All too often, when bands have a buzz going and then lose it, they become discouraged and break up. That could have happened to Winslow. But they held on and regrouped. And now the six-piece band Akron band is hoping to recapture some of its lost momentum when it releases its first album in nearly five years, Left of the Right Direction, at a CD release show at Musica this weekend.
When a bunch of musically inclined Kent State students came together in 2005 to form Winslow, they weren’t expecting to be the next hot local act, says vocalist Maurice Martin.
“We came out of nowhere in a lot of ways,” he says. “We had no intention of making it outside of college. But when we released our first album [Crazy Kind of Love] in 2008, it had more success than I think we imagined. We played shows with Earth Wind & Fire and Incubus. We felt like we were on the verge of breaking into the national scene because of the press we were getting and the contacts we were making.”
The band’s jazz-inflected soul-rock sound stood out in the area; they didn’t have any other bands working that territory. And their sound, which could occasionally be freewheeling and quirky, appealed to the college jam-band crowd, an extremely loyal audience.
Unfortunately, leaving college means life changes. For some members of the band, that meant moving on. In 2010 and 2011, several of the original group quit, leaving the band stalled.
“We were the first call for a lot of events and our name was getting around but we couldn’t play shows,” says Martin. It looked like Winslow was grounded.
But by the beginning of last year, the remaining founding members —Martin, keyboardist and trumpet player Curtis Tate and sax player Matt Tieman — had righted the ship, adding guitarist Charlie Trent, bassist Danny Kolliner, and drummer Jesse Marquardt.
One of their first steps was to get some new material together. It already had one tune in the can, “Quarter Life,” which it had recorded in 2011 with Gerald Levert collaborator Tony Nicholas. Once the new lineup jelled, the group went into RCR Studio in Solon and dashed off the remainder of what became Left in the Right Direction.
“We took our time before we went in,” says Martin. “We did a lot of preproduction and made sure we understood the needs of each song before recording. So [recording] was a pretty quick process. The drums were done in one weekend, we were that prepared. We decided if we were going to do it, we were going to be ready.”
While the band is still working the same territory it always had, Martin says its sound is more accessible now.
“There are more hooks whereas before sometimes we were just trying to be strange. We were maybe more into the jam scene. Not saying we don’t still appeal to that scene, but our sound is a little more reined, a little more grown-up.”
With its feet on solid ground again personnel-wise and musically, Winslow is able to tend to its career goals, starting with “having as many people as possible hear this album.”
“Our goal is to start at home and have Akron and Cleveland embrace it and then spread it to the world,” says Martin.
Like most savvy bands these days, that doesn’t involve spending all their energy looking for a big label deal but rather working with a constellation of companies to get the music heard. They include Cleveland’s Little Fish Records for distribution, Tinder Box Music for radio promotion, and Big Picture Media for publicity. The band’s got two showcases lined up at Austin’s South by Southwest Music festival in March including the Cleveland Rocks showcase, which will also feature Bethesda, the Lighthouse and the Whaler, and Attack Cat.
“For me it’s about recapturing the buzz and moving forward,” says Martin. “I think this album has the potential to put us farther than we were before. I think it has the potential to make us a household name here and maybe eventually the whole country.”
Tickets to the Musica CD release show are $10, which includes a copy of the new album. Winslow will be joined by Carlos Jones on percussion, plus opening acts the Strange Familiar and Ryan Humbert.
Akron, OH 44308