Jamestown’s 10,000 Maniacs hasn’t played in Albany in a long time, according to bassist and founding member Steve Gustafson.
But the band owes a great deal of its success to the help it received in the city in its early years. Before the group’s U.S. breakthrough in the mid-’80s with albums such as “The Wishing Chair” and “In My Tribe,” the band would frequent Club 288 on Lark Street, owned by Charlene Shortsleeve.
Helping hands
“Charlene Shortsleeve and her husband, those two in the early years helped us get a fan base in Albany,” Gustafson said recently from his home in Jamestown. “They played an important role to us. They took care of us, they let us play in the club when not many people would show up; they would feed us and put us up for the night. Without their efforts, and the efforts of a lot of people all over the country like them in the early-to-mid ’80s, without that kind of support, I don’t think any of this really would have happened.”
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This year, the folk-rock group is celebrating its 30th anniversary as a band, with a summer tour culminating in a large celebration in their hometown in October. The band is also hard at work on its first album of new material since 1999’s “The Earth Pressed Flat.”
Things kicked off last weekend with shows in Chicago and Minneapolis, and this evening the band returns to Albany for a free show as part of Alive at Five at Albany Riverfront Park’s Corning Preserve.
The past 30 years have seen quite an evolution for the band, which has been through at least four lead singers — Natalie Merchant, who was with the band from 1981 until she left for a solo career in 1993, being the most prominent.
In 2000, the band very nearly called it quits when lead guitarist Rob Buck, another founding member, died from liver failure at age 42. His unique playing style, marked by alternate tunings, was difficult for the band to re-create without him.
“Before Rob died, he sort of went AWOL on us for a while — he had a project going on in Texas, and we were going to go do some USO shows overseas, but Rob left and went to work on the other project and wouldn’t return our phone calls,” Gustafson said.
“We had the U.S. Army waiting on us to go to Kuwait and play a show, and we didn’t want to say, ‘No, sorry, we can’t make it.’ At that time, there was another really talented guitar player . . . who said he would come and help us out. Yeah, sure, the guy could play anything, but he was dumbfounded by Rob’s playing — he couldn’t play the open tunings; he was completely handcuffed by how Rob played.”
Two-year break
But beyond this, the emotional turmoil was enough for the group to take a nearly two-year hiatus. “We sort of sat down for a while and really kind of ignored the band,” Gustafson said. “We were really sad. We were lost, would be the simple way to put it.”
When they were ready to begin playing again in 2002, Buck’s longtime friend and guitar technician Jeff Erickson stepped in to play guitar, and he has been with the band ever since.
“Jeff had been on the road with us when Rob was alive, and he studied guitar with Rob,” Gustafson said. “He and Jeff play very similar styles, and Jeff was really interested in playing in the band. . . . Jeff understood how Rob worked, how he thought, and he fit in really well.”
The band toured from 2002 until 2007 with Oskar Saville stepping into the lead vocal role, replacing Mary Ramsey, who had herself replaced Merchant nearly a decade earlier. In 2007, Ramsey once again took up the frontwoman position, and the band’s current lineup — also featuring longtime drummer Jerry Augustyniak and founding keyboard player Dennis Drew — solidified.
It wasn’t until last year, with the 30th anniversary of the group’s formation approaching, that the band began thinking about writing and recording new material again.
“We played a handful of gigs every summer, and it was still fun,” Gustafson said. “As our 30th was approaching last year, we sort of talked about it [recording]. We had some songs already written or that we were ready to start work on, so we just sort of collectively said, ‘Let’s give it a shot and see what happens.’”
Making new album
Currently, the band is in the mixing phase on the recordings. The planned album will feature some firsts for the group, including male lead vocals from Erickson, and a more mature sound, according to Gustafson.
“A lot of the older stuff, we were very, very young when we wrote it — we were pretty raw as far as our talent goes,” he said. “The songs are relaxed; there’s not as much nervous energy behind them. Some of the songs sound very much like the classic Maniacs sound. . . . We’ve always been fond of all the instruments blending into one another, that Phil Spector wall-of-sound kind of thing, and we used that a lot.”
The band still writes collaboratively, and as such, if one member of the band doesn’t like something about a song, it will be changed or it won’t make the cut. At this point, Gustafson isn’t sure how the final album will end up looking as far as track selection or length goes.
However, the key to anything the band does is having fun, he said. And the band definitely had fun recording and continues to have fun playing together.
“Writing songs is like raising children — you groom them, pamper them, feed them, clothe them, make them look good,” he said. “At some point, you have to kick them out the door, and they’re done. You can’t keep them at home, no matter how much you like or don’t like what you’ve done. You have to let it go, and we’re good with that.”
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