It took Drop Nineteens 30 years to change their minds about reuniting
Considering how poorly things went the first time that Drop Nineteens played the Paradise Rock Club, singer and guitarist Greg Ackell says its’s a good sign that the band is playing there again Friday, which happens to be April 19.
“Numbers matter,” Ackell says.
Here are some other numbers, then: The concert is the group’s first Boston show in 30 years, following the release last year of “Hard Light,” the band’s first new album in nearly as long. Formed at Boston University in 1990, Drop Nineteens was among the first American shoegaze acts. They became kind of a big deal in Britain before they even had a record deal, thanks to a demo tape that found its way to the music press in London. Radiohead and the Cranberries even opened for them back in the day. Yet the group didn’t catch on as fast at home. Their first local show was in 1992 at the Paradise, after Drop Nineteens had released the album “Delaware.” Some of the buzz that had buoyed the band in England had crossed over, and Ackell recalls members of the Lemonheads, Blake Babies, and Galaxie 500 being in the audience.
“It was packed to the rafters, and we were very nervous because we had a lot of respect for our hometown,” Ackell says. “We just started pounding Red Stripes. I remember the stage was actually soaking wet from beer. It was a chaotic scene and we fell apart.”
A few years later, after several lineup changes and mounting internal tension, Drop Nineteens fell apart more permanently. At the time, no one expected the group to play together again, not least because Ackell was definitive about being finished with a life in music.
“I think that it was something I probably wanted to get out of my system, frankly, being in a band, making music,” says Ackell, who moved back to his native New York City and started a company that sells flowers. “Which is to say that for the 30 ensuing years, I really did not miss this at all.”
Two years ago, after decades of disinterest, Ackell found himself wondering what a modern version of Drop Nineteens would sound like. So he wrote a bunch of songs to find out.
“The trigger was just a phone call from a friend,” Ackell says. “I get these sporadically through my life, someone trying to tempt me back to music in some way. And I would always shut it down immediately.”
This time, though, he got off the phone and sent a text to see what Drop Nineteens bassist Steve Zimmerman thought about the idea. Zimmerman overnighted him a guitar, the first that Ackell had owned since the band broke up. It didn’t take him long to put it to use.
“My girlfriend was getting on a plane to go to Art Basel on that Thursday night, and by Sunday when she got back, I had an album in front of me, written,” Ackell says.
With a batch of new songs, Ackell got in touch with Motohiro Yasue, the original lead guitarist, and Pete Koeplin, the band’s second drummer, and they quickly signed on. It took the singer a little more time to approach Paula Kelley. She was also an original member of Drop Nineteens, on vocals, but left in 1993, feeling frustrated and isolated after a tough European tour.
“I was young and naïve and didn’t know how to handle not getting along with a bunch of guys,” says Kelley, who went on to play in other bands in Boston before releasing solo music and, in 2005, moving to Los Angeles to work on film scores.
To Ackell, the combination of their voices was a key part of Drop Nineteens’ sound, which paired their dreamy vocals with deep drifts of overdriven guitars that earned the band comparisons to acts like My Bloody Valentine.
Though Ackell was keen to have Kelley be part of “Hard Light,” he also didn’t want her to rush into it before she heard how the band was working up some of the tracks he had written.
“Because it’s her voice, because she’s such a talent, I just figured that she deserved to know what she was getting into,” Ackell says.
Kelley, too, had been approached over the years about a possible reunion, and had always declined. When Ackell got in touch with new songs, though, she had been sober for nine years and had found that her own creativity had rebounded after substance abuse had dampened it for a long time.
“The timing was great when they approached me,” Kelley says. “I thought, why the hell not? I’m in a decent place music-wise, we’re older, we’ve probably chilled out a little bit.”
Kelley decided a long time ago that she didn’t want to perform onstage again. Ackell had insisted he was finished with music. The unlikely resurrection of Drop Nineteens has offered the same life lesson to each of them.
“It just goes to show you, don’t be so sure about anything,” Ackell says.
‘We’re older, we’ve probably chilled out a little bit.’
PAULA KELLEY, vocalist