COLUMBUS ALIVE: SENSORY OVERLOAD (2.17.2011)
By Chris Deville
A couple of years back, Trains Across the Sea mastermind Andy Gallagher quit his job as an engineer to pursue creative endeavors full time. Philosophically, it was an admirable move. From a practical standpoint, I worried that Gallagher’s music wasn’t good enough to justify pouring his life into it.
Plenty of amazing bands have worked their asses off only to toil in obscurity. Then again, lots of bands that fall short of amazing hit it big, often by keeping their nose to the grindstone, Gallagher-style.
It’s a crapshoot. But after seeing Trains Across the Sea last Wednesday at Rumba Cafe, I’m a lot less concerned about Gallagher’s life direction.
One gripe with the frontman before was that it seemed like he was trying too hard, blowing up his enthusiastic showman persona to an obnoxious extent. When your band is just you and maybe one sidekick and your goal is to rock, you have to get hyped. Unless your songs absolutely kill, though, the result can be a performance that’s all exclamation point, no sentence.
Trains’ latest lineup solves that problem. Gallagher is now backed by the DewDroppers, a ragtag crew whose sound traipses drunkenly between Tin Pan Alley and the local saloon.
His songs feel completely different in their hands – more relaxed and natural, though certainly still rambunctious when they ought to be. Any step away from the nasal naivete of folk-punk acts like Ghost Mice is a step in the right direction.
Gallagher’s not writing emo songs, after all, so the tempered yet rollicking “Like a Rolling Stone” vibe conjured by his new players fits better with the reflective lyrics he’s been spouting from the beginning.
Words have always been his strength. With simple observations, he captures freewheeling twentysomething life in all its glory (“Let’s go stealing girlfriends from the boyfriends we don’t know”) and its shame (“If we sit by the window, the internet’s free”).
I still find his vocal affectations a little off-putting – is he Johnny Cash? Elvis Presley? – but considering how much Gallagher has improved this operation over the past year, there’s a good chance he’ll get that sorted out too.
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THE OTHER PAPER: LOCAL ROUNDUP (8.26.2010)
By Joel Oliphint
In last week’s issue, Trains Across the Sea’s Andy Gallagher wrote a guest column about how Columbus should stop ignoring its local bands.
He made quite a few points with which I agree. It’s true, there are some immensely talented Columbus bands that go unnoticed nationally and even in our own hometown. I’ve used plenty of ink to express similar sentiments in these pages. And yes, in an ideal world, I’d love to see a larger contingent of Columbus support its bands.
But here’s one of the inherent, assumed-but-rarely-stated flaws in the thinking of Mr. Gallagher and other like-minded musicians. He says, in effect: “People should pay me to make music so I can make my living playing music.”
Traditionally, the idea of playing music as a career is an anomaly. Sure, there have always been composers commissioned by wealthy benefactors and such, but normally, playing music has been something for the in-between times—after work, before work, on weekends. It’s a social thing, a familial thing, a community thing that’s there for your own enjoyment and occasionally the enjoyment of the people immediately around you.
In that way, playing to just your friends at a mostly empty bar is natural and, in one sense, the way it should be.
Join or form a band to play music and have fun. Work hard at it, sure, but go into it knowing that the end goal is not to play music for a living. If that happens, awesome, but don’t get caught up in “making it.”
Be OK with not breaking out of Columbus. Be OK with playing for a handful of friends. Be OK with the majority of a city ignoring you. You’re not doing it for them or their money. You’re doing it because you’ve got to get it out of your system somehow.
Gallagher is getting it out of his system with Trains Across the Sea’s new EP, Thanks for Coming Out Tonight. It’s a step up from the band’s previous EP, both in terms of recording quality and songwriting quality. I’d still rather see Trains go nuts onstage than listen to them with ear buds, but there are some good moments here.
Gallagher is at his best when using his casual baritone and tossing off phrases in a John Darnielle manner (see the first half of “Galileo”). Also nice is “I Just Wanna Get Paid,” a live cut that provides an endearing window into Trains Across the Sea’s theatrical stage show, with Gallagher playing the ironic snake-oil salesman.
There’s an overload of songs about writing songs and/or being an itinerant musician. The short title track, which wraps up the EP, fits into that category. But the piano-and-vocal number also is a nice switch-up sonically from the acoustic-guitar folk sounds that dominate the disc.
So take heart, Andy. Trains Across the Sea’s folk-rock is steadily improving. Whether people hear it or not.
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THE OTHER PAPER: STOP IGNORING YOUR LOCAL BANDS (8.19.2010)
*Note: They picked the title, not me. I would never have phrased it so negatively. It’s meant as a pick-me-up.
By Andy GallagherThis month, the band I am in will release its fourth album of original music written and recorded in Columbus, Ohio. If our own past releases and those of our Columbus musician friends are any indication of what the four of us should expect, the release will go a little something like this:
We will go a few thousand dollars into debt recording the album and printing a few hundred copies. We will get most of our friends to come to our release show, and some of them will buy the album—more out of social obligation than a recognition of the music’s quality. If we’re lucky, we’ll sell about 30 of these records at our release show, 30 over the course of the next year, and 30 in Australia.
We really don’t stand much chance of breaking even.
Without a bank that would trust our band-slash-startup company with a much-needed $10,000 loan to allow us to adequately record, promote and distribute this record, we’ll instead spend another year juggling part-time jobs, unable to squeeze in the six hours of daily practice needed to advance in the entertainment industry. We’ll frantically keep writing more music in every spare moment we get and go to fewer and fewer of those still-empty local shows, becoming ever more jaded with the scene until we finally put our guitars in storage and become mothers and fathers.
Obviously, this situation frustrates us to no end. And it isn’t only our own paltry record sales that frustrate us; it’s also that we see so many other great Columbus bands that have been here longer than we have and are still stuck, still asking the same question—why can’t anybody seem to make it in this town?
Those three words—“in this town”—are the most important ones. You simply cannot make a living selling Columbus music to Columbus people. If you want to make it, they say, move to the big cities where all the other great bands came from.
And most likely, they are absolutely right.
But before we all hit the road and flee to our happy artistic enclaves, let’s try to figure out why our capital city cannot support its local musicians. Some possible reasons:
► There does not exist a market of music fans in Central Ohio large enough to support its finest musicians.
I refuse to believe this is true. Look at the robust ticket sales for local appearances by nationally touring acts; look at the endless music collections of our friends (with nary a local disc among them); look at how many band T-shirts dot the college campuses in town. The purchasing power of music-listening Central Ohioans is immense.
► The music coming out of this town just isn’t that good.
Once upon a time, before I started frequenting local shows, I thought the same thing. I wasn’t hearing Columbus bands on the radio, I wasn’t reading about Columbus bands on the hip music blogs, and I wasn’t seeing Columbus bands on the television. I was left to assume that nothing great was happening in this town, because if there had been, I surely would have been aware of it.
Now consider this list: Nick Tolford. Ghost Shirt. Karate Coyote. The Liquid Crystal Project. Wing & Tusk. Andrew Graham & Swarming Branch. DJ Moxy. Flotation Walls. Envelope. Two Cow Garage. saintseneca. The Compressions. The Alwood Sisters. LES Crew. Super Desserts. Locusta. Greenhouse. Blueprint. Old Hundred. The Black Swans. Shin Tower Music. (If any of these groups don’t come up in your discussions of modern music, I strongly encourage you to check them out.)
I started discovering such groups when I started showing up in those empty bars on weeknights and seeing if there was anything to fuss about.
There was. Fuss.
Of course, the woes of the Columbus music scene may simply be symptomatic of a larger trend. To wit:
► The writing and recording of music is not an essential service in the new economy and will soon be eliminated.
If so, the problem is far more severe than originally thought, and my fellow musicians and I need to focus our efforts immediately elsewhere. But I doubt that this is the case.
To borrow a tired line, things don’t have to be this way. Whenever we choose, we can start giving a few of our favorite musicians in this city the real financial opportunity to keep writing their music and playing their music and further honing their music until they are finally granted a rare gem in these modern times—the chance to truly explore the limits of their own potential.
And it doesn’t require a complicated equation for this to work. If you haven’t checked out the local scene lately, do five minutes’ worth of research (for newbies, start with donewaiting.com) and find a local band you think you’d like. Then go to one of its shows. If you like the music, buy an album. If you don’t, don’t (both of these are equally important). This practice, repeated over time, guarantees the city at least the scene it deserves.
So the next time you decide to pick up the new album with the five-star Rolling Stone review, take that money, instead, over to a local music show and give us Ohio musicians a shot. Because some of us are extremely dedicated, hard-working individuals who are trying our absolute hardest to make it in this industry, and we’re going to keep on trying as long our bodies and wallets allow us.
By simply paying attention, we can help these dedicated and hard-working musicians actually support themselves and their families by creating and selling their own art. And if we can make that happen, we’re not just supporting the local scene. We’re creating jobs.
Guest columnist Andy Gallagher is a member of Columbus band Trains Across the Sea.
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UWEEKLY: LOCAL GOLD (7.28.2010)
By Kyle Reisz
Now that we can do anything, what do we do? For some time, songwriter and community activist Andy Gallagher struggled with that very question. And when it finally came to him, the Columbus music scene and arts scene as a whole, got a big shot in the arm. Gallagher’s answer was to quit his job and focus on two things: his band, Trains Across the Sea and the newly established Peach District.
“If there is this thing that I want to do, then I should go for it,” Gallagher said. “I took a year off and just focused on Trains. Literally every day, I woke up, ate breakfast and figured out what the next thing to do was, and the first thing to do was make this album.”
The album is “Greetings from the Peach District,” a folk dagwood loaded up with all the rock’n’roll toppings and stuffed into a 19-minute wrapper.
“I was living in the Peach District at the time, I am one of the contributing, founding members of the Peach District and am still active, so it seemed like a nice little ‘welcome to our crazy world of nice, community biking people,'” Gallahger said.
While the disc is short, it was a very intentional move.
“It’s exactly the length of my mother’s commute to work, and is actually the average commute time for Columbus. It is absolutely the perfect thing to listen to in the car,” Gallagher laughed.
Recorded with the help of fellow bandmates Joe Gilliland (guitar), Counterfeit Madison (keys/vox) and Adam Nedrow (percussion), the disc was named 2009’s “most fun album of the year” by a Columbus artist. [ed. note: I hadn’t met Joe, Counterfeit, or Adam when I was making this record, and it was named “most fun” by Columbus Alive.]
“We like to make a very clear distinction between folk rock and folk rock’n’roll,” Gallagher said.
“Folk rock does not sound like a very good idea, but at least what we get with folk rock’n’roll, I think, is much more ’50s rockabilly sort of soul influences,” he said.
While the band and the album are lending serious credit to the Columbus music scene as a burgeoning national hot bed, it’s only the tip of the iceberg for Gallagher’s contributions to this city. Frustrated by the pervasive notion that to “make it” as an artist you must head off to the green indie pastures of NYC or Austin, Gallagher became instrumental in planting the seeds of the Peach District. And, while the area can be geographically defined, the neighborhood between Victorian Village and campus, it’s also a philosophy.
“It’s nothing more than a bunch of people who, instead of complaining that stuff they want to happen in their community isn’t, they just make it happen,” Gallagher said. “You have to take a much more active role in your own happiness and your own community and your own everything, and so the Peach District is just people who are similarly minded about that, but who also like to drink and put on fun shows.”
The district and its founders were responsible (and perhaps best known for) a variety show-style series it hosted earlier this year know as “The Greatest Show.” A total of 11 events featured everything from Burlesque to stand-up comics and served as a giant networking event that has spurred many more artist collaborations within the city.
As the Peach District comes into its own, so has Trains Across the Sea. Gallagher was excited to talk about the band’s sophomore album, “Thanks For Coming Out Tonight,” which will be available in hard copy form August 19 and online even sooner.
“I have just finished, actually just got the master[ed] track back two days ago,” Gallagher said. “That’s what I’ve been doing for the past two months and it’s been a lot of work, but I definitely think it’s paid off.”
614 MAGAZINE: EVERYONE ABOARD (7.1.2010)
Glance at the clock to uncross your eyes, dry from hours of staring at your computer screen . . . time passing at horribly subsonic speeds. Sit in dead-stop traffic on the freeway, filled with violent thoughts for the other motorists. Get home and yank your lawnmower out of the shed and shove it up and down your yard, constant mortal combat with the strange forces of suburban nature, and convince yourself that this, in fact, is what you would rather be doing . . . this, instead of sailing a boat around the Caribbean like a pirate, or flying a kite, or a helicopter, or a homemade rocket ship.
Learn to enjoy the grind, and forget your childish dreams of freedom.
Or quit your job, and go start a folk band.
At least, that worked for Andy Gallagher.
The 26-year-old former engineer said that, after two years working in the oil and gas industry in Dublin, he quit his high-paying job, paid off his debts, and dedicated his life to playing music. All he had to do was learn how.
Lynsay Bensman, 28, worked with Gallagher at the engineering firm he left.
“He was a really good engineer, but that just wasn’t what he wanted to do with his life,” she said in an interview. “Everyone at work loved him. Even the VPs and the bosses thought it was great, that he was following his passion.”
Genesis of a folk hero
Gallagher had been playing guitar and harmonica for some time, but he claims Dave Casto, who runs karaoke “10 days a week at various venues,” taught him how to sing.
“He allowed a space, a venue, a moment, where you are allowed to walk in, piss drunk, amplify yourself, and scream your favorite songs in the world,” he said. “Just the opportunity to do that on a regular basis, that’s how someone teaches you to sing. He was like, ‘Well, we aren’t going to kick him out of the bar, I guess.'”
Gallagher spent the next year or so mapping out a project, a concept band called Trains Across the Sea, a reference to a song by indie band Silver Jews.
“I had an entire year of this being my sole focus,” he said.
“And that’s exactly why I started this band,” reads the band’s website. “It’s not that music is powerless to undo the crimes [of corrupt lobbyists and others] of this country, but that music is essential to developing the good and right foundation in those who will inevitably replace them.”
Not many bands have a mission statement. The ones that do tend to sound preachy and are then not quite as entertaining. If Trains Across the Sea has an agenda, it is endemic, not overt; though some songs are clearly possessed of a message (Bikes are cheaper than cars . . . bikes, they are cheaper than cars, the slightly political refrain of “I Just Want to Get Paid,” for example), they remain entertaining and largely light-hearted.
The band instead uses positive energy as a tool of conversion with an overwhelming message: Do what you want to do, and not what you think you are supposed to do.
“I was asked last week, ‘What’s the best part about being in Trains?'” Gallagher told me at the Taj Mahal open mic night, the musical farm from which he mines future members. “I told him, ‘There’s no longer a difference between what I want to do and what I am doing,”‘ he said. “That’s the best part.”
“I think there’s something very intentionally captivating, that there’s this guy on stage who has ‘Be The Change’ written on his guitar, who quit his job, who’s trying to play music in front of people – that’s all very intentionally designed,” he said. “Are you where you want to be? Man, I hope that what you are doing is what you want to do. Do what you want to do,” he said, restating the idea emphatically.
That sentiment, presented by the wrong kind of guy, could be an infuriating and cocky one, but the affable Gallagher seems so earnest, so caring, that you have to consider the question. The kid’s handsome and open, boisterous and jovial . . . and could have been rich as hell, parking a Beemer in front of a McMansion with a trophy lady and a herd of talking purebreds.
Instead, when I arrived at his campus-area house, we drank beer on the porch in the dark, presumably because the bulb had burned out. His comfy furnishings are undeniably modest, and the real action there occurs in the basement, as the normally acoustic act transitions into a plugged-in legit band, with keyboardist Sharon Udoh (aka Counterfeit Madison) on the keys, Adrian Jusdanis on violin, and Joe Gilliland on the electric guitar, with plans to add a drummer later this summer.
Evolution
Trains Across the Sea truly is more an idea than an actual band, as evidenced by its constantly revolving door. The incarnation that played last year’s ComFest was entirely revamped only a few months later. Recently, audiences have been treated to an all-acoustic version of the band, with only Gallagher’s guitar and Jusdanis’ violin roaming the center of the crowd, lyrics often roughly shouted over furious strumming and searing violin solos.
“It reduces the boundary between the audience and whoever is on stage,” said Gallagher enthusiastically. (That’s how he says most things.) “Also, it makes it immediately timeless,” he continued. “The technology of the guitar and the fiddle have existed for a long, long time, and so you are digesting it the same way it was heard like 500 years ago.”
As Jusdanis transitions now out of Trains to focus on his other band, Arlo and the Otter, the project’s lineup has changed again. With the relatively recent additions of Sharon’s keys and Joe’s electric guitar, Gallagher has found it necessary to abandon the all-acoustic set in order to be heard. His bandmates are talented and thoughtful, artfully augmenting Gallagher’s songwriting, gracing the slow ones with melodic phrases and harmony singing and imbuing the faster songs with the force of a semi truck careening across the open highway, leaving plenty of space in the music, giving it an open and honest quality that is currently rather rare.
Despite the formidable talent of the current band, Gallagher sees Trains as a constant evolution of music and musicians.
“The reunion show for Trains will have, like, a thousand people,” he laughed. “Who are all phenomenal, which is really weird, because when I started, I was really new, and when you see the talent on this board – it’s just incredible.”
The music lends itself well to both the mission and the presentation of the band. Gallagher relies on a definition of folk music from Bonnie Prince Billy’s Will Oldham:
“Folk music is any music that you get together and play and sing with your friends,” he said. “Anything you all know is folk music.”
“And that’s what we are trying to do with Trains,” he said. “You know: we want a community, for a moment, for an evening, for a set . . .”