A Fragile Tomorrow Delivers Solid, Star-Studded Power-Pop
It’s not unusual to hear veteran Carolina musicians well into in their 30s and 40s talk about camaraderie and fellowship between themselves and their contemporaries from the same generation and same circuit. Get a member of Hootie and the Blowfish or Drivin’ N’ Cryin’ to reminisce about rubbing elbows with R.E.M. or some other celebrated, ’80s-born Southeastern act; they’ll cheerfully talk your ear off. But it is a bit odd to hear a pack of bandmates who are barely into their 20s chat casually about bumping into Elvis Costello in the street, touring with the Bangles, or recording with one of the two Indigo Girls as if it was a conversation about their garage band pals down the street.
For the four guys in Charleston power-pop band A Fragile Tomorrow — singer/guitarist Sean Kelly, twin brother/drummer Dominic Kelly, kid brother/guitarist Brendan Kelly, and bassist Shaun Rhoades — those star-struck moments are simply part of their musical adventures thus far.
A Fragile Tomorrow (L to R): Sean Kelly, Dominic Kelly, Brendan Kelly, and Shaun Rhoades
Over the last three years, the four bandmates have acquainted themselves with a handful of veteran musicians in the national pop and Americana scene including singer/songwriter Susan Cowsill, multi-instrumentalist Peter Holsapple (of the dB’s, Hootie and the Blowfish), guitarist Vicki Peterson of the Bangles and Continental Drifters, and the Indigo Girls. The young band toured extensively with the Bangles and Indigo Girls in 2011 and 2012.
“We saw the Indigo Girls for the first time in late 2007 up in Kingston, New York,” Dominic remembers. “We’d been fans for a long time. We got there early and hung out behind the performing arts center, just to see if we could meet them. We mentioned to their guitar tech Sully that we were friends with Danielle Howle and then waited in the alley behind the venue for like an hour. Amy Ray found a note backstage that said, ‘Friends of Danielle outside,’ and then came out to meet us. We kept in touch after that.”
His brother Sean adds, “Vicki seemed to love us the first time she heard us. She was very supportive, which led to us opening for the Continental Drifters and the Bangles.” It’s still very early in their musical career, but the Brothers Kelly already come off like sagely old pros.
This weekend, A Fragile Tomorrow headlines a CD release show at the Windjammer in celebration of their long-awaited studio album Be Nice Be Careful, due Jan. 8 on Piewillie Records. Amy Ray and Danielle Howle will be on hand to perform opening sets.
The band recorded the 14-song collection last January during a 15-day/three-week run at at Fidelitorium Recordings in Kernersville, N.C. Acclaimed studio producer and songwriter Mitch Easter and assistant engineer Ted Comerford were at the helm.
“We e-mailed Mitch and explained what we were doing and what we wanted to do,” Sean says. “He replied, ‘Yeah, let’s do it.’ He never heard any demos beforehand. It was virtually that easy. I think it helped that we had a few mutual friends, too.”
Like mature musicians with a tone of gritty experience under their belts, they took their time tracking, mixing, and packaging the album. They’d learned a few lessons from their previous studio sessions back in 2007 and ’08 when they tracked their last album Beautiful Noise with Grammy Award-winning producer Malcolm Burn.
Mitch Easter at his N.C. studio (provided)
“When we did Beautiful Noise, he hustled to put it out right away, assuming that people would notice it because we’d worked with Malcolm,” Sean says. “But it didn’t quite work that way. We rushed the process. There are some great things that I love about that record, but it was weird timing. We rushed to get it out before a tour in able to sell. That worked okay, but looking back, I think we could have worked on it a bit more and refined it.”
Be Nice Be Careful packs a lot of upbeat power-pop jangle and sophisticated arrangements into a neat 40 minutes, but it doesn’t seem sloppy or rushed. It’s well-rounded, well-polished, and expertly delivered — from the anthemic “Long Time to be Happy” and the slinky, Spoon-like “Mess You Made” to the breezy, slow-rolling “Daylight” and “Three More Hours” (replete with Byrds-esque 12-string guitar).
“There had always been a sense of urgency about recording music and putting it out before this album, but it wasn’t like that with Be Nice Be Careful,” Sean says. “We knew we had to take our time, figure things out, and allow ourselves time to do it right. Everything sounded good right away, and there wasn’t really a lot of thought put into anything. It wasn’t even hard at all. We didn’t spend a couple of days figuring out what sounded right for each song; we just played. We worked well with Ted Comerford, too. He frequently worked with Mitch at the studio, so he knew how to do everything well.”
During the sessions, the band performed three or four basic versions of each tracks, but they usually ended up keeping the first or second takes. A few songs weren’t even tracked until less than a week before the session ended.
“We didn’t really know what to expect when we went in, but the whole process ended up being very laid-back and spontaneous,” Dominic says. “We were just taking direction and doing our thing.”
Fidelitorium evolved from Easter’s legendary Drive-In Studio, a garage-based studio he first assembled in 1980 adjacent to his parents’ house. Such acts as the dB’s, R.E.M., and Pylon recorded music there with Easter and fellow producers Chris Stamey, Gene Holder, and Don Dixon. Easter’s own melodic rock band, Let’s Active, tracked all four of their albums for the I.R.S Records label in the 1980s.
Easter set up shop in a bigger house in the mid 1990s (nicknamed “Brickhenge”) and continued to record a variety of underground pop and rock artists, including Pavement, Wilco, Polvo, Son Volt, and Helium. He opened Fidelitorium in 2000.
“When we lived in New York, we already had this fascination with Southern jangle-pop bands, from Big Star to R.E.M. and Guadalcanal Diary,” Brendan says. “We’d been fans of just about everything Mitch had done — R.E.M., Velvet Crush, Pavement, and all of those bands — so we were really excited to book time with him.”
Sean was just as eager to get going with the sessions, too. “It was pretty much a no-brainer to work with Mitch,” he says. “He was number one on our list. We drive up and met with him two weeks before the session, and we couldn’t believe that the studio was in a place like Kernersville, which is in-between Winston-Salem and Greensboro … with not much going on in town. But now, I’m in love with the place.”
The band admired and enjoyed the studio and the bucolic atmosphere of the town so much that they added a tune titled “Kernersville” to the set. This fall, they produced and posted a music video for the song with footage shot at the Pierpont Pub in West Ashley. The video was directed, filmed, and edited by Amanda Lowers and Jeff Janecek at Dreampop Media. Extra footage includes cute clips of Howle, Peterson, and fellow Carolina musicians Mark Bryan and Don Dixon among others (see below). The band’s joyful antics in the clip resemble the chipper, youthful energy of the music on the disc.
“We figured out at some point that we work better when it’s loose and live in the room,” Sean says. “And everything was available to use; every little cool amp, combo amps, organs, autoharps, and effects. We used vintage organs that Mitch brought in, and tried out all sorts of stuff. It was such a cool process. At one point, we thought it would a great idea to try out a harpsichord on a song. It involved tearing down all the drum mics and setting things up in a special way, but Mitch was totally cool with it. We tried it, and it just didn’t work at all. I felt so badly about and apologized, but Mitch was like, ‘No problem — this is what it’s all about.'”
A Fragile Tomorrow shares the stage with Amy Ray and Danielle Howle at the Windjammer at 8 p.m. on Sat. Jan. 6. Admission is $5. Visit the-windjammer.com and afragiletomorrow.com for more.
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About the Author
Ballard Lesemann is a musician and writer. Born and raised in Charleston, S.C., he spent years playing in bands and working for Flagpole Magazine in the bustling music town of Athens, Ga. He returned to his hometown and served more than seven years as the Charleston City Paper's music editor. He's better at drumming than he is at playing guitar.
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