Photo via Facebook / Eric Blowtorch
As the old saying goes, there’s no time like the present. That’s how Eric Blowtorch and the Inflammables talked themselves into creating what they claim is the first triple vinyl album in Milwaukee music history. Their new album Quality Items features a whopping 36 songs.
“When the Inflammables first had a couple of sets’ worth of material together, it was apparent that we had a special sound, as a result of pretty intense rehearsals and live shows,” says Blowtorch. “I didn’t want to wait to start documenting our work. I’d done that before, and several bands’ best work wasn’t recorded. The Forces of Victory (1990-1991) and Revelation Rockers (1994-1997) come to mind.
“We’d built up a big repertoire of about 20 to 25 new songs pretty quickly, so I knew the results might be formidable,” he continues. “At first, I wanted to release an LP, a 12" single, a 10", some 45s, even a 78 at one point, but the cost was ungodly.”
Slew of Studios and Musicians
The process to record the album was just as ambitious as they recorded at five different locations with five different engineers (Shane Olivo, Didier Leplae, Joe Vent, Billy Cicerelli, and Blowtorch). They were joined in the studio a slew of local guest musicians including singer Shahanna McKinney-Baldon and her mother Harriet McKinney, violinist Glenn Asch of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, jazz trumpeter Eric Jacobson, Cecilio Negrón and Julio Pabón of De La Buena, soul/jazz saxophone player Juli Wood, Paul Cebar and Robin Pluer.
The result is a rich and diverse tapestry of sounds, proving again why the singer/guitarist is one of the most tenacious and ambitious musicians in town. That includes the ska-influenced opener “First Taste of Freedom,” where Blowtorch and Renato Umali sing, “I wanna run around the city in exhilaration, take out the trash from the past I wanna savor every second, every sensation, blowing out boredom with the barium blast.”
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Describing the album, he says, “There's some reggae, including a dub version or two, ska, a kind of acoustic rocksteady number, soul and funk filtered through rock‘n’roll, a bossa nova, a kind of Brazilian disco thing, a few jazzy numbers including two big-band ballads and some mongrelizations, as Paul Cebar would say.”
When asked what it meant to potentially have the only triple vinyl in Milwaukee history, Blowtorch half-jokingly laid out a challenge for the next generation. “I’m waiting for a gospel group or high school band to show up and put us in our place,” he says. Blowtorch sat down for a full interview.
Why did you feel Quality Items was a fitting title? What fits your description of quality?
“Quality items” was one of the many memorable expressions of a London DJ named Tommy Diamond, whom Renato, Mike and I had met when we played over there at Gaz’s Rockin’ Blues in 2002. As soon as Renato and I heard Tommy—in his pugnacious New Cross accent—shouting out that phrase repeatedly at Portobello Market, while he was trying to hawk a bunch of spray-painted wooden letters snatched off the side of a pub, we couldn't stop repeating it. For me it was an easy choice for album title. Renato came up with one other idea, from a line in “Town for Sale”: Too Many Complaints of Too Much Blue. Maybe that was more apt, after all.
What are the biggest themes you wanted to convey on the album? What common threads that tie the album together?
I look at Sides 1 and 2 as a declaration of love and solidarity, Sides 3 and 4 a look at how we deal with crisis, and Sides 5 and 6 a series of examples of how we can emerge from crisis with more understanding, more zest for life, and maybe even forgiveness. We try to start each set with some drama, ratcheting up the energy for at least the next few songs, and hopefully end on a high note. You won’t hear two consecutive ballads—that's pretty much the only rule.
Why does it feel better as a single album instead of multiple albums?
I think it can work as three single albums, or two overlapping double albums, or two three-sided albums, like The Parkerilla. That’s up to the listener.
You were able to assemble a diverse list of guest musicians. In general, what qualifications were you looking for in musicians?
They have to sing and/or play with conviction and character. That's it.
What was one or two of your favorite interactions?
I always love working with Dan Flynn, because he's so accommodating and willing to try every possible idea. And he can play like any other guitarist on Earth, including himself. For our version of “First We Take Manhattan,” all I had to say was “Ernest Ranglin’,” and his work was practically done. Plus, Danny is a really droll dude, so we had a lot of laughs. He keeps my conceits of grandeur in check.
When Iesha Sturdivant, a/k/a Esh the Singer, was working with Julio and Cecilio from De La Buena on her vocal part for "Ghosts of Stonewall," that was a pure pleasure. I got to watch more trained, experienced musicians interact on behalf of the song, and I hardly had to say anything. Esh finally came up with the uppermost harmony vocal, which makes that recording the only one of mine that gives me goosebumps.
What’s one or two moments from recording that was indicative of this project as a whole?
Since we had to work super efficiently to ever finish this thing, our engineer Shane Olivo and I had to book sessions on top of sessions and hope that our guests would be patient. When I was recording the vocal for “Song from the Saturation Zone,” a really sad ballad, Cecilio was loading in some congas, and I felt really inadequate that day. I knew he could hear what I was singing, and the song is already the saddest thing I’ve ever sung, so I knew any attempt to sang it, you know, like Tony Bennett or Joe Williams, would be just laughable. So, I just sang it straight, without trying to add any vocal drama. So, the horns give you the drama, and I can actually listen to it without listening for mistakes, like you always do in the studio.
The moral of that story, with respect to the album, became ‘Don’t go nuts on the mic.’ This isn’t Give ‘em Enough Rope. Much as I would like every single song to hit you like “Stay Free” or “All the Young Punks.”
You recorded at five different locations with five different engineers. What was the biggest way each impacted the songs they worked on?
Didier Leplae recorded most of the drum tracks on three-track tape. The fourth track turned out to be broken. So, his work at Sidney HiH and Riverwest Commons gave the drums a super-live sound, like you’re walking into a big rehearsal room, sort of like The River.
Shane Olivo engineered and coached a lot of the overdubs, and my favorite experience was watching him interact with Paul Cebar during Mr. C’s vocal recording for “Drums of Life.” I’m in between Paul and Shane in terms of age, and I was really proud to be the bridge between two of Milwaukee's greatest musical forces. Shane is always encouraging. Always.
Joe Vent recorded my piano parts on about five of the songs, and that was wild. Joe was in the basement, and I was in the living room. Joe has a rapid-fire sense of humor, so we both were laughing a lot. The only pressure I felt in those recordings was self-imposed.
Billy Cicerelli, who engineered “Guzzling Gasoline,” originally for a Paul Host live session at WMSE, manages to elicit a really vibrant, exciting sound from everybody records. I don’t know how he does it because he played back a minute or two from rehearsal, and we really butted heads over the bass sound. I was too busy moaning about the lack of low end and volume to notice what great work he'd done with the rest of the group. Sorry, Billy!
As far as my engineering on the four-track recordings of “Throw Open Your Arms,” “Mercy” and “Dance Do the Reggae” at Mike and Claudia Koch's house, I followed the example Andy Noble had set when recording the drums for “My Revolutionary Love” for the second album: listen, move the mics around until they sound good, and record everything.
