Stump the Host’s Trip to the Zoo
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In movies and myth, rock bands are “discovered” and then quickly made stars. In life, it’s a little more complicated. Stump the Host is a successful local club band from the Phyllis’ Musical Inn scene, which also produced Souled American and Shrimp Boat. While the band’s friendly, slightly antique sound has exactly nothing in common with the reigning grunge of today, Stump does have a lot of things going for it: Dawson’s lucid, sophisticated new-country compositions, his and Christiansen’s luxuriantly entangled dual vocals, and a tough and articulate lead guitarist in Brian Dunn. For the last several years the band has been the wary inhabitant of almost-signed-dom. Dawson and Christiansen, for instance, signed a two-year publishing deal with PolyGram last year. In such arrangements the company tries to place the writers’ songs on other albums, and indeed a song Dawson cowrote nearly made it onto a George Jones record. In another bit of advancement, Stump the Host was a finalist in Musician magazine’s Best Unsigned Bands Contest last year. And the recording session last May was another step forward for the band–Zoo records had coughed up money for a “demo deal.”
Powers hooked up with the band some time ago: he corralled Zoo personnel into checking Stump out at the South by Southwest music conference last March. The company was interested enough to pay for Berlin and the demos. “It’s when the company’s not ready to commit to six figures, but you want a better indication of what the band can do,” says Powers. “You do things in a day you’d generally spend weeks and months on.” The band enjoyed themselves over the four days, during which they recorded and mixed four songs–“Married in a Taxi Cab,” “10,000 Pounds,” “Bronko Nagurski,” and “Pink to Black.” Powers took the tapes back to LA, and Zoo eventually responded with an offer.
WTTW’s taping of Center Stage continues with Lindsey Buckingham on December 18, Keith Richards on December 28, Gloria Estefan on January 21, and Sade on either March 10 or 11. The station fills the taping audiences via a random drawing of self-addressed stamped envelopes. Send ’em to Center Stage/artist’s name, 5400 N. Saint Louis, Chicago 60625. Inside, they want your name, your age, day and night phone numbers, and, again, the name of the artist you wish to see.
