IN PITTSBURGH NEWSWEEKLY.COM | COVER STORY | March 24 - 31, 1999

Floors of Perception

It's all in how you look at it: Kirk Botula and Bill Deasy and their respective bands, Cloud and the Gathering Field, may have nothing in common musically. But they share the history of one of Pittsburgh's beloved rock bands.

BY Steve Segal

Once upon a time, Eric Riebling, Kirk Botula and Jeff Babcock belonged to a crazy little band called the Affordable Floors, whose aim was to make music

that would physically shake you up. The band is no more, but the shaking it did reverberates through Pittsburgh's music scene today.

In the late '80s, no one was more popular among hip young concert-goers than the Floors. Botula was voted Pittsburgh's best songwriter, Riebling its best bass player and the Floors its best band.

The city cheered when, after two self-released local albums, the Floors were signed to MCA in 1990 -- a victory somewhat dampened when the band was subsequently dropped during a corporate restructuring. The Floors bounced back in '92 with the indie release of All the Things I Meant to Be, their most musically ambitious effort.

For all their sophistication, though, the Floors were making pop ballads, with a verse-chorus-bridge-solo structure any radio listener could comprehend instantly. At the time, that's the kind of song Botula (the band's songwriting leader, though not its sole songwriter) got a kick out of creating. Then, in 1994, a repetitive stress injury rendered both his hands useless. Doctors told him he might never write or play music again.

Six agonizing, uncertain months later, Botula's hands began to improve but he had no way of knowing if it would last. "Each time I sat down," he remembers, "I'd think, 'This might be the last time I ever get to play.' I realized I wanted to write songs I didn't know how to write. If this was going to be the last chance I had, I didn't want to waste it asking questions I already knew the answers to."

He started to experiment with more far-out musical structures. Guitarist Jeff Babcock loved it, but it soon became apparent that bassist Riebling, singer Harvey Coblin and drummer Ken Zenkovich were not on the same page.

"We kept holding on because the Floors were successful," says Babcock. "Finally, we were at a Taco Bell after a show in Erie and Ken said, 'Why don't we just quit?' I felt this intense feeling of relief.
Everyone else, too. It was the friendliest break-up I've ever seen or heard of."

Out of the Affordable Floors' demise, two musical "children" were born. Botula and Babcock took some material they'd started writing together in the Floors' waning days and began developing it into a project they dubbed Cloud. Eric Riebling, meanwhile, had already been recruited by an old bandmate of his, Bill Deasy, who was busy putting together a band called the Gathering Field.

Despite a shared lineage, Cloud and the Gathering Field have nothing in common, musically speaking. The former is spooky, high-tech mysticism that only occasionally dips a toe into the sphere of rock & roll; the latter is exuberant heartland Americana that would do the BoDeans proud.

Three years after debuting nationally with Lost in America, the Gathering Field has completed a new disc. Though a hit regionally, Lost in America didn't set any sales records nationwide, and last year Atlantic dropped the band. So the public's response to Reliance, which the band is self-releasing on March 30, will be a real litmus test for their future.
They'd prefer not to repeat the Affordable Floors' endgame: Label says "See ya," band puts out indie release, Pittsburgh fans love it, band breaks up anyway.

Gathering in songwriter Bill Deasy's Shadyside living room, they listen to the finished product together, as a band, for the first time.
The band -- Deasy, Riebling, producer/guitarist Dave Brown and drummer Ray DeFade -- looks pleased.

The rolling, joyously plaintive Gathering Field vibe -- distinctly recognizable despite incorporating equal parts Van Morrison, Bruce Hornsby and '90s radio rock --sounds tighter and crisper than ever.
Particularly striking is "Right Where You Want Me," a moody jazz opus featuring a smooth horn section. The four 30-something musicians grin at each other, admiring Deasy's haunting vocal and the intricate time signatures.

"We should tell the X and 'DVE that we really think this should be the single," deadpans Brown. Everyone understands he's joking.
What commercial radio station in America would play a seven-and-a-half-minute song, no matter how good it might be?

Halfway through the disc, DeFade's face suddenly falls. "Our sha-la-las are gone," he wails at Riebling, tongue only half in cheek. The two rhythm players turn to Deasy for an explanation. Their shaggy-haired leader hems and haws for a moment, but the explanation is simple: Deasy and Brown liked the guest vocalists' sha-la-las better. When you're trying to make a living in the music industry, you can't allow sentimentality to dictate your actions. As Riebling points out, "One of our goals is to achieve similar levels of success outside Pittsburgh."

Unlike the Gathering Field's meeting place in Deasy's big living room, the space where the members of Cloud assemble every Tuesday night is tiny. The studio is just an extra second-floor room in Kirk Botula's suburban home, outfitted with a computer station, a couple of synthesizer keyboards, some recording equipment and suspended wind chimes.

Botula, 35, looks up from the synth console, where he's been quietly tweaking things for several minutes. He peers through his dark-rimmed glasses at his bandmates: Sarah Siplak cradles her viola in her arms, while Jeff Babcock tests out a penny in place of a guitar pick.

"Why don't we warm up with something new?" Botula suggests.
"Here's a rhythm I was playing with earlier."

A slow, thick electronic drum beat reverberates through the room. Botula gently touches the keyboard and calls forth a series of resonant cyber-organ chords whose tone constructs a dark aural space, the musical equivalent of a vast, empty metal chamber.

Babcock listens for a moment, then joins in with a skittering, distorted guitar line that's not a riff, nor a rhythm, nor a solo. It sounds more like his amp is plugged into a Superball that's echo-bouncing around the inside of Botula's synthesized void.

The cool breeze of Siplak's alto voice slides in, a soft cosmic wind swirling with ginger delicacy around and through the instrumental formation. Botula cocks his head to listen to her melody. While the others continue exploring variations on the musical theme they've established, he picks up a notebook and jots down a half-page of lyrics.

Given the jazz/hippie connotation of the word "jam," it may be an inappropriate term for the ethereal techno-hymn coming to life.
Nonetheless, this, for Cloud, is jamming; it's also the band's songwriting process and its recording process.

Aside from occasional sit-ins by former Floors drummer Ken Zenkovich, Cloud has stabilized as a trio, after having gone through two bass players, three backup singers and two drummers. But this collaborative creation is slow going. More than three years and two dozen songs after Cloud's birth, the band has yet to be satisfied enough with its material to release even a four-song EP.

Aside from being the heir apparent to Botula's old crown as the foremost serious songwriter on the Pittsburgh pop scene, Bill Deasy is the clear-cut, no-doubt-about-it leader of the Gathering Field. The band has no group songwriting sessions; Deasy presents them with a basically completed song, and they figure out how to best implement it without corrupting his vision.

"During soundcheck at a show, Bill will play his new song for us, and we'll play it that night," says Eric Riebling. "That's the band joke: 'Hey, I just wrote this this morning. Kick it, boys!' It's exciting."

When Atlantic signed the Gathering Field in 1995, just about every music critic in Pittsburgh pointed to Deasy's songwriting as the deciding factor. Sure, the band's mix of jangle and Hammond organ fit great into the post-Counting Crows radio-scape, but it was Deasy's Kerouac- and Salinger-inspired lyrics that screamed "angst-ridden pop hit." ("Under an open sky/He stands with his eyes closed/If anyone asked him why/He would not know/He's lost in America.")

Still, while an album or two of this Holden Caufield stuff is great, Deasy realized that a songwriting career of nothing else might be excessive.

"With Lost in America, I was feeling the call to write fiction," he admits. "Since then, I've actually written a novel -- an 18-year-old-coming-of-age story, the kind of cathartic thing you might expect. As the novel was satisfying my literary urges, I started writing more 'songy' types of songs."

Another factor contributing to Deasy's current "songier" leanings is his increasing amount of work with collaborators -- not members of his band, but outside professional songwriters. "Simplify," the ringing, back-to-basics anthem that kicks off Reliance, is a prime example; Deasy co-wrote it with Nashville songwriter Steve Diamond.

"He wrote the chorus with chord changes I would never have done," Deasy sighs, envious. Then he brightens. "I guess that's the beauty of it -- now, I might."

"Songy" types of songs are exactly what Kirk Botula is determined to evolve away from. "It's important for our songs to be broken in some way," says Botula, "because that's where they really reflect the listener. Ultimately, we" -- he places his hand on his heart to show he's talking about we, humanity, not we, the band -- "are broken. The goal for Cloud is to take the moment in music that's moving from tension to resolution, which is the ecstatic moment, and draw that moment out."

His primary inspirations these days come not from the pop world, but from liturgical music. Holding up a disc of Russian choral pieces, he says, "This music that's supposed to be a window to heaven -- it has to sound simultaneously like noise and angels, beautiful and yet unlistenable."

Sometimes Botula conceives the germ of a song based on exactly that sort of dissonant harmonic idea. Sometimes, though, the writing starts with Babcock.

"I'll start playing something wacky on the guitar and Kirk will say, 'That's cool, let's play with that,'" says Babcock. "I'm into all the noise you can make on that instrument: banging it, putting paper clips on the strings, plinking the pickups."

In the lyrical realm, however, Babcock and Siplak happily yield to Botula's mastery. His style isn't dramatic in structure like Deasy's, but poetic: "While you sleep/I repeat/Lists of things that you might say/If you said such things and spoke that way/While you rest/I confess/All the things that I'd tell you/If you pressed me when I want you to."

Botula doesn't dictate the precise notes that will carry those words. "Sarah has room to create melodies," grins Babcock, "because Kirk will go, 'This is what I'm thinking,'" and Babcock starts warbling atonally like a sick rooster doing a Yoko Ono impression: "'Aaaaughhhooohhhaaauggghhh!!!' It's kind of up to her own brain to interpret what that is."

Eric Riebling's eyes light up when he's shown a copy of a recent, unreleased Cloud recording. "Oooooo," he squeals, reaching for the disc. "I feel like I'm still part of this project spiritually."

He listens, shaking his head at Babcock's guitar work. "I can't describe it except to say it's chaos -- the most brilliant chaos I've ever heard," he says with admiration. "When the Floors were auditioning guitarists, Kirk would tell them, 'Try to play a solo as if someone's shaking you, beating you.' That's what Jeff accomplishes."

After close to five years in the Gathering Field, Riebling remains astonished by the musical talent his bandmates possess, loves the songs they play and thrives under Deasy's leadership. Still, he can't help waxing nostalgic when the subject of the Floors comes up.

"I keep thinking about doing a reunion show," he says. "We used to play at Graffiti every New Year's. It would be a perfect occasion.
Will it happen? I hope so."

The idea of a reunion show does not appeal to Botula: "That was a really, really fun thing to do -- at the time. Today, I don't like cigarette smoke and I don't like being up till three in the morning."

Babcock, though, confesses to moments of temptation: "It was rock & roll -- but adult, wall-of-sound rock & roll; thinking man's rock & roll. I miss that interaction with the audience, getting fired up. Some of those Graffiti shows we did -- you could feel electricity in your body, in your stomach. It was almost orgasmic."

Listening to 102.5 in his jeep on the way to an acoustic gig in Beaver County, Bill Deasy smiles as the DJ spins the first single off Reliance, "I'll Believe in God for You." When the song ends, the DJ says tha t the female backing vocals are by Jane Wiedlin of the Go-Go's.

"No they're not!" yelps Deasy. "He's just assuming that because Jane co-wrote the song with me." In fact, the harmonies are by New York City singer Becca. Deasy seems suspicious that 'DVE and the X might have picked "I'll Believe..." as the single just so they'd be able to name-drop the Go-Go's.

Earlier in the week, the song was featured on B-94's "To B or Not to B" program, which invites listeners to call in and give a thumbs-up or thumbs-down to new songs.

"I thought not many people would call," says Deasy, sheepish. "Like maybe our friends and that would be it. But those young kids -- man, they're harsh. They called up and said, 'That sucked! That song bit the big one!'"

Deasy arrives at Thursday's, the Bridgewater club where he and Dave Brown are playing tonight. He greets Brown and Ed Campbell, the club's owner, then heads to the stage to start the soundcheck.

Without bassist and drummer, Deasy and Brown's musical texture is starker, less subtly shaded. The nuanced color of the full Gathering Field is nice, but Deasy's songs work as well with just two guitars and two voices -- pain wrapped in joy wrapped in fear wrapped in bravado.

After the soundcheck, a series of fans approach Deasy and Brown, one or two at a time. Some bear gifts; some are students who've been spinning Gathering Field tracks on their college radio stations; some just want to shyly say hi.

Campbell is glad to see the Gathering Field duo. They're good company, good musicians -- and one of the club's biggest draws. "Them and the Clarks," he says. Thoughtfully, he adds, "The only local band that was more popular here was the Affordable Floors."