Chattanooga Times Free Press - ChattanoogaNow
Singing the ‘middle-class blues’
STOP LIGHT OBSERVATIONS BRINGS ITS MUSIC FROM ‘TOOGOODOO’ TO REVELRY ROOM
“In the 1930s, the blues sang the sorrows of a man with nothing,” says JohnKeith “Cubby” Culbreth, principal songwriter of Stop Light Observations. “This 21st-century album, ironically, sings the sorrows of a man with everything. ‘Toogoodoo’ is the ‘middle-class blues.’”
That album, named for the family compound where its music was written along the Toogoodoo River in South Carolina, will be the foundation of Stop Light Observation’s 9 p.m. show on Wednesday, June 21, at Revelry Room. The Georgia Flood will open.
The roots of Stop Light Observations, or SLO, stretch deep into childhood, when Culbreth first began assembling the lineup as a middle schooler.
When the band released its acclaimed 2013 debut album ,“Radiation ,” Metronome Charleston hailed their “emotive and elegant” songs, which blended arena- sized rock with undercurrents of hip-hop and folk.
Charleston City Paper profiled SLO’s unexpected rise, which “took many in the music industry by surprise” as they went from relative unknowns to playing Bonnaroo and selling out Charleston’s largest rock club, The Music Farm, in roughly a year.
Since then, the band has gone on to break the record for most consecutive sellouts at The Music Farm and perform live shows all across the country.
Despite t he r a pi d growth of its fanbase, the band dealt with misplaced trust in music industry f igures along with a series of setbacks and the accompanying disillusionment. SLO hit rock bottom at the end of a tour in Colorado, facing a depleted budget, no shows on the books and the potential dissolution of the band.
“I remember sitting in the van wondering what we were going to do and how we were even going to make another record,” recalls singer Will Blackburn. “I said, ‘Why don’t we go out to Toogoodoo?’”
Toogoodoo is a more than 200-year-old private family compound located about 30 minutes outside of Charleston on the Toogoodoo River. Culbreth’s family had been renting it out to vacationers in recent years, and while beautiful, it was a far cry from a modern recording studio. The grounds are a trip back in time, far removed from the luxuries of Charleston and its bright, sunny beaches. The property overlooks immense, brackish marshes where ocean and river meet.
The band decided the only way to proper- ly record an album there would be to track everything live as a full band over the course of 11 days, then render the resulting songs through analog tape. They relocated all their gear and set up in the house on a tireless quest to capture the sound in their heads.
Once t hey felt l i ke they’d nailed a perfect take, SLO would push onward to cut it again with even more intensity. Sometimes 40 performances deep into a song, band members would continue to call for one more and one more again until something undeniably transcendent hap- pened.
“I grew up in a church, and it was like a Holy Spirit- type of situation,” says Culbreth.
“Every single time we got the one, we all knew that was it, there were no arguments. We would just hug and sometimes cry. The best thing about it all is that every single song on this album captures that deep level of emotion we felt performing it. Every song you hear is ‘the’ take, and every time I listen to them it takes me right back.
“Southerners are the storytellers of America,” reflects Culbreth. “You might listen to our music and hear elements of classic rock and modern indie rock and blues and folk and hip-hop, but underneath all of that tying everything together is Southern storytelling.”