From the Files of Gabriel Davies, #1

***This article appeared in Echo/Response Magazine, vol. 4 iss. 7, August 2006. See magazine for reprint information.***

The Crucibles:  On Trial On Tour

By Gabriel Davies

It's six-thirty in the morning and Victor Calderone, lead singer of prog-poppers The Crucibles, is bitching me out.

 

"What the hell, Gabe?" he says in his ever-lovin' voice of his.  He has the kind of voice where you wish he wouldn't talk when he isn't singing, for fear that he'd do it harm.  It's the kind of voice where, if you want to seduce a girl and don't have any Isaac Hayes or Barry White on hand, this guy will do, and he's not even a bass voice.  And right now, he's using it to bitch at me.

 

"It's too damn early for this," he whines.  "The last thing I want to do is do an interview."

 

And he promptly lights up a Winston in front of me, takes a long puff, and exhales out of the corner of his mouth.  I remind him, while I keep from wincing at this sacrilegious act of rebellion against his vocal cords, that he was the one who'd scheduled it.  "Oh," he says sheepishly afterwards.  "Continue, then, my friend," he says happily, as if his poor attempt at diva attitude hadn't happened at all.

 

We're sitting on his veranda overlooking a lush green forest, somewhere in a small town in extreme western Massachusetts.  It's a beautiful morning, the kind that only New England can offer, where the air is humid and cool, and the temperature hasn't skyrocketed to over eighty, as it will in just a few hours.  Calderone loves it up here.  It's interesting to note that he lives as far away from Boston as he can without actually leaving the state.  The other three members of the Crucibles--guitarist Dave Bateman, drummer Paolo Dominguez and keyboardist/multi-instrumentalist Freddie Chisholm--live much, much closer to their native Salem roots.  Still, the fact that Victor lives a half a day's ride from the rest of his band doesn't bother any of them.  They prefer that, outside of the studio and far away from the clubs and arenas, they live their own lives.

 

"I've seen too many bands die out because of the 'Extended Family Syndrome,'" says Calderone.  "The fact that they want to deal with each other outside of work, so to speak, is laughable.  Freddie has his own family he's starting.  And Dave has his own projects outside the band.  And Paolo still does his gig at Berklee when we're not on the road or in the studio.  It's a healthy thing not to be with each other twenty-four seven."

 

Easier said than done.  Last fall the Crucibles spent over seven months demoing, jamming, and recording their latest opus, the double-disc Life Beyond Your Means.  Seven months, Beatles-White-Album-style, of relentless recording everything.  Let's emphasize that: everything.  Calderone has to admit that things got a little tense during the sessions:  "Dave wanted to kick my ass," he says with a wry grin.  "I know, the guitarist hating the singer.  Such a lame-ass cliché, isn't it?  But hey--I deserved it.  I was the one that pushed the other three farther than they wanted to go.  That's why we decided to give the album that title.  We all went beyond our means recording this."

 

Dave Bateman agrees, when I meet him a day later at the Middle East in Central Square, Cambridge, one of their hangouts when the band started out and the club where they played their first Boston area show.  "Life is probably one of my favorites of ours," he says.  "Never mind the fact that I wanted to kill Vic.  He's a guy who knows how to push people's buttons, both good and bad.  We got it done--hell, it took seven months, but we got it done, and I'm proud of it."

 

Still, seven months in the studio seems a bit, well, normal, compared to other bands nowadays.  "Most bands are on the road for over a year," Dave says.  "Thing is, they don't multitask.  It's always studio-tour-rest, studio-tour-rest.  With the Crucibles, we try to get our recording done as we're on tour.  With the exception of Life, all our other albums were recorded in fits and starts while on tour."

 

So what about all those outtakes that were obviously put on tape?

 

"Oh, dear…" Dave laughs.  "I wouldn't be surprised if we see them as bootlegs and online soon."  And his reaction to such a possibility?  "Vic is smart," he says.  "Most of the master tapes are locked away in a place only the band knows.  John [Pellerton, the band's producer] doesn't even know where they are.  Still, there's a fact some intern copied the tapes after we went home.  Want to know the truth?  I've heard the tapes.  There's a lot of good stuff on there, but it's all in shards.  Take 'Cover Yourself,' the lead-off track.  A great jam track at nearly nine-plus minutes, but you know what?  That is the only full version.  The track took us twenty takes, and even then we didn't have the killer middle-eight until we recorded take nineteen--the one you hear on the album.  So no, I don't mind at all if the outtakes get out."

 

"They'll just have to get through Vic first," he adds with a wink.  "That is, if he doesn't leak them himself."

 

Later on that day, just across the Charles River on the same street, drummer Paolo sits behind a makeshift mixing board in a classroom at the Berklee College of Music.  He's teaching his students the joys of making a lot with a little.  The miniature mixing board only has eight tracks, rather than the desk-spanning seventy-two, and the difference, or rather the lack of, amazes the kids.

 

"The Beatles recorded Sgt. Pepper on less tracks than this," he informs them.  "So think about that the next time you want a huge sound."  To Paolo, huge doesn't mean seventy-two tracks of overdubbed strings, sound effects, and flourishes.  To him, it means the end of the middle eight in the Beatles' "A Day in the Life."

 

"Listen to those horns," he tells them as he cues up that part of the song.  "Notice how the band's instruments retain their volume, yet the horn section gets progressively louder.  You get an ominous wave of energy out of that, and it pulls the song back into the last section.  See--you don't need to always be loud and intense.  Use it sparingly, and only when the song warrants it."

 

Paolo glances at me with a hint of amusement.  Though he's only thirty-two, he knows that he's just given away the fact that he's the music geek in the band.  "I collect useless stuff like this all the time," he smiles.  "Pointless bits of trivia.  Keeps us entertained while on tour."

 

Speaking of which, the Crucibles' first major tour since signing to new Warner-affiliated label, Foundling, is about to start.  Their first show is right here in the Boston area, playing the Fleet Center.  This is their first tour where they'll be playing major arenas almost exclusively.  "Broadening our fan base," Paolo says.  "We're not abandoning our loyal diehards.  Not at all.  We're just opening ourselves further.  The music hasn't been compromised.  We haven't sold out.  Besides, there's a good chance we may just do a few small clubs…you know, surprise shows."

 

Playing the Fleet Center is a big thing for the band, especially for Freddie Chisholm, the keyboardist.  In fact, we're at a sports bar just across Causeway Street from it.  "I'm a huge Bruins fan," he says with a laugh and his thick Boston accent.  "Lord love 'em.  They were in a slump last year, but I’m hoping they're better this time out.  I remember when my dad brought me and my brother Kevin to our first game, back when the Garden was here.  I thought: man, the Beatles played here.  I already knew I wanted to be a musician at that age, you know?  Just like my dad.  But playing the Garden only gave me yet another musical goal to achieve."

 

Freddie never got to play the Garden before it was torn down to make way for the Fleet Center, but he holds no grudges.  "Not a bad seat in the house," he beams.  "The upper decks freak me out because they're so steep, but you can watch a game or a concert without obstruction.  That was always a big thing when I saw bands here and at the Garden.  You're going to see them.  Why should I have an upper deck or a post right in my line of sight?"

 

And about the music?  "The acoustics rock there," he says.  "I can't wait.  This will be our make-or-break night.  If we suck there, you know we're gonna suck elsewhere that's big.  I'm wicked nervous, but hey--who isn't?"

 

"I'm nervous," Victor says a few days later during a soundcheck.  "God, I'm gonna piss my pants when we take the stage."  The others laugh at him, knowing full well that that would only make the girls howl for him more.

 

"The fans are great," Dave says.  "We know a lot of them personally, the ones who've been there since the beginning.  They've become a sort of…extended family." 

 

Victor arches his brow at that cryptic statement.  "Easy," he warns playfully.

 

It seems as though a touchy subject has been breached.  They may be referring to a group of extremely dedicated fans of the Crucibles, a sort of Deadheadism that hasn't been seen since Dave Matthews first came along.  In a strange twist, however, these fans inexplicably dress not in the neo-hippie style that always seems to follow those kinds of bands, but a post-rock Goth look.  Perhaps it's a throwback to the Crucibles' earliest days, when they first started as a post-punk band on the North Shore, but Victor dismisses that.

 

"They're harmless," he says, "but hey--at least they're loyal.  I know quite a few of the 'Enclave,' as they like to call themselves.  Nicest people you'll know, even if they dress like Goths and punks."

 

Regardless, it brings back memories of an event that the four guys would rather forget about.  Three years ago, on the heels of their Called By Name album, six fans allegedly belonging to the Enclave were brought up on murder charges, stemming from a grisly attack on fifteen non-Enclave fans outside a Chicago nightclub where they were playing.  The band itself refuses to comment on the unfortunate event; in fact they're legally bound not to.  While two of the six were arrested and later acquitted, the other four were found guilty and are currently serving time.  Of the fifteen victims, ten miraculously survived.  Five of them later died in hospitals.  The full nature of the attack has never been brought to the public, and the band continues to back the relatively harmless members of the Enclave.

 

But does the band fear a heightened version of those events, now that they're playing arenas?

 

"Not at all," Victor says.  "Security will be tighter.  And there's strength in numbers--a good number of our fans would never let something like this happen again.  But that's all I can say, Gabe.  Sorry."  Dave, for the record, refuses to say anything even remotely involving that event.  Paolo and Freddie are the same way.

 

"Come on, then," he continues, joking with me.  "Let's end this thing on a good note."

 

…and on a good note we will.  Advance ticket sales for the Crucibles' first major tour have been impressive.  Aside from selling out the Fleet Center--both nights--they've sold out virtually every other place on the East Coast.  Life Beyond Your Means has just hit the million mark, in only two weeks' worth of sales.

 

"I mean, we're prog rockers, for god's sake!" Dave says, laughing.  "How a band that attributes more of its sound to Porcupine Tree and the post-rock crowd than the pop we get lumped in with sells as quickly and as much as, say, Norah Jones, is beyond me.  We just got lucky."

 

"Real lucky," Victor says, a glint of genuine happiness in his eyes.  "We're going to enjoy it while we still can."

 

--30--

 

*****All work by Gabriel Davies (c)2004 Jon Chaisson.