Nickell’s Bag

With a voice so pinched he sounds like he’s being strangled after inhaling a helium balloon, Wolf Redboy will never count among history’s great smooth crooners. Rather, his voice – both lyrically and musically – falls in the long line of earnestly oddball singers who’ve given grain to the glow of American popular music over the past half century: the Dylans and Reeds, Byrnes and Youngs.

Maddening men all, with their squeaking voices pronouncing profound thoughts, sometimes only barely keeping a tune, always commanding attention. Redboy, a Missoula-raised musician who has played his original music around town for the past several years, may not yet stand shoulder to shoulder among those greats. But he undoubtedly walks in their footsteps, as made evident on a new, three-song demo CD that he and his new band will release this Friday night, Oct. 16, at the Badlander.

In fact, for awhile there, Redboy’s musical path almost followed literally in the footsteps of Neil Young. In early 2008, he made the acquaintance of John Hanlon, Young’s go-to recording engineer. After hearing some of Redboy’s music, Hanlon offered to work with him on putting together an album.

The project moved slowly along, with Hanlon flying from California to supervise sessions at Missoula’s Habilis Records recording studio. Then, Redboy met Ryan “Shmed” Maynes, the former keyboardist with the Los Angeles-based indie band Arlo, who at the time had recently moved to Missoula to open a recording studio. The two hit it off, and after just one recording session at Maynes’ Club Shmed Studio, Redboy decided to change directions entirely with his recording project.

“John and I had done a lot already; but from the very beginning working with Shmed, we had this incredible sort of symbiotic experience recording,” said Redboy. “It immediately convinced me that I wanted to focus all my energy on working with him.”

The decision hardly sat well with Redboy’s bandmates at the time.

“They looked at it as, I was working with one of the top guys in the world, and here I went with the local guy who had a studio in his garage instead,” said Redboy. “They thought I was crazy, to the extent that we broke up as a band because of that.”

But Redboy held firm in his decision to stay local with his project, and ultimately says he’s proud of the result – which is far different from the direction that Hanlon was leading him.

“It went from a really punk type of sound with guitars, to a more piano-led approach and more of an intellectual sound,” said Redboy, who plays piano and keyboards in the band.

Though short, the demo record doesn’t shortchange on musical styles. There’s harsh guitar-rock and soaring piano ballads, skipping electronica and minor-key folk-rock, all crammed into just three songs. The result is an record that feels more than a little searching, right from the start, when Redboy croons, “It’s funny, you’re in my thoughts / No, no, back up, back up / You’re not in my thoughts at all.”

According to Redboy, the short record’s diversity is a reflection of the many threads of his musical interests.

“You have the best of the best for me here. It cuts right to the chase,” he says.

As to his ambitions with the record, Redboy says he will shop it around to labels and promoters to some extent. But for the most part, he’s happy to have this product of a newly forged relationship, and happy to play around his beloved hometown with his new band (Bill Birkenbuel on guitar, Abe Jindrich on drums, Max Russell on bass, and Lee McAfee sharing vocals).

“Being here where my family lives is more important to me than following any kind of giant dreams,” said Redboy. “When you get wrapped up in ambitions, you lose perspective of the community in some ways, the friends you have; and that’s a million times more important than following your dreams.”

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