Forgotten But Not Gone - Splender Frontman Talks Todd Rundgren

June 8, 1999
Splender Frontman Talks Todd Rundgren
By Anders Wright

It takes a lot of time and energy for a band to put together its major-label debut. That's why Splender, a four-piece rock group from New York, was so thrilled to discover that legendary rocker Todd Rundgren had agreed to produce its project.

Rundgren's name had come up while the band was trying to choose a producer for its first album for Columbia, Halfway Down the Sky. "We all agreed that what we needed was a single focus," frontman Waymon Boone tells Wall of Sound. "See, no one was on drugs, we didn't need a baby sitter, and everyone could play, so we didn't need someone to rewrite the songs. We needed someone who could make sure the production moved along, period." But as far as available producers went, Rundgren seemed out of reach. "I mean, the guy hadn't done an album in over a decade," says Boone. "We thought it was just wishful thinking."

But Rundgren got ahold of Splender's demos, and decided he liked what he heard, agreeing to produce the band's album. "We were shocked," says Boone. "It was an honor. But once he signed on, we all had to take a really deep breath. Because that meant a whole new level of intensity. No one was sure how it was going to work out. He's known for being anti-establishment, anti-label, and anti-everything except for the music. But when we met with him, though a lot of those things were true, he had a much better sense of humor than we'd expected. We were expecting this guy with big sunglasses and his arms crossed and a big attitude."

Boone says that though working with Rundgren was a wholly valuable experience, it wasn't all fun and games. "He was very efficient. He sat us down before we started and explained that he was interested in doing the band's first album. Sort of a one-point-of-view record, and he wanted to prepare us for that before we started to record the first note. We were all sort of wide-eyed — it was our first major label record, after all — and Todd sort of took away some of the preciousness of that, made us realize that each day was just another day. We definitely had moments where we would clash. It was very apparent that he knew what he was doing from beginning to end, and sometimes we had to play catch-up."

But in the end, says Boone, "We could not have been happier. It's the best thing we could have done, and the record came out great. There are so many artists who end up making the record they didn't want to make."

With their record in stores, and the band on tour, Boone says he and his mates work hard not to lose perspective. All four band members regularly chat with and write responses to fans who post on Splender's Web site (www.splender.com). That's something, says Boone, that won't go changing. "We can never take something like our fans for granted," he says. "The idea of just having one single fan is a huge accomplishment. We've always been a band that's fought for them, almost collected them. Ultimately, that's what you're trying to do, talk to people, and we're trying to gain a loyal following. So it's important to us that for every fan we come across, that we feel the same way about them that they feel about us."