, which I suppose is the band’s theme song, is played at a much more relaxed tempo. This song has a loping feel like some of The Band’s jauntier outings. The basic message of this song is that you should stick with the ones you like and love, because who the hell knows what else is going to happen. That’s pretty good advice. And there’s other sorts of wisdom throughout the song: “Well I got your number on the palm of my hand/you can call me first I won’t feel like less of a man.”
These guys have good taste too. There are two covers here. One is a Hoyt Axton composition, “Sweet Misery”, which was once waxed by John Denver. I haven’t heard Mr. Rocky Mountain High’s version, but I can’t imagine it has the bluesy backporch treatment that Kingsizemaybe gives it. It’s good. The album leads off with “The Treasure of Love”, a George Jones tune. The song puts a bit of guitar charge into good old fashioned honky tonk. Buck Owens would have approved.
The band even nails a bit of a Southern rock feel on “Dallas”. Maybe 60 percent Southern rock and 20 percent Eagles and 20 percent Marah. The lyrics are heavy on specific details, but there are a lot of blanks to fill in. It’s an epic and a mystery. The swelling organ and the background vocals behind the passionate lead vocal are extremely compelling.
Too often roots rock is a designation that implies one defined sound, and only one. But Kingsizemaybe shows that you can find all sorts of roots all over the place, and they have the confidence and talent to pull off a relatively wide ranging slab of Americana.
By Mike Bennett
FROM THE I.E WEEKLY:
Los Angeles' Kingsizemaybe works in a capacious musical bag, one loaded with country heart, garage soul and plenty of flat git-it rock & roll; theirs is an illimitably flexible sound, with a scope and range that could only have come as result of the extraordinarily varied backgrounds of its personnel. Nominal band leader Gary Eaton has long toiled in the pop field, from a teenage start in late-70s new wave band, the View, on through a series of alliances the Ringling Sisters, Continental Drifters that took him not only coast to coast, but onto big-time bills (opening for Bob Dylan with the Drifters) and deep into the black heart of the music business (working with notorious rock impresario Lou Adler when A&M signed the Sisters). Veteran drummer Adam Maples survived the most punishing course of major label mishandling, first when MCA signed his punk band Legal Weapon, then at Elektra with riff-rock self-destructo sensations the Sea Hags and a brief visit to the very pinnacle of overblown rock insanity when he spent a month in dig! Guns & Roses. Underworld avatar-journalist Robert Lloyd and actor-rocker Robbie Rist also bring a lifetimes' worth of untrammeled creativity, bruised glory and underdog insight to the bandstand, while Eaton's wife, bassist Shelli, adds a welcome grounding element. The result is a drastically freewheeling set that ranges from songs with evocative, semi-surreal imagery to full-bore, knock-down rave ups, all delivered with a libertarian disregard for both PC convention and audience expectation that makes for a refreshingly honest, purely musical approach.
--JONNY WHITESIDE
(thanks, man!!)
FROM THE L.A.WEEKLY:
Kingsizemaybe singer-guitarist Gary Eaton writes catchy, unpretentious classic-rock songs that would go over well in the heartland with their feel-good, anthemic choruses and his easygoing, room-filling vocals. He's backed by a sympathetically tight group of friends and family who bring it all home.Aching harmonies from bassist-wife Shelli Eaton and drummer Adam Maples, Blonde on Blonde keyboard glow from Robert Lloyd, and snarling-bobcat guitar solos from Robbie Rist.
"I think that we have an audience out there, if people would hear us", Eaton says before a recent show at Taix." But I know my enemy. Were not in a niche, we dont wear bell-bottoms.
Well, Shelli wears bell-bottoms we dont have the Ashton Kutcher shag haircuts. And were not really depressed, were kind of happy."
With a set list of highway-driving rockers like Rolling Vatican Blues and the reverentially unfolding ballad, Beautiful North, Kingsizemaybe would probably stand out more in Chicago's Bloodshot Records mini-scene, or New Orleans, where one of Eatons previous bands, the Continental Drifters, relocated in the early 90s (with Eaton staying behind in L.A. to raise his family). Locally, the Maybes seem to fit in best with those few alterna-cowpokes who dont strictly adhere to a faux-twangin retro formula. "I have an affinity for some of it", Eaton says. "And there are some bands, you know, I dont really . . . uh . . . really care for. " "Be politically correct", Shelli sarcastically advises.
"There are a lot of bands in the alternative-country scene that are boring. I dont know what they're trying to do", Gary says. "Im not trying to be alt-country or country; I'm just playing all the crap that I know." After taking a supporting role in most of his previous projects including the Continental Drifters, 4-Piece, the Ringling Sisters, Devil Squares, and even stints with Motorcycle Boy and Tex & the Horseheads, Eaton got the gumption to front his own group, an early incarnation of Kingsizemaybe with drummer Maples, in the mid-90s. Despite sporadic solo appearances over the next decade, Eaton kept a low profile until Maples got on his case last year to bring back the band with new members. Says Maples, whos drummed with Legal Weapon, Sea Hags, Earthlings and (for one month) Guns N Roses, "I dug out an old Kingsize tape and said, These songs are sitting idle why? Lets play!"
Although Eaton dismisses his songwriting as a jumble of wild imagery, thats all, he crafts deceptively simple stories that are often deeply moving, especially All Roads Lead to Dallas, with its soul-stirring, Stax-y crescendos and enigmatic lyrics that allude to the first Kennedy assassination through a sequence of palpably Southern evocations. "It's the way the lyrics fit into the music when you hit the chorus, with those harmonies and those big chords, and everything's thundering and crashing", says Lloyd, a Weekly contributor (Eaton is also a Weekly staffer) and multi-instrumentalist whos backed the songwriting likes of Syd Straw, John Wesley Harding and Steve Wynn. "I love Dallas because Im never going to crack the mystery of that song."
"Dallas is kind of a collage", Eaton explains. "When I was 5, I lived in Wichita Falls, Texas. It was November, 1963. I was really bummed, because my [TV] cartoons were canceled when Kennedy was shot. My dad was a frustrated guy, pushing a pencil in the Air Force, in his office next to where all these glorious jets were parked . . . I remember slate-gray clouds, and ditches across the road from the Piggly Wiggly, and thinking were going to have to hide in there if a tornado comes down . . . that kinda stuff."
Once Rist finishes mixing the groups debut CD, that kinda stuff should get the sort of attention that Eatons beloved Anaheim Angels finally won in 2002. "This is the best band Ive ever been in", he says. "Every at-bat counts. If somebody needs to bunt the runner over, they're going to bunt the runner over. We're not all swinging for the fences, saying, Where's my guitar solo?"
--FALLING JAMES MORELAND
( thanks, man !!)
