The Sheila Divine (2001)

Originally published on Swizzle-Stick.com

The idea of Aaron Perrino (swooner/strummer), Shawn Sears (timekeeper), and Jim Gilbert (dancing rhythm machine) sharing punch with members of Slipknot and Sepultura at the Roadrunner Records Christmas party was on one hand intriguing and on the other completely revolting. It was a (cruel) twist of fate that led the romantic-pop Boston band to their deal with the HEAVY metal label. The label that originally signed The Sheila Divine – a small indie called Cherry Disc – was bought out by Roadrunner and it was an “all or nothing” deal. Roadrunner decided to keep all the bands it really wanted out of the deal and discard, at a later point, the bands that didn’t fit in. Despite having a successful alternative radio hit with “Hum” and putting up some decent sales numbers for the full length (The New Parade), The Sheila Divine found themselves holding a pink slip in the fall of 2000. Nobody will argue that this was the best possible move for both the label and the band.

2001 finds the band set to release their sophomore effort, Where Have My Countrymen Gone, independently (although if the right deal comes along, you better believe they’ll take it). The band added guitarist Colin Decker to the mix before recording the 11 songs and his addition to the lineup is apparent – he fills out the sound and allows Perrino to concentrate more on his vocals. The disc is the logical next step for a band that longs to be on the soundtrack to a John Hughes teen dramady.

We caught up with Shawn Sears via cell phone as he drove to a band rehearsal.

The new record, in my opinion, is your “Use Your Illusion” as “New Parade” was your “Appettite For Destruction.” I don’t mean that you sound like Guns N’ Roses, but I think that the new record is more ambitious and full of really big sounding songs. “Wanting is Waited” and “Antidote” are your “November Rain” and “Don’t Cry” — they have an immediate impact and you’ve gone far beyond what you’ve done in the past, just as Guns N’ Roses did with the two songs of theirs that I mentioned. Do you feel that you’ve matured and grown as songwriters?

Definitely, over the course of the last however many years we’ve been a band, we’ve definitely grown and progressed and gotten better as songwriters and musicians and I think this record really, really shows that a lot. The first record, we were just winging it. We didn’t know what we were doing. We didn’t know what we wanted to do in the studio. We didn’t know much of anything about putting together a record. This time in we had ideas of what we wanted before we went into the studio and how we wanted songs to feel and sound. It’s definitely much more cohesive and more mature than the first, which is good, because that’s what we wanted.

Does the addition of a second guitarist help fill out the sound?

One of the cases in point on that, the song “Vanishing Act” used to have a different title and different lyrics and a completely different feel. We were having a hard time huffing it out. The first night we tried Colin out we started working on that song. He just played it in a kind of different tempo and different rhythm and it just clicked. We just looked at each other and said, “Oh, that’s a good sign that he can just come in and fix something we’d been having problems with.”

Live it really frees Aaron up a little bit to focus more on singing and not so much on hitting all the right guitar notes. Not to mention we have three guitar amps on stage now which is pretty huge.

What made you decide you needed a second guitarist?

We had always been talking about adding someone who could play keyboards and guitar and possibly sing back ups. It was just kind of a logical idea when we were in between records and we thought it was as good a time as any to add somebody into the mix. Jim really brought about the decision of should we do this or shouldn’t we do this. We all sat down and agreed that it would be a good idea to do it and see what would happen. It’s been great so far.

It was weird going into the studio and having someone else there playing parts. I think we’re getting used to playing with him, especially live. Playing with him live for the first time really screwed me up because I was hearing all these weird guitar parts and I was like, “Oh shit.” I wasn’t hearing the guitar cues that I wanted from Aaron and I was hearing weird guitar cues from Colin. But now it’s like we are all learning how to play off each other. And he’s a really nice guy and it makes things easier — it splits up the driving a little bit.

So you’ll be asked this a million times about how you found Colin and how he found you. I’m going to skip over that and ask you what Colin’s biggest secret is.

About Colin? (asks Aaron) What’s Colin’s biggest secret? Is it that he used to be a big rough tough hockey player? And he’s married. Hockey player is his big bad secret. I don’t think he’s real proud of that one. He’d rather be the sensitive musician.

It’s always easy to follow what’s happening with the band as you’ve got quite a dedicated following on the Yahoo Groups. I can always read about the shows you play or the solo shows Aaron performs around Boston. While I can’t be there for those shows, it’s nice to know what’s going on in your “public” life.

Oh yeah, those guys are very well informed. It’s kind of scary sometimes. They’ll e-mail sometimes and be like, “Did you know . . .?” They’ll be telling me information about my own band that I don’t even know.

I hate asking about Napster, but since you are such an Internet savy person, what’s your take on the whole file sharing thing?

We’ve had — especially in California — people come up and say “I found you guys on Napster and then I went out and bought the record.” One guy bought 2 or 3 copies of the record at the show after he had downloaded some songs off Napster. I think, especially for small bands, it’s a great marketing tool. If you hear a name and you go on Napster you can find it rather than trying to find it in a record store and blowing $15 on a CD. Independent releases seem to be more expensive than anything now at the stores.

Do you use Napster?

I go on if we’re going to do a cover and I find the original song. I tend to download live things. Aaron seems to really like Napster. He’s on there all the time. I just never think of doing it. I know it’s there, but I’m like, “Ah, whatever.”

I’ll just listen to Internet radio. I have this MusicMatch jukebox that has an Internet radio station where you type in three bands that you listen to and it tries to match to your musical tastes. It just puts up random stuff. You hear some pretty good stuff sometimes.

What three bands do you put in?

The last time I put in Built to Spill, Radiohead, and R.E.M. so I get a lot of Manic Street Preachers, Radiohead, The Verve, Supergrass. Coldplay doesn’t come up that often, it’s kind of weird, you’d think they would. I get the Supergrass record a lot which is fine with me.

What do you think of the new wave of British bands like Coldplay and the Doves?

I have the Coldplay record and I really like it. It’s along the same lines as the Travis record. I think they both are really nice to listen to. I don’t think they are groundbreaking and I don’t think they are amazing, but I think they are good records. They are better than anything I’ve heard in a while.

What is your situation labelwise?

Well, we’re putting this record out on our own. It’s got an inprint on it — Co-Op Pop — which is just basically something our manager put together with a couple of other managers and a retail chain in New England and a radio promoting company. Basically everybody is helping each other in Boston. There are so many Boston bands that have been dropped lately. It’s just a means of putting something out under a single umbrella even though they are all completely separate. Our manager is not working on anybody else’s record.

We’re actively shopping this record around and we’re getting some pretty good responses so far but we’re enjoying the fact that we have total control and can do whatever we want to do within our means. We don’t have a huge bankroll to fly around the world, but we can pretty much pick who we want to tour with and go out whenever we want and put out whatever single we want.

Are you being a little apprehensive due to the fact that you’ve already experienced what it’s like to be on a major label?

The way we see labels is that they are giant banks. You have to figure out how to use them to your advantage. They usually use the bands by taking their music and owning it. That sucks, but at the same time, although we didn’t sell a ton of records, we sold more than we would have sold on our own, we got to tour way more than we would have on our own, we got a lot of fans out of it and we got to make a really expensive record. We look at it like there was an open checkbook for a couple of years. There is no hard feelings. I wish we owned the record, but maybe someday we’ll be able to buy it back from them.

I think if we got signed again, if it was the right company, we wouldn’t have any reservations. We’ve been in the system, we know how to work with it, and we know how to exploit it a little bit better than some of the newer bands.