Austin, TX-based guitarist and vocalist Mike Roeder has written songs for a number of Austin bands. He put together Maplewood All-Stars to pick up some club dates, adding Dave Erertson (bass) and Chris Williams (drums) to the lineup. They found that they clicked, and put out their eponymous debut Mapplewood All-Stars, where the band tried to capture the live feel of the songs.
If you’re a three-chords-and-the-truth lover, Maplewood All-Stars is cause to rejoice. The trio serves us eight songs which meld rock, country, blues and soul, in their own take on the broad “Americana” genre. The songs feature some hooky, sing-along parts, with good vocal harmonies; Roeder’s voice is a nice blend of honey and grit, and a just-right fit for the material. Underneath the vocals, the band swings. Evertson’s bass and Williams’ drums will make you want to move. The guitars (played by Roeder) have that spot-on open-string, bendy Telecaster twang with just enough crackle to remind you that this is unsanitized rock n’ roll. Maplewood All-Stars is a living, breathing band, and they’ve captured it here. There are a few overdubs--this is a studio album, after all--but really, if you stumbled across them live in Austin, you’d probably get something that sounds like this record, and you’d be happy you did. Roeder’s lyrics are down-home and relatable, as you’d expect. For instance, in “Stylin’ City,” which takes us to a roadhouse bar--you can smell the jeans, boots and sawdust on the floor--he tells us, “I suggest you keep your hand on your knife.” Or, in “Grackle,” he memorializes an everyday conversation about a tree: “I could use the firewood / but I don’t think I can give up my shade / Let it be.” It’s three chords and the truth. Categorizing the music as “three chords” undersells the quality of Maplewood All-Stars. They use more than three chords, and the band varies its playing style throughout the disc. “Candy Cane Katie” is a jump blues. “Stylin’ City” should unseat Billy Ray Cyrus’ stranglehold on line-dance songs. If you like groove tunes, spin up “All the Way Gone” and enjoy the wonderful use of space, peppered with tasty little guitar licks. There’s reggae (“Waterfall”) and doo-wop (“Ain’t That Way No More”) too--something for everyone. There’s strong songwriting, strong execution and a nice variety of blues-based styles on Maplewood All-Stars. I hope this is just the first of many discs to come.
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