Stop Light Observations At The Crossroads

Borrowing its title from the South Carolina location where the band set up shop, Stop Light Observations’ second album was recorded in 11 days.  Combining social awareness with a solid rock sound, Toogoodoo isn’t merely the group’s latest effort.  In fact, there was a time when band members thought it might be their last album.

But chief lyricist Culbreth, who plays piano, guitar and synth, along with his bandmates Will Blackburn on lead vocals, lead guitarist Louis Duffie and drummer Luke Withers, were determined to make the album they wanted to hear, with words reflecting today’s world coupled with the kind of melodies, riffs and sonic achievements that rock aficionados hunger for.

And there’s good news for fans who fell in love with Toogoodoo.  A vinyl edition arrives Nov. 11 and can be preordered via this link.

How does Toogoodoo differ from 2013’s Radiation?

Individual development.  It’s spiritually, emotionally and physically just growing and getting older.  Culturally, the world has changed from when we wrote Radiation. … We recorded this album live and Radiation, we did it more in the box.

So Radiation was more about layering tracks?

We did [Radiation] live to get the drums down. Then we re-tracked the bass, the guitar, the vocals, and harmony.  Anybody makes a mistake, you can just punch them in and have as many tries as you want.

This album, everything you hear, the vocal, the guitars, drums, bass, keyboards, it’s all live.

After recording live, what goes on in the post-production process?

There’s definitely work involved.  You capture the vibe when you do it live. Then you take it into the studio. … Even like a lot of Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers albums, there’s a lot of stuff Rick Rubin does that’s live. … You EQ it, you compress stuff, run it through limiters. We added some sound effects and stuff like that.  On “The 50 Ways” there’s a sample of the local news anchor in New York as he sees the second plane [fly] into the World Trade Center.  Then … one of the very first 911 calls [reporting] that a plane had hit the World Trade Center.  Then, in the background, we faded in some on-the-ground people’s reactions when the plane hit. So it’s the news anchor’s point of view, a person from the distance, and people right underneath the World Trade Center. 

Then one song we added samples of the the [Apollo 11] countdown and little stuff like that.

That’s pretty heavy subject material.

I think so.  I dunno. As unaggressive as I can say this, one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., says something along the lines of, “When you stop talking about things that actually matter is when you begin to die.”  I think there’s a lot of things that need to be said right now. I think the country is in a state of turmoil, in a state of confusion and [has] kind of an overlaying layer of anxiety and panic about what the future is going to look like.  At the same time, there’s a real fear right now to say the wrong thing, upset people and speak up. … It’s almost like political correction that’s kind of made a lot of people afraid to speak their minds.  I think rock ’n’ roll really derives from and is rooted in people saying how they really feel. Robert Johnson in the ’20s and ’30s saying it like it is, all the way up to Bob Dylan and Kurt Cobain.

I felt like if I was going to make an album and … let all the other artists feel like it’s OK to say what you want and it’s OK to speak your mind.

Is everyone in the band involved with the songwriting process?

Everybody has a different perspective of what a song is.  To me, a song is something you can play with an acoustic guitar, sing it, and it consists of a melody, lyrics and rhythm. The very heart of it is just me.  Where the magic happens is when the band becomes involved.

When you talk to record industry people, they always say, “We want to hear songs.”  Tom Petty is a master of songs. People like John Prine, Bonnie Raitt and The Beatles – they wrote songs.  But … Mozart wrote songs.  There are no lyrics in it.  You couldn’t just sit down with a guitar and play it.  I think it would be pretty vain to say that Led Zeppelin didn’t write songs.  However it’s very difficult to sit down by the piano or with the guitar, by a campfire and throw out a Zeppelin tune.  They are definitely songs.

I just do the lyrics, the melody and the idea. But when the band comes together, that’s when the recipes start coming together.  I might be the chicken and rice, but the rest of the band is the spices, vegetables, sauces, the wine and the whole experience.  It’s definitely a collaborative, team effort.

Does the completed track sound as you imagined when you first put the words to music?

Sometimes and sometimes no. … On this album I’d say no.  This album was more of a surprise.  I think that comes from the more involved, [making it] more of a group effort it.

The band’s official bio states, “The band had to deal with misplaced trust in music industry figures along with a series of setbacks.”  What was going on at that time?

We started playing shows … and one of the biggest people in record labels in the past 30 years just happens to live in Charleston and went to one of our shows.  He loved us. He’s one of those “golden ear” guys you hear about that finds all these hit bands.  He promised he was going to get us a showcase, shop us to labels, get us a business manager, the entire team.

As young boys sitting down with this head honcho, it was super-exciting.  It just never happened.  [We] sat down with the record labels and what they wanted was not what we wanted.  It was at a time of a lot of confidence, too. We were like, “Right now we don’t need them.”

Then things started to slow down. We got a potential management who we were working with for a long time.  They promised us all these big glorious things but I didn’t feel right about it.  I said, “I just can’t work with y’all like this. Something in my gut says I can’t work with y’all.”

They tried suing us for $30,000 and took us to court knowing we couldn’t afford it, and really just trying to shut us down. That stress, mixed with the stress at the time [that] we didn’t have any  money, no shows on the books, no manager, no label, just kind of built up.

Then one of our key members quit the band. Then another member quit, who wasn’t as significant, our horn player, and we don’t have a horn player anymore.  We were at our very bottom and took whatever money we had left and were told we had one more shot.

The man who found us … was really interested in us.  He said, “I need a single.  Go get a producer and make a single.”

So we went out and got a producer.  We spent every dollar we had. We got four songs back after spending months in the studio. … They were totally way overproduced.  The producer sung all the harmonies on it and you could tell.  He changed lyrics and stuff.  He got a drummer and re-tracked an entire song without telling our drummer.  It was real disheartening.  Just for a bunch of young early 20-year-olds that were completely independent, that had a lot going for them, we got it all ripped away. 

We were completely broke, at a really low, low vibe.  We were like, “Fuck it.  Let’s just do what we really want to do.  If we make this album and nobody hears it, and we’re 80 years old, I just want something to show my grandkids that I’m proud of what I did fully out of my heart”

That’s why we decided to go out to Toogoodoo where we all grew up. … It’s an old native American part of South Carolina on a tiny little river. … The epicenter of slave trade was in Charleston and a lot of African culture was imprinted in this area. … It’s very very vibey and super kind of voodoo-y.  Right now I’m looking at the most gorgeous marsh.  This is an old plantation house from the 1700s. 

Anyway, we decided how cool it would be to live-track that vibe. … We got it together.  Had to borrow tons of people’s equipment. … [It’s a rental] and my dad was kind enough to not rent it out for two weeks.  We all took off work and went balls to the walls, a bunch of young, fool-hearted, confused, boundless 22-year-olds.

You compare our story to some people and it’s like, “Boo hoo.  Forget about it, kid.  That’s nothing.” But from our perspective, it was like the band almost ended.  And the band is everything to us. It’s our destiny.  To be able to finish the product and have it out, and the way things have come together, I’m so grateful and blessed from all the support we’ve had.  It’s completely amazing.

For Toogoodoo, was everything planned out or were there impromptu moments when, perhaps, while jamming, a song came into being?

There were three or four songs we had never played but I was planning on recording them.  Those are definitely complete moments.  When you live-track something, it’s all about the vibe.

We only had 11 days out here and after three days we didn’t have one song done.  Everybody was kind of in a state of panic.  I was the one who calmed everybody down.  I was like, “Let’s just keep it going and see what happens.  If it’s another day or two, maybe we’ll try a different style of tracking.” 

On the third night I introduced everybody to a song we had not played at that point, called “Dinosaur Bones.” It’s the first track on the album.  Everybody kind of knew the gist of it and we gave it one track through. That was the turning point of the entire album.  We all looked at each other after hearing the playback and said, “We can do this.” It was a total monumental vibe shift.  There was a lot of spontaneity on that song and on a few others.  But that was the very first song where we had the courage to realize we were able to live track it.  That song is really special.

Did the rest of the recording process start coming easier?

We were playing in the day and … it’s way vibe-ier to play at night.  You can almost hear on the album which songs were done in the day and which were done at night.  “Give To Get,” and “For Elizabeth,” and “Leroy” were done in the day.  “Security” was done super late at night.  “Dinosaur Bones” [and] “Who You Are” was done late at night.  [On] “Who You Are” you can even hear the pouring rain [from outside].  To me there’s a lot of heaviness in the album … but [last track] “The 50 Ways” is kind of like the triumph and last note of hope. … It stopped raining while we were recording “The 50 Ways” and all of a sudden this magnificent rainbow, a double rainbow appeared.  That’s when we tracked the keeper for “50 Ways.”  You can kind of hear the weather in a way.

How influential is Tom Petty in your music?

He is a big influence in a way that I didn’t even realize. I always loved Tom Petty.  Jack Johnson is a big influence on this album, [as is] Kings Of Leon.  John Lennon, Biggie Smalls – those are my lyrical influences.  Then musically, I like the big bands, Frank Sinatra, obviously rock ’n’ roll.  Really into classical.  I’m not a classical aficionado but one of my favorite songs is Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, the fourth movement of it.  That’s a big influence on this album.

You have a few songs available as free downloads.  How does giving away your music for free help the band?

Two or three years ago it was kind of cool to [say] we’re giving our music away for free.  Now it’s almost irrelevant.  Spotify is what everybody is listening to and it’s free. … You almost have to give it away for free.  It used to be like, “I give it away for free for deeper reasons.  I want to give back to my fans, connect, and use it as a marketing tool.”  But now you release your music for free because if you don’t nobody is going to hear you.

If you go back to the way it used to be …  [Many] people played music because they were passionate about it.  But the only way you could get heard on a bigger spectrum was if you got a record deal.  And when you did get a record deal you still didn’t make a lot of money. You hear stories about old blues players and early rock players not ever getting paid.  But they kept doing it because it was for the passion. 

Then it turned into this giant economy.  If you’re in it for the right reason, you shouldn’t be so worried about it.  But only the survival of the fittest are going to be able to stand out because it’s so easy to record music now. … You just got to be the best of the best.  And when you are the best of the best, you’re probably going to be pretty broke.

What was your first instrument?

Guitar.

Did playing guitar make other instruments, such as piano and synths, come easier?

Yeah. I think the piano is a phenomenal instrument.  The look, the sound … is so ingrained in our brain that it’s hard to separate it, conceptually.  But it’s the musical calculator.  The scales are all right there in a straight line.  Going from guitar to piano is very easy.

Would you say things are improving for Stop Light Observations?

As far as this whole story goes, it was like a moment in anybody’s life. … When you see some snobby, stuck-up entitled millennial that looks like a Barbie yappin’ at the waiter because her beef tenderloin is slightly overcooked, or you look at a homeless man on the street who’s struggling, you gotta be empathetic to all people because everybody is going to see extreme struggle.  There’s no human being who has made it through life that did not face extreme struggle. 

I don’t think it’s about the struggle, it’s about overcoming it.  That’s where the real story is. … This album covers a lot of struggle, but it’s about overcoming the struggle as a country, as a culture, as a generation.  I feel like we’re on Cloud 9 right now about how many things are going our way, how great everything is and [how there’s] a bright road ahead of us.

What’s the best advice anyone has ever given you?

To not give advice and just listen.

Upcoming Stop Light Observation shows:

Sept. 16 – Asheville, N.C., Asheville Music Hall
Sept. 22 – Columbia, S.C., 5 Points Pub
Sept. 23 – Augusta, Ga., Southbound Smokehouse
Sept. 24 – Spartanburg, S.C., Downtown Spartanburg (Melting Pot Music Festival)
Oct. 2 – Tulsa, Okla., Guthrie Green Park
Oct. 5 – Greenville, S.C., Furman University
Oct. 7 – Charlottesville, Va., The Southern
Oct. 11 – Ardmore, Pa., The Ardmore Music Hall
Oct. 13 – Fairfield, Conn., The Warehouse
Oct. 14 – Somerville, Mass., Once Ballroom
Oct. 15 – Brooklyn, N.Y., Brooklyn Bowl
Nov. 17 – Athens, Ga., Georgia Theatre

For more information, please visit Stop Light Observations’ website, Facebook page, Twitter feed, YouTube channel, and Instagram account.