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The high-tech sound of synthesizers and drum machines is the current trend in pop music.
But two Vancouver musicians, Billy Cowsill and Lindsay Mitchell, have opted for the low-tech approach to rock and roll.
Cowsill and Mitchell are the chief engineers of a new band called Billy Mitchell's Tranwreck.
And the band appears to be on the right track: because they believe dynamics are more important than decibles, they use rudimentary equipment, including rinky-dink amps that are smaller than your average beach-blaster radio.
"We're not trying to blow people away with sonic overkill or anything," says Mitchell, 33, the former lead guitarist for Prism, which won the 1981 Juno for group of the year.
Musically, Trainwreck is a back-to-basics rock trio that plays everything from rockabily to old R&B tunes, from Elvis to the Platters and from the Yardbirds to the Rolling Stones.
"We're like a jukebox from our teens," says Cowsill. "Just drop your quarter in and watch us go."
Mitchell formally quit Prism in January of '82. "I left on screaming terms with Bruce Allen [Prism's manager]. But that was nothing new."
After leaving Prism, Mitchell teamed up with ex-BTO member Randy Bachman and Bachman's wife, Denise McCann, to form a group called BMX. But that only lasted a couple of months.
Then one night last spring at the Ankor in Gastown, Mitchell met Cowsill, who suggested he join his pop-country group, Blue Northern.
When Blue Northern folded a few months later, Mitchell and Cowsill decided to perform as a duo.
They became the weekend house band for Trimble's on West Tenth, which is where the band's bassist Elmar Spanier, 29, walked in one night with his acoustic upright bass. He jammed with Cowsill and Mitchell, and has been a band member ever since.
Spanier, who was with Maurice and the Cliches and Bonus Boys, uses a souped-up, slap-thud style of syncopated bass to compensate for Trainwreck's drumless sound.
The trio takes its name from two sources: Cowsill says their songs end like trainwrecks, and Transwreck is the name of an instrumental written by Mitchell (it was an outtake from the last Prism LP).
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