As singer/guitarist Brian Fallon noted ina recent phone interview, the band members weren’t close friends when theyformed the group several years ago. Based in the JerseyShore area near Asbury Park, N.J.,they were aware of each other from various bands that played in the region, buthad never so much as been in the same room together before playing as The GaslightAnthem.
What’s more, they didn’t share similarmusical tastes. Fallon mentions classic soul artists like Otis Redding androckers such as fellow Jersey native BruceSpringsteen, Tom Waits and Van Morrison as influences, while guitarist AlexRosamilia is a fan of the feedback-drenched indie-rock of My Bloody Valentineand Sonic Youth. Drummer Benny Horowitz, meanwhile, counts hardcore andpost-modern rock bands like Minus the Bear among his favorites.
What seemingly also should have workedagainst The Gaslight Anthem, which includes bassist Alex Levine as well, was anoutlook that could only have accentuated the musical differences within theband.
“We talk about that a lot, like, ‘Why doyou think this worked and nothing else did with our other bands,’” Fallon says.“And everybody says it was because of compromise, because we all were doingthings (in the previous bands) to benefit the other people in the bands andcompromising the things we wanted to do. Whereas in this band, it’s like you’vegot four feet permanently in the ground. Like, ‘This is what I’m playing and myfoot’s down.’”
Instead of creating conflict, stayingtrue to their own musical instincts has helped the members of The GaslightAnthem to mesh musically, Fallon says. He points to an early practice sessionthat reinforced the idea of not compromising creatively. He’d tried to writehardcore songs that Horowitz might like, but the drummer instructed him to goback to the drawing board “and write as if you were writing by yourself.”
The band all agreed that thecountry-leaning songs that Fallon crafted on his own, which other band membersthen put their own spin on, worked much better.
Those songs made the band’s debut album,but the group took the idea of not compromising their individual ideas to a newlevel on the band’s second CD, The ’59Sound.
Fallon says he felt it was time to makean album that defined the group’s sound, and he essentially schooled himself totry to achieve that goal.
“I was listening intentionally to recordsthat I thought were classics,” he says. “I packed all of the records I couldmuster, like Moondance from VanMorrison and Rain Dogs from Tom Waitsand [Bruce Springsteen’s] Born to Run… I was finding out, what did they add? They added their own spin, but how didthey do it and what did it sound like and what was the process?
“[Those artists] really just went forbroke,” Fallon continues. “We just tried to do that.”
The sweat and effort that went into The ’59 Sound paid off with glowingreviews. As word has spread about the album since its summer release last year,the group has seen its audience expand noticeably. Fallon says the size of thevenues the band plays has quadrupled.
Now that The Gaslight Anthem is on tour,the band is not being too precious about its songs. Fallon notes that the groupisn’t afraid to expand on the studio versions of its songs on stage, and saysthis helps to make The Gaslight Anthem experience in concert different than onthe album.
“I saw Bob Dylan one time and his songsare completely different (live),” Fallon says. “That kind of inspired me to belike, ‘Hey wait, these don’t have to be the same all the time.’”
TheGaslight Anthem tops a Sunday, Oct. 4, bill with Murder by Death, The LovedOnes and Frank Turner at the Turner Hall Ballroom at 7 p.m.
