Unamerican

The name says it all. Or rather it doesn’t. This is not an American band and yet they sound just like America. In fact this might not even be a 1990’s band: UnAmerican sound like they’re rooted in classic Americana – they could have been around for decades and they intend to stay around for decades. So what’s in a name?

‘Well, you’d think we were American if you heard us, but we’re from London’, says vocalist and founder-member Steve McEwan, who was born in Hull, grew up in Scotland, went to University in Africa and has lived in Australia.

At the musical heart of UnAmerican is the guitar and the song, but as if to confirm their unEnglish sensibilities, UnAmerican were snapped up by Estupendo Records – an English satellite of Universal Records – with a guarantee of an American release. So confident are Estupendo Records in their new signing, that they are about to become the first English-signed act in living memory to be launched first in the States.

Originally seen as out of step with the British fashion for Indy Rock, UnAmerican are already being touted in the UK as the leaders of a British Rock revival. ‘America is less into image and more into how good the music is,’ explains bass player Pete Clarke. ‘The place is so big you can tour from January to December and never play the same place twice. That would suit us fine.’

This may not be wishful thinking for a band whose album is already being touted as the hottest debut of the new millennium.

Long before he ever put his first band together, McEwan had been inspired by musical giants – both known and unknown. It was as a child in Scotland that the legendary Sister Ignatius first took him over the piano scales – and it was as a student in Africa that he ended up writing and playing with another legend, Miriam Makeba. Along the way his catholic tastes were particularly informed by his love for sixties musical Americana – notably icons like Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell and Neil Young.

On his return to England, Steve settled in London and was soon in demand as a guitarist and vocalist, working with a host of different bands. This culminated in a memorable jaunt around the world playing guitar with Karl Wallinger in World Party. It only whetted his appetite to take his own music on a global tour.

All the while demoing his own material, McEwan began collaborating with former World Party colleague Guy Chambers. The pair wrote several songs of which The Closer You Get on Un-American’s eponymous debut album is the sole survivor. When Chambers was lured away to become co-writer and producer with post-Take That Robbie Williams, McEwan set about assembling Un-American.

It was in the summer of 1997 that Steve chanced on 19 year old guitarist Matthew Crozer playing with the quaintly named Ugli in a London pub. Crozer, who remained Ugli by day, began moonlighting with McEwan on the early demos, bringing with him his life-long enthusiasm for Chuck Berry, Bob Dylan and Paul Simon. By the Fall, he was a full-time member.

Pete Clarke, recently departed from the Sony-signed HoneyCrack, now jumped the highly-rated Bugs after falling for McEwan’s muse. Bringing with him a new and heavier set of musical soundscapes – notably Rush, Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin – Clarke also brought with him a drummer, Tim Bye. But only just. ‘Actually, I’d packed in music that day,’ recalls Bye. ‘I was looking at a promising career with Gap. Still, retail’s loss is rock’n’roll’s gain.’

Tim joined the band 48 hours before the first ever UnAmerican gig. With a background at the BRIT-School for Performing Arts and influences from the Buddy Rich Big Band to Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin and the Beatles, Bye knew he’d found his musical home in UnAmerican.

With the line-up complete, recording demo-tracks began in earnest at the band’s north London studio and more gigs soon followed.

McEwan, who had told everyone confidently that the band would have a deal within ten gigs, was proved right after seven. When Robert Rosenberg of Estupendo Records saw them play at London’s Barfly he left the other companies in the starting blocks, immediately offering UnAmerican a major deal. In partnership with Bill Curbishley, the pair look after the management of The Who and Page and Plant. Now they saw the opportunity to sign a new band which could ‘break America’.

‘For years,’ says Rosenberg, ‘I’d been looking for that one special British band with the potential to happen in the US. With UnAmerican I knew I’d found it.’ Curbishley simply describes the band as “the best new band I have seen in twenty years”.

Within weeks of signing, the band had recorded some 25 songs with a view to tempting the right collaborator aboard to help make the album. A long search led to Memphis-based engineer/producer Greg Archilla, whose previous credits included Neil Young, Collective Soul and Matchbox 20. Archilla spent a week in the studio with Steve and the band just up the road from Graceland and, by the end of it, both knew they could produce a record together.

The debut album was produced by Archilla and McEwan at The House of Blues in Memphis between April and July 1999 – with strings laid down at Ocean Way in LA and assorted overdubs in Nashville. If the recording locations spanned American geography, some of the sessions brought in great names in American music history: keyboardist Jim Dickinson, (whose CV includes the Stones, Ry Cooder, Arlo Guthrie and Aretha Franklin); Barry Beckett (track record includes Wilson Pickett, Boz Scaggs, Bobby Womack and Bob Dylan) and David Campbell (Beck’s dad, credits including Carole King, Jackson Browne, Roy Orbison and Alanis Morissette.)

“We love the music of America and recording the album there had always been our ambition,” says McEwan. “But having these legendary players step out of the rock and roll hall of fame to play on our record was unbelievable.”

McEwan says that his songwriting muse is invariably triggered by emotional responses and that the single, She’s A Bomb, is unusual for being so upbeat and unambiguous.

‘I suppose you could say it’s about dangerous people,’ he says. ‘Most of my songs are more difficult than that.’ McEwan says it’s the intricacies of the human condition that inspire his songs, whether its life’s ‘unanswerable questions’ in the track Mary’s Son or ‘the blurring of boundaries between good and evil’ in Wicked. No song was inspired by a darker evil than If This Is The End, sparked by an incident in his youth in Africa. “A kid I was at school with was obsessed with his girlfriend and when she broke up with him he couldn’t accept it. He couldn’t take it so he shot her. He was caught and jailed but come Christmas he hung himself. He was 16.”The song, a huge ballad, was made all the more powerful after a visit to Los Angeles where Beck’s father, the legendary arranger David Campbell, gave it an incredible big-string treatment.