CREEM SHOWCASE

CREEM SHOWCASE

THE MATURATION OF JOEY PESCE

by

Dan Hedges

The blonde with the bass is the one you notice first. But thanks in large part to Joey Pesce, ’til tuesday’s swelldressed keyboard korner, the Boston-based band have managed to break free of the bar circuit with dignity and credit ratings intact, if not improved.

Voices Carry, their debut album, fared well in the vinyl wars. But it’s their newest (the Rhett Davies-produced Welcome Home) that’s had the critics turning handstands. The band, they all seem to be saying, has “matured.” They’ve avoided the dreaded sophomore slump, turning the initially harder, abrasive attack into a more instrumentally homogeneous approach.

In other words, the new stuff sounds better.

“I didn’t change my approach to keyboards,” Pesce says of his contribution to the Cosmic Whole. “It was just captured in a different way by Rhett Davies, more in the way it was originally intended. The fullness of the keyboards didn’t translate onto Voices Carry. The keyboards and guitar got lost, so we were more sensitive this time to tonal arrangement. I had better instruments to work with too, so the new album sits in the speakers better.”

Unlike much of the competition, ’til tuesday isn’t a guitar band, or a keyboard band, nor a static backdrop for some terminally spandexed lead singer brandishing a runaway microphone stand. Although bassist Aimee Mann is undeniably the focal and vocal point, the instrumental pecking order is pretty democratic. To coin a dubious phrase, what we’ve got here is a sonic family.

“It’s kind of an orchestral technique,” Pesce agrees. “We sound like one instrument. For every song on the new album, we put the basic track down all at once. We just plugged in and played, even though the only keeper out of that sessipn was the drums. Then we went back in, got the real guitars and keyboards out and...”

He places due credit for the way Welcome Home turned out on the surroundings it was recorded in: the rural mountain atmosphere of Bearsville Studios in upstate New York. “With the first album, we were in Manhattan. It was all rush rush, staying at the Gramercy Hotel, recording at RPM, running back and forth, and all the pressure that comes from trying to get something done in the city.”

Then too, the band had played the tunes on Voices Carry around the Boston clubs for quite a while before snaring a record contract. “Those early songs were made for a certain purpose, playing live and getting a deal,” Pesce says. “On the second album, many of the songs were written in the practice space just before we went into the studio, so they were specifically for the record.”

Keyboard-wise, there were differences too. This time out, Pesce found himself using “many more acoustic keyboards—a Bosendorfer grand piano, for example— though sometimes I chose to use synthesized or sampled piano because they’d fit better if they were chorused or smoothed electronically. Or like on a Roland Juno 60 or an Oberheim, those nice analog lows you can get.”

His specific choice of a piece of gear hinges on where it’s going to be used. “I enjoy acoustic piano so much,” he says. “I enjoy orchestral instruments. I can play many of them, so a synthesizer has to be really good for me to use it.

“But sometimes using the same instrument live that you played in the studio doesn’t cut it. The EQ of a room can vary so much, so you have to pick equipment that will say what was on the album in a way that’s more concise tonally.”

He uses an E-mu Emulator both onstage and in the studio. The live set-up also includes a Yamaha DX-7 and an Oberheim OB-8. “I used a Roland Juno 60 on the album, too. I’ve replaced that onstage with an Oberheim Matrix 6-R because of the MIDI capabilities and because it’s easier to control. As for the Emulator strings, I reproduce that live with an Ensoniq Mirage because it’s rack mountable and easier to use MIDI-wise.”

Lately, he’d been looking backward. Old Hammond B-3 organs, Fender Rhodes pianos, Leslie speakers. “They’re interesting to use for nice quirky passages, so to have those on stock in your sound library is a very important thing. Lots of players do that, but I’ve been playing around with a real B-3, and there’s nothing like it.”

Onstage, he runs his keyboards into the monitors, operating his own mixing board for the stage mix, “so my volume levels on the synthesizers stay the same and don’t affect the mix out in the house. Obviously, I’ve spent a lot of time briefing our soundman on how to mix my sound, since I use a lot of triple MIDI sounds for layering.”

For that 3-D effect the kids love so much.

“Yeah, and that all soundmen hate. Our guy’s got a handle on how to mix me, though it’s such an artistic decision that from show to show you have to check the tape just to make sure you’re getting what you want.”

As far as personal history is concerned, the Bronx-born Pesce’s introduction into the World of Music was initially a case of ‘‘steal the guitar out of my sister’s room. But there was a piano around the house too, so I started to play that.”

He started lessons at age nine, which lasted all of two weeks, though it was enough to fan the flame and keep him glued to the keys well into his teens. In the process of checking out music colleges in New York, he got into an expensive car accident. ‘‘I wound up going to Massachusetts and the cheapest school, Berklee. I ran out of money there too, so I only went for half a year. I didn’t know ’til tuesday in Berklee, but we were all around the Boston scene together, playing in pseudo-punk/pop bands. I was in an XTC-type band, then I hooked up with this band...”

The rest, as they say, is history.

If somebody put the proverbial gun to Pesce’s head and forced him to choose one keyboard for the road, he says he’d opt for the Oberheim OB-8, “because for my purposes I use a lot strings, smoother sounds, fuller sounds. The OB-8 gets that. I would have said the Juno 60, but mine just broke. I’ve had it for five years, and this is the first time it’s conked out on me, so it’s not going anywhere. Guess I’ll have to take it home and fiddle with it.”

And botch it up even more.

Pesce laughs. “Yeah, I can see it. I’ll take it to the repair guy and he’ll open it up and go, ‘What the hell did you do to this?”’