Fox(trot) on the run

South County's Zulu is poised for take-off

by Bob Gulla

You don't have to get very far into Foxtrot Zulu's new record, Frozen In Time, to hear that this band's got it goin' on. Co-produced by Steve Bramberg and Harvey Goldberg, the record marks the first time in three tries that Foxtrot has used outside producers and the influence has taken the band to the next level.

Goldberg (the Ramones, Joshua Redman) and Bramberg bring a classy, slightly less frenetic sound to the local groovemasters, who have always had the tendency to shoot off vibrant grooves like rounds from a repeater. On songs like "A Pretty Perfect God Damned Day" and "Seven Men," the band takes a step back from their giddy up-tempo stuff to explore the shadowy corners of mid-tempo and balladic material. When they do rev it up, like on the horn-happy funk of "Into the Daytime" and the passionate singalong closer "Maryann," the producers were able to strip away the sloppy, seven-piece blur, and carve each instrumental track into clear, defined sections.

"It's great if you can self-produce," says singer/guitarist Nate Edmunds, fresh of a Cleveland-to-Albuquerque tour of the Midwest, "but we all have a different vision, and we all write songs. So to have someone help us gel our ideas is essential. We're not headstrong or anything, but after two albums of self-production, it's tough to have some stranger tell us how to do things better."

In the end, though, the studio experience -- six days of basics, 12 days of overdubs, and six more days of mixing -- was in Edmunds words, "a treat, the best experience in the studio we ever had." Frozen In Time, as a result, is the band's best album, and vaults them into the rather elite company of the country's best groove -- OK, let's say it -- jam bands: moe., Strangefolk, Blues Traveler, even Phish.

Edmunds and the gang should have no qualms about such company. Aside from tapping into the teeming bastion of jam fans, hungry for the endless and trippy transcendence of the perfect jam, Edmunds himself came into music as a Dead fanatic. He, along with lead guitarist Neal Jones, learned to play guitar to the music of Dead and Dylan at URI, where they met back in 1993. Edmunds, the band's chief songwriter, took a large part of his musical approach, the searching guitars, the tight, soulful underpinning rhythms, the rustic roots elements, and, of course, the improvisation, from his daze as a Deadhead.

After curing their sound in the goodtime chaos of URI's party atmosphere, the band -- which also includes massively funky bassist Brad Haas, multi-instrumentalist TK Kyan, hornblower Jeff Light, percussionist Paul Miller, and drummer Jeff Roberge -- brought their tasty kaleidoscope of grooves to, of all places, Ashaway, Rhode Island, a sleepy berg just north of another sleepy berg, Westerly. Not exactly the kind of place a young band goes to get themselves noticed, but just right for the band's current needs.

"We all moved -- wives and girlfriends, too -- to this big Victorian house in Ashaway," says Edmunds. "The thing we like most about it is that it gets us on the highway in seconds. And we anticipate spending a lot of time on the highway in the future." Indeed, the band did their first out of state tour in 1996, when they journeyed to Maine and Massachusetts. Since then they've been gone nearly every weekend -- "besides weddings and holidays." Recently, Foxtrot got a taste of spending some time far away from home, doing their thing in front of virtual strangers. The demanding, 27-day tour included 23 shows. That's a lot of driving.

"In places like Erie, Pennsylvania and Cleveland, we hadn't had too much exposure, so the shows were a little disappointing," says Edmunds, "but when we got to places like Boulder, Chicago, and St. Louis things really picked up. There was a nine-day stretch when we played nine shows over and back across the continental divide, and we got really focused. We had no day jobs to worry about and no girlfriends pulling us away . . . Things got really tight and we had some incredible musical times."

If the new record and the band's flourishing base of groovin' converts are any indication, Foxtrot will have a few more of those incredible times, and they won't have to wait long to get it done. "We're gonna go back out there the last week of September," says Edmunds, with some glee. "The amazing thing about this last tour was that we played in a bunch of college towns -- Laramie, Flagstaff, Boulder -- where the schools weren't even in session. The fact that it was successful really blew our minds. We can't wait to see what it's gonna be like when the kids get back."

Foxtrot Zulu hits the Century Lounge on the 16th with upstate New York's Conehead Buddah, and head to Matunuck on the 17th, where they will present "An Evening With Foxtrot Zulu" at the Ocean Mist. Check 'em out at www.foxtrotzulu.com.

WANDERING EYE. It's getting tougher and tougher to ignore the bookings at the Station down off Route 2 in West Warwick. For a while it seemed like the space was content with its '80s hair-metal boyz and classic rock cover bands. But now it's thrown its line out a little further in hopes of hooking bigger audiences. Tonight (the 15th), for example, the musician's musicians King's X hit the stage with hip up 'n' comer Protein, whose new record is out soon on the quality WORK label. On Saturday, the Station features Hoboken's alternative rock icons 10,000 Maniacs. Of course, Natalie's long gone, but Mary Ramsey, the vocalist who has taken her place. fills the void beautifully.

INDIE ROCKERS REJOICE! Things are a-brewing at the Scribblehut Laboratories. On Saturday over at the Safari Lounge on Eddy Street, Rebuilthangartheory get together with Wolfie, KleenexGirlWonder, and Chiko & Johanna for what Renee over at Brentwood Estates' Records calls a "zowiefenderblast!" You be the judge.