The Police. King's X. The Violent Femmes. Rush. Nirvana.
Rock and roll history boasts many fine bands that have existed
in the form of a power trio. There's a special kind of energy that is
created within a skeletal guitar, bass, and drums arrangement, and it
is something uniquely demanding upon the instrumentalists involved.
That captivating, visceral quality, and the amazing music made by
those predecessor trios, is the inspiration behind The Muckrakers.
These three songwriter/instrumentalists have combined the musical
complexity of progressive rock, the reckless abandon of punk, and the
lush hooks of modern pop, and the result is their debut album, May.
Each born during the earliest days of the 1970s, the members of The
Muckrakers were raised in the Western townships of Ishpeming,
Michigan, a remote iron mining community in the state's isolated Upper
Peninsula. Meeting each other in the fall of their 6th Grade year, the
three students already shared a knack for academics, technology, and
music - the same forces that shaped their work as The Muckrakers.
Their high school and college years provided some opportunities for
rock and roll experimentation, but it wasn't until the Winter of 1994
that The Muckrakers officially existed. During a rare reunion in
Ishpeming, the writing, arranging, and recording of the band's first
song "BETA" brought together, for the first time, the talents of:
Todd Berg - engineering and computer whiz;
David Casimir - biochemist and lawyer;
Jonathan Rundman - freelance musician.
The recording of "BETA" was so invigorating that the group was
motivated to write and record more songs, but Berg, Casimir, and
Rundman's geographic separation prevented any one-on-one songwriting
efforts. Turning to the internet and the U.S. Postal Service, the
three composers devised a system of "song-building," involving the
incremental addition of various tracks onto 4-track cassette tapes
sent through the mail to one another. With each band member
contributing lyrics, chord progressions, vocals, guitars, drums, bass,
keyboards, and arrangement ideas, The Muckrakers produced a dozen
songs that possessed a completely fresh sound. This was music unlike
any that Berg, Casimir, and Rundman had ever come up with
individually, and The Muckrakers committed to collect these new songs
in an official "album."
In May of 1997, Berg and Casimir flew to Chicago to join Rundman in a
week-long musical marathon, where the rough Muckrakers song-sketches
were re-recorded for an album. Combining their studio gear, and using
a mixture of live recording, digital editing, and good-old-fashioned
4-tracking, The Muckrakers produced May. The trio's initial
songwriting attempt, "BETA" begins the album with its unpredictable
chord changes and message of media-prompted desperation. "Helvetica"
and "One Night in the Month of May" showcase The Muckrakers' ability
to deliver soaring, driving, and detailed rock and roll. The band puts
a paranoid spin on the unreal sound-sculptures "...And you in
Cloudless Heaven", and "Prometheus", where exotic instruments twang
above grooving drums. Hopelessness and decay echo in the heavy crunch
of "Leech", "The Arson Song", and "Skeletons Everywhere", while the
themes of perseverence and construction power the acoustic based "Box
of Nails" and "City in Bloom". Rural stagnation is represented in the
9/4 time signature of "Chassel Rut", which contrasts to the
freewheeling, Stonesy riff of "Walking at Night." May closes with a
demo version of "The Kiln", a wonderfully ferocious song recorded live
in Todd Berg's basement in the Summer of 1995. The creative spark that
ignites The Muckrakers can be heard in this recording of "The Kiln",
as the song builds into its careening climax.
All sides of The Muckrakers are revealed in May: the spontaneous, the
constructed, the dark, the liberated, the absurd, the genius, the
cynical, the innocent.
The Muckrakers wrote, arranged, recorded, and produced this, their
first and only album, without ever performing live.
Following the release of the album, the band vanished the public eye.
Todd Berg, David Casimir, and Jonathan Rundman have created, in May,
a testament to the creative possibilities that rest in three brains, a
guitar, a bass, and a drum.
Well, it's the month of May 2006. Nine years after the recording of the Muckrakers album MAY, and eight years after its release on Salt Lady Records.
The project did indeed find an audience, small though it may be. But fame and glory should not be the motivation for a band. The creation and enjoyment of music is the reason for being, and I believe the Muckrakers should sleep well, knowing that they've brought some excellent songs about technology, mythology, and society into the world.
The month of May will always bring to find fond memories of this inspiring band.
