Jeffrey Hill
Matthew Dermond
Andrew Wilson
Joel Franke
Carmine Bonnani
Influences
Stereolab, Wendy and Bonnie, Cornelius, The Association, The Kinks, Beach Boys, Deerhoof, The Dirty Projectors, Yo La Tengo, Pavement, Frank Zappa, Tortoise, Pizzicato Five, Broadcast, Godspeed You Black Emporer, Olivia Tremor Control, The United States of America, Radiohead, Zouzou, Astrud Gilberto, Blonde Redhead, Unwound, Comus, The Painted Ship, HoundDog Taylor, White Noise, Ennio Morricone, The Small Faces, Midwest Product, Sonic Youth, The Chills, Early 70s Motown, Charles Mingus, Kraftwerk, Silver Apples, Roland Kirk, Sun Ra, US Maple, High Llamas
Small Town Fires is an electronic rock band from Pitman, New Jersey (15 minutes outside of Philadelphia). Pitman, former home of rock legend Patti Smith, is ironically a small town existing in the shadow of Philadelphia; trying to build buildings just as tall, but failing miserably. There’s not much to do in Pitman. You can join the town’s cult, or you could start a rock band. Trust me, there are a lot of people in that cult, so the choice isn’t that obvious.
So, about the band: they write rock songs about menstruation, birth, death, rebirth, birds... Everything the kids want to hear about these days. There is this one song about menstruation that reminds me of the Talking Heads and Blondie if they stopped fighting and formed a band (note- Talking Heads and Blondie are not fighting). I name drop those bands because that’s when I had hair. Anyway, they also have some pretty bluesy slow jams, and a stomp-happy homage to Tom Waits. I heard that their singer likes the Association a lot, but not everyone in the band is that lame. My parents even thought the Association were horrible.
Jeffrey Hill- is the multi-instrumentalist singer for Small Tow Fires. His former band, The Genius Test, had the privilege of working with Mitch Easter (R.E.M. producer, Let's Active frontman, Pavement producer etc.) and Derek Almstead (man of 1,000 bands: Of Montreal, Elf Power, Circulatory System). An avid jogger, Jeff enjoys nice quiet nights and building dream guitars in his mind. He also holds the high score on several Ms. Pac-man machines scattered throughout New Jersey's diners.
Matt Dermond- is the keyboardist, ukulele player and background vocalist for Small Town Fires. His former band, Goodnight or Sleep, was very popular in the South Jersey scene and released 3 albums on their own. You can download them all from their website- Matt can speak the language of machines and electronics and is often found buried in them. He builds a lot of his own musical equipment and is a real stickler for sound quality... something he has nightmares about. It is rumored that Matt never stops moving... literally.
Andrew Wilson- is the bassist for Small Town Fires. He was forced into his low-frequency responsibility nearly five years ago when asked to team up with After the Universe. This gave him the virtue of a polished rock style, but didn't allow him the freedom to play in the aggressive improvisational/jazz-funk fashion he is best known for with his current rock trio, MILK. In his free time, Andrew enjoys practicing the art of amateur bodybuilding because it makes his imaginary "roid-rage" acceptable. He also loves snapping film and looking at witty photographs... Smile!
Carmine Bonanni- is the drummer for Small Town Fires and the guitarist and vocalist for his own band, Menu. Carmine admires champions of eating and is a Motown connoisseur. His favorite song is "I'll Be Around," by The Spinners. Carmine drives a Volvo and is proud of its safety features, but doesn't want that to detract from his "living on the edge" persona, which he has hired 12 marketing reps to build up in the public eye.
Small Town Fires is currently recording their first EP and working on a tour for early 2008. Keep posted for new events as we will be updating this space frequently.
Just writing to let you know about the arrival of another new album from misophone- I sit at open windows, on another-record. (another-record.com, myspace.com/anotherrecord) Due out on May 5th.
The album contains 12 unreleased songs, including the previously lost archive tracks ‘castles in the sand’ & ‘cow bell blues’.
Online Now!
