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Who: Continental Drifters
When: Thursday, 10 p.m
Where: The Nick
Tickets: $5 at the door
NEW ORLEANS - Miranda Holsapple bolts through CarrolltonStation, her 2-year-old feet scurring across the nightclub's hardwood floors as she manuevers between tables and down steps.
Around her, members of the Continental Drifters set up their equipment for a show that night. Included in the crowd are Miranda's parents, keyboardist/vocalist Peter Holsapple and vocalist Susan Cowsill, who keep a practiced but casual eye on their daughter.
In the midst of Miranda's playing, a friend approaches her with a well-worn teddy bear. "Oh look, Miranda, it's Boo! You've been looking for him," exclaims Cowsill, whose face retains its essence of cuteness from her days as the youngest member of the'60s singing clan.
Miranda grabs Boo and hugs him to her chest, then resumed playing. It's obvious that being in a bar about 2 p.m. is no big deal. In her world, real life has always mixed with the surreal land of music. Mommmy and Daddy play in a band and their friends do, too. The band is now Miranda's family; in fact,the band is the band's family.
"This is certainlty the closest group of friends and family that I've ever come up with," says the bespectacled Holsapple, founder of the late dBs. "I spent three months on the road with a national touring band (Hootie & the Blowfish) and I really missed this group of people personally and musically. All I could think about was getting home and doing this."
No cliches
The Band As Family is as hoary a cliche as resides in the music business. Most groups jabber on about how the group is just like blood kin.
The Continental Drifters, whose blend of rock, country and soul is played by former members of the Bangles and Dream Syndicate, say the same thing, but in their case they seem to be paying the image more than just lip service. They bring their kids to soundcheck; they hang with each other at backyard barbecues and video-rental nights; they had Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner together.
"We fight; we kiss and make up; we cook; we enjoy each other's company on stage or off," says guitarist/vocalist Vicki Peterson, late of the Bangles.
"The dBs, bless their souls, spent most of their nine years not talking about stuff," Holsapple says. "The Drifters were this incredible, wonderful, wild, dysfunctional, loud family."
"We feel like we're on Wheel of Fortune and we've gotten a free spin. We've lucked out," says bassist Mark Walton, formerly of Dream Syndicate. Walton and drummer Carlo Nuccio co-founded the Drifters about four years ago.
So much for the statements. But the Drifters, which also features lead guitarist Robert Mache, offer proof in music, where no one is the star but everyone shines.
On their self-produced, self-financed, self-titled debut - "a big,ol' CD-sized business card" says Nuccio - there is a close-knit feel of sharing to their ensemble playing, a sense that they're making music simply for the sake of making music. Those simple ambitions make the music powerful and sincere.
"We've all been through the wringer in the way (record) companies are," Holsapple says. "A lot of the reason we formed in the first place is that we enjoyed playing each others' songs and singing with each other. Fun was kind of highly prized."
"It's kind of a novel idea," Peterson says.
On stage there's an elasticity to their playing, a give-and-take that allows everyone to enjoy. The band is loose-limbed and at ease. Cowsill and Peterson lean into each other's ear and whisper, often laughing. At the back of the stage, Holsapple sits behind his keyboard and Nuccio is behind his drums, cigarettes dangling from their mouths, both wreathed in smoke.
"We all sing; we all write; we all play," Cowsill says. "None of us have any desire to be Tom Jones or Courtney Love."
The Beginnings
Despite reports to the contrary, "the band was not formed by Peter," Nuccio emphatically states. It was in 1991 that Nuccio and Walton, both living in Los Angeles, decided they wanted to get together to write songs.
"It was more of a songwriter's workshop," Walton says.
"I don't even know if we were thinking about a band. I've been a sideman drummer for so long, I wanted a band where I could write songs," says Nuccio, who played on both of Tori Amos' albums and toured with Pat McLaughlin.
To test out the material, they scheduled a regular Tuesday-night gig at a local nightclub. The evening quickly became an open-mike night for friends, with just about anyone invited onstage. Word spread about the sheer amount of fun being had, which attracted Holsapple.
"The first time I went, to be honest, it didn't really blow my dress up," Holsapple says. "But the longer I saw it, I found myself calling Carlo at three o'clock in the morning and saying 'Hey man, thank you, what a great time. I had a ball.' After a while I figured that the only way I could get out of calling him at that horrible hour was to join the band."
About the same time, Cowsill and Peterson came by. The pair were involved in a duo called the Psycho Sisters, but found the Drifters' energy and enthusiasm refreshing and soon were performing with the band. It wasn't an instantaneous decision to join, though, says Peterson.
Despite her quick smile and disarming wit, there's a core of quiet reserve, maybe even sadness, to Peterson. It comes, perhaps, from her fiance's death two years ago from leukemia. "Peter wrote 'Invisible Boyfriend' (a song on the record) about it and I'll always be grateful to him for that," Peterson says.
That loss, coupled with the break-up of the Bangles, which she says "was kind of like a pretty nasty divorce," threw her into a "period of introspection." She wasn't sure if music ws the ticket.
"I was a little gun-shy about checking into another musical situation,"she says.
She didn't want another Bangles incident, where a band starts out with uncluttered intentions but gets sidetracked by hits and the gears of the music machine. Hanging out with the Drifters convinced her that quality music could still be made.
"Carlo and Mark had this big cushy couch that I could sink back into," she recalls. "We'd sit around making music with acoustic guitars."
For six or so months she and Cowsill were Drifters in "an unofficial capacity," Peterson says. Eventually, Cowsill and Holsapple developed into a couple, as did Peterson and Gary Eaton, a former guitarist in the band. When Cowsill and Peterson were asked to join the band, it came with worries from Nuccio.
"I had a nightmare about playing with women in a band," he says. "I had been in a band that had a relationship in it and it was just a nightmare. I told them, 'The first fight you guys have and the band has a problem because of it, somebody's got to go.'"
The value of fueds
Fights appeared and continue to appear, but not necessarily betweeen couples. In the Drifters, everyone argues.
"The Drifters are a lot of people about three inches from each other with their fingers near their chests, saying 'You don't understand!' ' No, YOU don't understand!" Holsapple says.
"It's sort of a mantra," Peterson says.
Chanting that mantra may have kept the Drifters sane and intact, but it hasn't gotten them a major-label deal, something the band wants. Part of it is the music, which is too varied to easily pigeonhole for easy marketing. Part of it is the band's attitude, which is: We'll do it our way or no way. Offers have been made, but none have suited the band's fancy.
"We didn't like the idea of a major label coming in and saying,'Oh OK this is what you are,'" Walton says.
In February, the Drifters will show what they are to folks at major labels in New York. Members are hopeful but not desperate.
"There is a chemistry now that I think has taken four years to develop," Cowsill says. "I think we've made it clear that we're stuck the way we are."
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