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from Puncture, First Quarter 1994 # 29
Dual Power: The Spinanes
by Bill Meyer
Already veterans of the road, the Spinanes have amazed and delighted crowds from coast to coast and abroad with the vertigo of her multiplex guitar and the punch of his drum. Bill Meyer studies them in a Chicago club…
Interviewing a band on the road can be a chancy affair. They may be more interested in finding food, drink, or sleep than answering music questions for the umpteenth time. But not the Spinanes. Sitting in the bowels of a squalid Chicago nightclub around a bowl of fruit and a bucket of Leinenkugels beer, singer-guitarist Rebecca Gates and drummer Scott Plouf overflow with good humor, cutting each other up with joking asides.
Their demeanor might surprise you if you’d just listened to one of their singles, or their album, Manos (Sub Pop). Gates’s songs often linger over moments of loss and regret. But contrast and confounded expectations come naturally to the Spinanes. You’d expect a two-piece band to sound small and shy, but this power duo rock hard. Where other two-pieces emphasize their smallness with a less-is-more instrumental approach, Scott and Rebecca are both full-on players.
Scott, who plays in his stocking feet, sets up busy but uncluttered rhythm patterns, and he likes to hit the drums hard. And why not? The drums aren’t his. He tours with a set borrowed from Rebecca’s dad, and learned to play on his brother Steve’s (longtime Wipers drummer).
Rebecca’s guitar playing is full of odd chords that twist her songs in unexpected directions, creating a welcome tension; you never know where one will end up. But she’s also happy to crank up her Marshall amp (which has been defaced to read Nasal) and bash out big, choppy riffs.
The focus of the Spinanes’ sound is Gates’s voice. Multi-tracked, its texture adds shape and warmth to the music. Her singing is low and smooth, without any frills; her delivery never distracts from the songs’ wide emotional range. “Hawaiian Baby,” from the band’s second single, takes you through the feelings of loss, sorrow, and anger that accompany the end of a relationship, accumulating details. Her restraint makes the song more powerful.
Rebecca has a lot of respect for the mystery inherent in great music; ask her about her lyrics and she clams up. “I’m really closemouthed about that stuff. Most of it comes out of observation or relationships or communication. I don’t like to say what they’re about: they’re only about one thing for me, but they’re about other things for other people. That’s how I’ve always listened to music. I like it that people can put their own stuff into it.” Unsurprisingly, Manos has no lyric sheet: “We decided not to print the lyrics. We like to see what people come up with.”
Music has always been important to Rebecca, now twenty-nine. “I remember the song ‘Downtown,’ by Petula Clark. I must have been two years old at the time and I have a visual imprint of this room and hearing ‘Downtown’ and dancing to it, and my dad being in the room. “That’s pretty much my first memory, and from there it’s been straight up. I’ve always loved music; I used to get my grandma to type out the lyrics to ‘Come Saturday Morning,’ and Beatles songs.”
Scott, on the other hand, denies growing up in a musical household. “Just my brother… I don’t even own a drum set,” he laments. “Though your dad’s a good dancer,” adds Rebecca. Scott admits, bashfully, “He knows how to pogo. He was pogo-ing one night.” Says Rebecca, “He’ll never live that down!” For a long time, Gates’s love for music was expressed through what she calls “music-hag work.” She ran a nightclub in her hometown of Portland, Oregon, and for a time managed the band Dharma Bums. As far as guitar playing goes, although she was “a bedroom strummer” for years, she didn’t play in public until about five years ago when some friends urged her to perform.
“That was Lois Maffeo and Jan Brock, who’ve both done stuff with K, and my friend Lori Pollock from Portland. There’s an Olympia film festival in Washington, with a fringe festival staged on the weekends on either side of it. It was the original girl-night concept. Lois got asked to play, and since she and I had been talking about playing together, we decided to get this band going. We played a song I had written, and two songs Lois and I had written, and then we covered an Aerosmith song. It was ‘Seasons of Wither.’ It’s on Get Your Wings, I think.” She laughs. “It’s really great to hear Lois singing Steve Tyler lyrics!”
It was the first time Rebecca had ever played on stage. “We were called the Cradle Robbers. It’s going to go down in history. I don’t know if that’s good or bad.” Following the festival, she didn’t play much for a while, eventually hooking up with Scott through mutual friends. They had begun sporadic rehearsals when the offer came for a once-in-a-lifetime first performance at the International Pop Underground Convention. Recalls Rebecca, “They were going to do girl-night the first night and Calvin and our friend Margaret, who was helping to put it together, called and said, Do you want to play?
“It was a real validating experience—attending the convention, being around there, made me realize I could play music. It was a supportive atmosphere and we had a lot of people telling us they really liked what we were doing.”
That wasn’t all that they heard in Olympia. There was also the matter of their name, which rhymes with a couple of other band names. “I thought up the name and then we went to Olympia and everyone was like, ‘Oh, the Cannanes,’ and it was like Duh, ’cause I had heard of them. In fact, we had a fantasy of doing a Cannanes-Verlaines-Spinanes tour down in Australia and New Zealand.” But she didn’t have either band in mind when she named hers, though she likes them both. “We’re going to do a record with the Cannanes for K. The concept is, we’re going to write basics for two songs and send them to Sydney, and they’re going to write basics for two songs and send them to Portland, and then we’re each going to complete the songs we were sent.”
While you’re waiting for that, you can dig up the Spinanes’ other records. Besides the Manos album, there are two singles on Imp and one on Sub Pop, and a track on the International Pop Underground Convention compilation (K). The band have completed two extensive tours of the US in a Geo Metro, and are soon to set out on another. And fine as the records are, the Spinanes are in their element live. Onstage, the thoughtful restraint of the recordings is overwhelmed by the duo’s readiness to rock out—it’s no accident Rebecca uses a Marshall amp. And though she’s cagey about influences, she’ll admit to being affected by supreme rockers Aerosmith. “I had never really listened to Aerosmith. Of course I’d heard the hits on the radio, but when I did hear the ‘Seasons of Wither’ song I thought, That’s beautiful. And the way I learned to play that song—which is totally fucked up, I don’t play it at all like Joe Perry did—influenced the way I play guitar. It’s not even him, it’s just the way I figured it out.” She laughs suddenly. “That I’ll admit to, since it’s too far afield to make sense to anyone!”
from Puncture, Summer 1993 , # 27
SPINANES * LOIS * TIGER TRAP at The Chameleon, San Francisco
Despite several appealing draws in town, the Chameleon was packed for this showcase. Time was, Mecca Normal and the Go Team could set up in a tiny bookstore, and Beat Happening could just about fill a coffee house. Nowadays, the 11th letter of the alphabet draws a crowd. This show demonstrated the label's inspired amateur magic. K still discrimates against bass players--aside from that I couldn't have been more pleased with these three supreme cool bands, each better than the one before.
Tiger Trap, a very young female quartet, has a hard-hitting drummer who threw out one roaring pop gem after another. One song in four was bliss, the rest impossible to dislike. A Marine Girls/Buzzcocks mix with meandering, bell-like lead-guitar melodies on top. A great moment came when the drummer strapped on a guitar, stared at the crowd, and gasped, "Look at all these people!" The song she sang turned out to be another show-stopper.
Lois Maffeo, with Bratmobile's Molly drumming, showed how to hold an audience in the palm of your hand. Her set got off to a disastrous start that a lesser performer might not have recovered from. After a shaky rendition of "Bonds in Seconds," a string snapped on her acoustic guitar and she had no spare. Handing the guitar to the Spinanes's Rebecca ("I know, if I were a real riot grrrl, I'd change it myself"), she won the room over with chat, wisecracks, and joking yet impeccable a cappella versions of a Zombies song and the Smiths' "Girlfriend in a Coma." By the time her guitar was restored we were her love slaves. Warmed up and in good voice, she cruised through a magnificent set of subtle, lilting folk-pop numbers. The same scathing post-Dorothy Parker wit seen in Lois's past writing in these pages is evident in her songs; and in a live setting her music comes across best.
My previous impression of the Spinanes came from hearing "Jad Fair Drives Women Wild" on the radio; I expected something like Beat Happening with Heather doing all the vocals. I'd have been quite happy if it were like that; but it wasn't. I was amazed by the towering presence of Rebecca Gates, the raw power and dexterity she and drummer Scott Plouf exerted onstage. Imagine Fugazi with a female singer taking on the Verlaines catalog. (One song even wrily appropriates the chorus of "Death and the Maiden.") Rebecca's fingers twisted into positions I've never seen on a fretboard, and at times she sounded like two or three guitarists at once. Dazzling, stirring songs: a perfect evening.--J Neo
The Spinanes - Manos
The Spinanes are Rebecca Gates on guitar and vocals, and Scott Plouf on drums. They formed in Portland, Oregon in June 1991 and played their first show that August at the International Pop Under-ground Convention in Olympia, Washington. Since then, they've appeared on two compilation albums, released two singles to unanimous critical acclaim, and toured the country twice in an old hatchback, both alone and with such bands as Fugazi, Lois, and Dinosaur Jr. Their debut album, Manos, was produced by Brian Paulson (Slint, Unrest, Arcwelder) and was released by Sub Pop in November 1993.
The Spinanes play gorgeous, melancholy music with surprising volume and rhythm. Rebecca taught herself to play guitar, and in the process made up some beautifully bewildering chords. Scott's drumming is powerful, melodic, and pushed up front. Their songs are warm and intimate, but played as much with punk ferocity as tension and restraint.
Prior to the album's release, the Spinanes toured the States for months, culminating in an appearance as headliners at the Sub Pop CMJ showcase in NYC in November. Despite the massive critical and popular acclaim already being showered upon them, they're trying not to get too cynical or jaded, and will continue to tour internationally through Spring of 1994.
The Spinanes - Arches and Aisles
The Spinanes are a band. Have been since 1991, when Rebecca Gates (singer/songwriter/guitarist) and Scott Plouf (drums) started playing together in Portland, Oregon. "How ingenious, a rock duo! How could this great sound come from just two people?" So quipped a good many critics in 1993, gushing over the band's amazing first album, Manos. Rebecca and Scott toured extensively after Manos, then rested. Then they recorded the second album, Strand, released in 1996. As Strand hit the stores, the band hit the streets of the US again, expanding their live shows to include a guest keyboardist and a bass player.
It was nearly two years ago that Scott decided to leave the Spinanes and consequently joined Northwest rock group, Built To Spill. Rebecca, the only other permanent member of the band, continued to write songs under the name the Spinanes because, after all, she liked the name, and Scott didn't mind. When she’s needed to, she has gathered new band "members" for this, other new band "members" for that. Some are friends, some are admirers, some are folks she’s worked with in other collaborations. Then, in October, 1997, she traveled down to Memphis to record Arches And Aisles at Easley Studios.
Seven years, three albums. It bucks standard music biz wisdom. But pacing yourself leaves time for quality experiences. For example, between the first and second records Rebecca took time away from her own material to tour as a guitarist/backup singer for the young Aussie, Ben Lee. Her vocals have accented not only Ben's, but those of Grammy winner Beck (on "Lemonade," the B-side to "The New Pollution"), Elliott Smith, and the Mekons (on the forthcoming album, Me ). The Spinanes have toured with a wide variety of artists, including Fugazi, Ben Harper, Morphine, Afghan Whigs, Stereolab, Liz Phair, Versus and 764-Hero. Recently, Rebecca took a version of the Spinanes on tour in New Zealand and Australia, playing with Jim Kimball (Laughing Hyenas, Mule, Dennison Kimball Trio and now Jesus Lizard) on drums, Beverly Breckenridge (Phonocomb, Fifth Column) on bass, and John Moen (the Maroons) on guitar. Then she returned to the US and toured for four weeks solo, doing the driving herself, in total control of the maps and the radio, just letting those experiences sink in. After all the touring, she thumbed a ride from Portland to Chicago (okay, she didn't literally do this, it's illegal for chrissakes) and set up house, making her now, the lady by the lake.
And that's where the story continues to unfold. By the big lake, in Chicagoland, where Ms. Gates has adopted her own Windy City perspective. Does this mean she's now a Bulls fan? Hmmm...