The Ready Stance (ex-Ass Pony\u2019s \/ Middlemarch) release debut album Damndest, May 21st <\/p>\n
www.readystance.com <\/p>\n
In rock \u2019n\u2019 roll some tales are just too perfect to make up. And the back story of The Ready Stance is definitely one of them. A truly perfect storm that unfolded within one square block of the historic district in Newport, Kentucky, just across the Ohio from Cincinnati.
\nThe back story of Cincinnati band The Ready Stance qualifies as rock\u2019n\u2019roll fairy tale.
\n\u201cI hadn\u2019t been in a band in years but was still writing songs and jamming with friends on weekends; really just a therapeutic thing after running a manufacturing business and having a family,\u201d recalls guitarist Wes Pence, the creative force of 1990s outfit Middlemarch. \u201cI was walking home one night and happened to glance in the open window of a house on my block. Inside were a couple guitars and fliers for shows by the Replacements and other bands I loved\u2014really out of place for the neighborhood. Then this guy walked out on the porch\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
That guy was lead vocalist and guitarist Chase Johnston, an Ohio native and alumni of the Athens, Georgia, music scene who\u2019d recently moved back to the area. An animated conversation between the two revealed an uncannily simpatico musical vision and still more shared touchstones: Big Star, Television, VU, The Band. They recruited a bassist and old Middlemarch bandmate, drummer Eric Moreton and started working up Pence\u2019s backlog of tunes. Before even playing a show, they began recording Damndest, The Ready Stance\u2019s astonishingly solid debut, in the basement of Pence\u2019s 1880s house. Mixing was completed on the same block, at Audiogrotto, a newly converted church housing a world-class studio.<\/p>\n
Much like the story of the band\u2019s formation, the yarns in the album\u2019s 11 tracks\u2014all set to sweeping, melody-rich hooks, raw, ringing guitars, and driving rhythms\u2014are rooted in fact and stranger than fiction; literate, image-laden observations with a penchant for classic, bent Midwestern arcana. There\u2019s Steamship Moselle, the calliope-infused account of an 1838 maritime explosion that ends with an ill-fated minister found clutching a dry Bible; and Marathon, an amusing local legend concerning a confused fistfight between a speech-impaired gas station attendant and a customer with a similar affliction. More timely themes include Real America, a chord-crunching, poetic look at divisive politics and pundits who claim to represent the \u2018Real America\u2019.<\/p>\n
In these days of gimmicky indie projects, the Ready Stance\u2019s time-honored sound is rare: just four guys in a room knocking out earnest, urgent rock, much as it could\u2019ve been done in any decade. \u201cWe all can tell after one take if it\u2019s any good\u2014we don\u2019t even really talk about it,\u201d says Johnston. Such timeless stuff has already drawn praise from some legendary names.\u201cWhen I was a kid growing up in Kentucky,\u201d recalls Talking Heads and Tom Tom Club drummer Chris Frantz, \u201cmy cousin would pick me up in his Chevy Super Sport and drive me down along the Ohio River to Cincinnati to hear some rock \u2019n\u2019 roll. Those were exciting times, and the bands would play late into the night, rocking soaked in sweat. When I hear the Ready Stance, these memories come back to me and I remember that Cincinnati has produced so many wonderful musicians. The Ready Stance is among that number. You will be hearing a lot about them in the future.\u201d And with Damndest, that future is already here. Waiting to be heard. Now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Ready Stance (ex-Ass Pony\u2019s \/ Middlemarch) release debut album Damndest, May 21st www.readystance.com In rock \u2019n\u2019 roll some tales are just too perfect to make up. And the back story of The Ready Stance is definitely one of them. A truly perfect storm that unfolded within one square block of the historic district in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":295,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-press_releases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.livestagemusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.livestagemusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.livestagemusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.livestagemusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/295"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.livestagemusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1605"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.livestagemusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1605\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.livestagemusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.livestagemusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.livestagemusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}