The Connells Make Triumphant Return with Steadman's Wake

The North Carolina-based alt rock outfit releases first new music in 20 years.

Thank you for spending part of your day with Michael’s Record Collection. I’m excited about this issue of the newsletter. Before I get into the story, which features one of my favorite alternative rock bands that I started listening to in the early 1990s, I want to remind everyone that starting at just $2 a month you can support independent writing and podcasting at the MRC Patreon page, and you will get exclusive membership benefits that escalate with your level of support. That’s just 50 cents or less per issue/episode if you only consume MRC in one format, and significantly less if you read the newsletter and listen to the podcast and/or watch the interview videos. That money goes back into MRC to make improvements for you, so in a way it’s just you, making your own MRC experience better.

Now that the advertising part is over, let’s get into a band that should be much more widely known than it is — The Connells.

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It’s been 20 years since The Connells released their last album, but this Friday, Sept. 24, the band will drop Steadman’s Wake, an 11-track release that shows the North Carolina six-piece outfit has lost nothing off its fastball. In fact, to continue the baseball analogy, The Connells may have added a new slider or curveball to the band’s repertoire.

The songs came together slowly, in the years since Old School Dropouts (2001), when members of the band went off to raise children and dogs and get real jobs. The band had been released by TVT Records and the musicians started to think about their individual futures. There were occasional gigs in the Raleigh, North Carolina area, and guitarist Mike Connell kept writing songs.

Steadman’s Wake finds the band a little older, a wiser, more mature in their songwriting and presentation, and angrier. Much of the album’s material ruminates on what it means to be a Southerner today. Fans of The Connells from their popular height (think: 1993’s Ring album and its alternative rock radio-friendly songs “’74-‘75” and “Slackjawed”) will find plenty to like on the new record. For those who are less familiar with the band, Steadman’s Wake is a slice of introspective Americana with a mild southern accent — the latter is in the material, but not in the vocals. There is influence from such diverse acts as The Byrds, Bob Dylan, and R.E.M. but The Connells are their own unique thing.

The last we heard of The Connells (some few diehards, anyway), the band had self-released Old School Dropouts on CD in 2001 after being dropped by major indie label TVT Records. Old School Dropouts never got the full production treatment and was seen as more or less an album of demos, although there are good songs on it (It is a Connells album, after all). Three of those tracks — “Rusted Fields,” “Gladiator Heart,” and “Hello Walter” — were dusted off, polished up, and added to Steadman’s Wake. None of the three are changed significantly, but they sound more fully realized with the better production and there’s a little more meat on the bones now.

Why those three in particular? Well, co-founder and band namesake Mike Connell isn’t really sure.

“We thought we could pilfer from that record and get away with it,” Connell said, as the album had never been distributed digitally before. “And any of the songs would have benefited from the treatment that those three were given. I swear I have been scratching my head a little bit asking myself, ‘Why did I lobby for those three versus songs like ‘Back in Blighty’ (or) ‘Put Down’ and some others on that record,’ which would have been a little more raucous and up-tempo. So, I don’t have a good answer for that. Those were songs we just recorded in our practice space.”

Connell and his brother David (bass) founded The Connells in 1984, along with vocalist Doug MacMillan, multi-instrumentalist and vocalist George Huntley, and drummer John Schultz. The Connell brothers and MacMillan remain from the original lineup, augmented by Mike Ayers (guitar), Rob Ladd (drums), and Steve Potak (keyboards).

The album opens with the appropriately named “Really Great” — the album’s first single and probably my favorite track. This peppy, upbeat number would have fit in perfectly next to “Slackjawed” on Ring. Lyrically, it’s told from the perspective of someone who doesn’t seem to be doing all that great, yet there is a hopefulness to the song as well.

I’m in some thunder-clapping, soul-sapping whirlwind
And it’s gonna gather speed
But you’re coming and I’m humming
You’re my blue sky
And that is everything I need

“Part of the positivity is the fact that there ain't any minor chords in that song. It's all major chords, which is a rarity for when I sit down to write a song,” Connell said. “It’s all major chords, which would tend to make a song sound brighter. It is tongue-in-cheek, with what is described in the verses as not doing so great at all. The opposite.”

The blend is perfect here. Guitars, keyboards, drums, bass, layered chorus vocals, and just the sheer vibe all come together to create a modern pop-rock masterpiece.

MacMillan’s voice has always shone particularly brightly on the slower Connells numbers and “Fadin’ In” is such a song. Connell said the song was inspired by one of his kids (another track, “Song for Duncan,” was written for another). “Fadin’ In” is a simple yet melodic number aided by rock-steady drumming from Ladd, who has played with the likes of Don Henley and Alanis Morisette.

Following “Fadin’ In” is the second single from the album — the title track, “Steadman’s Wake,” which is a moody, haunting piece with anger bubbling under the surface. Topically, it’s diverse, touching on the opioid crisis, war, and the 2017 violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, when a protest over the removal of a Robert E. Lee statue turned deadly in a clash between civil rights supporters and white supremacists. One particular line is a not-so-subtle dig at a certain politician for how he characterized those involved in the incident.

I showed up in Charlottesville.
You make of it what you will.
Now I’m just running fast.
These fine people with baseball bats.

“We were never gonna be a band or songwriters that were good enough to pull off some heavy political or social message,” Connell said. “I love, it goes without saying, everyone from Dylan to Springsteen, but we just weren't good enough songwriters to begin to attempt that. ‘Steadman’s’ probably veers as close to trying to make some sort of social or political commentary as we get.

“The opioid crisis, which is the first verse, hit Virginia especially hard. So, that is a very Virginia-centric song. Two of the verses certainly are in the state of Virginia and in that first verse, could be as well.”

The verse quoted above is the last of the three in the song and producer John Plymale came up with the idea of stripping away some of the music and backing vocals in that verse, giving it more power and drama than the song’s previous verses.

“I did not, for one second, contemplate something that stripped down,” Connell said about the choice. “And you don't know how you're gonna feel about something like that until you actually hear it. And when I heard it in the studio, I was like, ‘Well, yeah that's pretty damn cool.’”

Connell, who is extremely humble and self-deprecating about his work, gave his explanation of why the track name of “Steadman’s Wake” ended up being the title of the album.

“I guess, at some point, there was something of a consensus within the band, what the individual band members felt best kind of represented what the band has become (and) where we are now,” he said. “And a few of the guys at least claimed to especially like that tune. And, you know, the record is maybe a little on the darker side and that song certainly fits the bill in that respect.”

“Rusted Fields,” one of the three songs carried over from Old School Dropouts and given a production spit-shine, is one of the album’s most evocative songs, lyrically. It has the album’s best opening line.

Out beyond the mills and the radioactive fills
We went out into the night

That line provides the imagery for a song dripping with sadness and tinged with anger. MacMillan sings the hell out of it and delivers some of his most emotional vocals on the album.

“The sort of the images I have in mind with that tune I find sort of intriguing and the whole notion of ‘southern-ness’ is touched on,” Connell said. “I was trying to get somewhere with whatever it means to be southern, especially in these times. I think I tried to describe ‘Rusted Fields’ as sort of a post-apocalyptic love song.”

The location Connell wrote about and MacMillan is singing about is real. He said it depicts Chatham County, North Carolina, not far from his home.

“It’s beautiful countryside but some of those fields are littered with the carcasses of old cars. The juxtaposition is intriguing,” he said. “I love driving through the countryside in Chatham County, which is also where the nuclear power plant happens to be, so all of that brought that particular part of the state to mind.”

The honest “Song for Duncan” follows, as the second of the songs inspired by Connell’s children. Any parent can easily identify with the following lyric and Connell’s self-deprecating manner creeps in as well.

Please be open, please be grateful, please be everything you’ve got
Please be ready, please be able, please be everything I’m not

“Gladiator Heart” features the band’s trademark fuzzy, jangly guitars with some underlying organ chords. All of it lies on a bed of Ladd’s drums and David Connell’s bass work, and MacMillan’s voice dances above it all, adding light to the melancholy soundtrack below him. The song features one of the album’s more striking guitar solos.

Potak’s keyboards, mixed with some jabbing guitar chords, lay down the foundation for the intro to “Burial Art,” a song Connell wrote for his wife. The chorus ends with MacMillan’s vocal — sounding rather Roger McGuinn-like — imploring “dig me, dig me, dig me now,” which has a tremendous double meaning, considering the song’s title. The music builds nicely from the pre-chorus into the chorus, with Ladd’s drumming picking up at that point and driving the song forward.

“That is pretty telling that I wrote a song for her called ‘Burial Art,’ or at least with her in mind,” Connell said with a chuckle. “Burial art is a thing. It’s obscure enough people would be saying ‘What the frick is this guy talking about?’”

“Universal Glue” is the album’s first real up-tempo song since opener “Really Great.” It contains one of my favorite lyric devices by beginning the first verse with the word ‘and,’ as if it’s part of a conversation that’s already underway. The song contains a reference that harkens back to Ring and to the band’s biggest career hit song, “’74-’75.”

It was ’75 and it was no later
That I divined the universal glue
That could hold me in place
Keep it all together
But now I’m stuck around with nothing much to do

“It’s not coincidental,” Connell said to the reference to ’75 in the song. “I’d started writing that song about the time that the songs for Ring were coming together.”

The Ring vibe is apparent, and the upbeat nature of the song gives the listener a break from some of the darkness and mid-tempo and slower songs, although the chorus for “Burial Art” is also a bit more poppy than some of the previous tracks.

Steadman’s Wake’s third single, “Stars,” follows and slows the tempo back down. It employs some tasteful trumpet, played by Mike Mole, who has contributed to previous work by the band. Another distortion-drenched guitar solo is a highlight of the song and ushers in Mole’s surprising, yet welcome, trumpet part.

“He first played with us when he was in high school here in Raleigh,” Connell said. “I mean, maybe as far back as ‘87 or ‘88 or something like that. And then, we had gone decades without playing with him.”

Mole’s trumpet contribution is simple and brief, but it adds a splash of color and brightness to “Stars.”  He also contributes horn bits to a couple of other songs, notably the outro on album closer, “Helium.”

“Hello Walter” has a similar vibe to “Spiral” from Ring, but a tad more upbeat. It contains another instance of beginning the lyric with the word ‘and.’

Connell said the song is a personal one to him, written about his best friend growing up.

Down at the river
Where the freaks would do their best
And the brothers came to rest
Mostly together and we thanked our lucky stars
For a world waiting
And once opened the bars
And guitars, always guitars
And how did we get where we are

“There are references to Macon, Georgia in the tune,” he said, referring to his hometown. “The river that’s mentioned is the Ocmulgee River in Macon, Georgia, and Rose Hill Cemetery looks down on the Ocmulgee, and that’s where Duane Allman and Berry Oakley are buried beside one another. They died about a year apart, both on motorcycles there in Macon. And that was, understandably, a big hangout. The squares and the freaks were converging on Rose Hill Cemetery. So yeah, that song has personal significance for me, which might have something to do with why I selected that one (from Old School Dropouts).”

Album closer “Helium” has a bit of a crunchy guitar intro, but it quickly falls away to provide space for MacMillan’s vocals. I’m a sucker for melancholy lyrics and Connell delivers those here, as he often does. Honestly, the lyrical content of The Connells has always been one of the biggest draws of the band for me.  

And the message that I sent wasn’t what I really meant
And my cast off, blast off, hats off, wasn’t time well spent

And…

And the what we’d never been, turned to what we’d never be
And that school boy, fool boy, new boy, wasn’t really me

The words “new boy” here also provide a link to Ring, which has an excellent song by that title.

Mole’s trumpet blends into the fadeout and the album closes, seemingly far too soon. But, as with any good record, it makes you want to hit the play button again immediately.

Steadman’s Wake is available from the band’s website on vinyl, CD, or digitally. It can also be purchased through the band’s Bandcamp page or through most major online outlets.

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Thanks again for your time today. For my full interview with Mike Connell, please see the video below. You can hear brief snippets of the songs on episode 30 of the Michael’s Record Collection podcast, available wherever fine podcasts are offered. Apart from Steadman’s Wake, Mike talked a little about his influences, how he consumes music as a listener, some of my personal favorite songs from the Ring album, and more.

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