Admit it, you hear the term “supergroup” and thoughts turn to the 70’s…of pompous money grabs, feathered hair, puffy shirts, and sprawling guitar solos tucked into Roger Dean-influenced gatefold sleeves. OK, maybe I’m just thinking of Asia.
Regardless, Chicago’s Candy Golde, while a supergroup of sorts, is none of the above. Think lean, mean rock and roll machine with over a 100 collective years of bashing about—on stages and in studios.
Troubadour extraordinaire and vocalist Nick Tremulis, in his 25+ years of performing, has shared the stage and studio with Keith Richards, Billy Corgan, Marianne Faithful, Mavis Staples, Ronnie Spector, Jeff Tweedy, Los Lobos, The Neville Brothers, Steve Earle, Bonnie Raitt, Ian Hunter, David Johansen and more.
Bun E. Carlos has pounded the skins for nearly 35 years behind a little band called Cheap Trick. Bassist John Stirratt has clocked 15 years in a band you might know named Wilco. He’s also one half of the wonderful Autumn Defense.
Rick Rizzo brought Eleventh Dream Day to light on their second release “Prairie School Freakout” and keyboardist Mark Greenberg, also from Eleventh Dream Day and formerly of The Coctails with Archer Prewitt, rounds out the lineup.
They’re all here with us this week at TVD, debuting their new material (via 10″ vinyl out on Ten-O-Nine Records) and basically trawling through their 100 collective years of musical musings which they’ll be sharing here over the next 5 days.
Nick Tremulis kicks it off today. It’s Day #1 of the Candy Golde TVD Takeover Week . . .
“At the age between three and four years old I was sitting with my father in a booth at a small diner near where we lived waiting for fifteen cent hamburgers to make it to the table for lunch. In the olden days of which I was a part of, some diners used to have small personal jukeboxes at each booth. They weren’t that loud, but still enough to hear the song if you sat close to it.
My old man gave me a coin and said I could choose whatever I wanted, saying I had to push in one letter and one number and then a song would come out. There were no pictures of the artist, no album covers. Just these little boxes with words I couldn’t read on them. Plus they were already old as hell so there was only intuition to go on which at that age was all I ever went on anyways.
The buttons were like the rocker buttons on an old Lowry Organ only they stuck in for a second after you pushed. Somehow, after some scrutiny, or what a kid plays at to look like he can read, I picked my favorite letter button and my favorite number button, popped the coin into the slot and waited eagerly to hear what the fates had granted me.
The needle dropped on the 45 with that scratch sound I’d heard so often at home, but this was my baby! The music started with this revolving groove coming from bass, drums, and piano. It was rocking back and forth, but quiet, in a relaxed sort of way. It went around with the blues style changes I was familiar with from home as pops played piano all the time and was partial to those changes. But after once around all of a sudden this giant voice bellowed out of that machine and knocked me back into my seat.
Candy Golde | Trouble’s Coming Down
LUCILLE!!! YOU WON’T DO YOUR SISTER WILL!!! What the hell is this? I could feel this bright burning sound cooking through me. Motion moving through my body made for something little kids weren’t supposed to know about. Then those stops man, POW! I was hypnotized by Little Richards wild voice. Then came that sneer from Lee Allen’s tenor sax. This wasn’t like the wiggly all over the joint sound of the be-bop my dad listened to at home. I was too young to comprehend that stuff when I was little anyway. Besides this was lean and twice as mean. I was floored. I must have asked the old man for another ten nickels so I could play it again and again.
When we left we went next door to a record shop to see if we could get the single but like the songs on that jukebox it was a little past its prime. This was the summer between ’63 and ’64. Single were about what was on the charts and Lucille had already seen its day in the sunshine. Soon the Beatles first singles came on the scene and blew away everything around them for kids my age. But man, even now, when I hear that song coming out of a speaker I get that same feeling all over me…only now I no what to do with it!” —Nicholas Tremulis
