His plea sounded desperate: "What do I have to do to get my band in the paper?"
Perhaps I should have just smiled professionally and handed Steve Shwills, singer/guitarist, frontman and songwriting force behind Curious Buddies, a business card, but having had a few adult beverages already, I said, "Bring me three lambs slaughtered by a virgin."
Months later, I received a frightening package, which, though it was not a box dripping with actual blood as rumor had it that Shwills was sending me, was nonetheless an artful rendering of what I had demanded, along with a four-page account of the process, including which tools were used in the slaughter and how hard it was to find a virgin in this day and age, not to mention this town.
The band's debut album, scheduled for release next year, presents a bizarre amalgamation of influences from the '50s through the '90s. There are Frank Black/Pixies moments, hints of The Frogs and an underlying vibe of Jonathan Richman in Shwills' slurred, anguished vocals (plus he seems to write songs about anything he looks up and notices at any time). The bass parts, courtesy of Steve Deal, are mostly picked and punky, and the album captures a phenomenal drum sound, especially the sound of a snare, that sounds almost metallic when drummer Chris Laplante really bashes it.
With all that effort and a good disk, the name of Curious Buddies clearly had to be written, in golden ink, into the Advocate Book of Life. Shwills recently responded to questioning, and, for the record, he requested the waterboarding:
Valley Advocate: How long have you guys been a band?
Steve Shwills: [makes a sound like "gurglegaaccchhh!"] We've been together nine months. It's funny, it was only after the first month that we found I was pregnant and then another eight months and here we are with this ugly little child that resembles a piece of all three of us.
Where did the name come from?
It was the name of my acoustic duo back in my home town in New Jersey, which was my very good friend Christopher Malecki and I. Malecki got the name from a Nick Jr. television show of the same name. The show is about a cute group of little puppets that play music together and go on adventures.
Tell us about the album you've been recording.
We were lucky enough to have the album recorded at Bankrow in Greenfield, with Justin Pizzoferrato as our engineer. Some of the people he has recorded are Thurston Moore, Kim Gordon and Dinosaur Jr., to name a few. The album was mastered by Pete Wiess, who's recorded the Velvet Underground, along with many other big names that escape me at this time. It has 11 tracks that were recorded in seven hours on the date of July 11, '07. Get it? Eleven tracks, 7 hours, on 7/11. It will be released as Curious Buddies in the new year.
Was this your first time witnessing the slaughter of fictional live baby animals? Do you feel dirty now?
No, it was not the first time I witnessed such a slaughter; after all, I do watch the news on TV. And as for feeling dirty, well, this was for a good cause and besides, it's art (whatever that means).
Check out some Curious Buddies at www.myspace.com/curiousbuddies.
