615 to Fame

When you put two veteran Nashville session musicians together who share a love for Duane Eddy, surf-era guitar, honky tonk, Booker T. & the MG's, Ennio Morricone-like movie soundtracks, and the pedal steel swing of Pete Drake, you end up with Steelism, a band that blends all of this and more into a unique vision for instrumental pop in the 21st century. Guitarist Jeremy Fetzer and pedal steel guitarist Spencer Cullum are an incredibly versatile duo. The music they make is like having the Stax house band, FAME's Swampers, Nashville's Area Code 615, and the Ventures all rolled into one, and on the reverently and cleverly titled 615 to FAME, Steelism's debut full-length, they just may have single-handedly reinvented instrumental pop music for a new era. Working with drummer Jon Radford and bassist Michael Rinne, and with occasional keyboard assists from co-producer Ben Tanner of Alabama Shakes and Jimmy Matt Rowland, Fetzer and Cullum have come up with some trippy and gritty grooves, a refreshing take on 1960s instrumental pop thrown decades forward and then reexamined, reimagined, reassembled, and put back together just right. This is a wonderful album, full of fascinating peaks and lulls in tone, sometimes dark, sometimes joyous and bouncy, and full of great guitar and pedal steel. It's country because it twangs, but it's also sometimes more like funky soul-jazz, and sometimes it's just downright weird, like a spaghetti Western soundtrack gone to Memphis or Mars. "The Landlocked Surfer" is surf, sort of, while "Caught in a Pickle" sounds like the Stax house band in a space-time continuum. Cullum's version here of his idol Pete Drake's "The Spook," where he lovingly toughens things up on pedal steel, is another highlight. It all works like this, track after track, a reverential blending of influences into something familiar, yet also entirely new. This is instrumental music that looks back even as it looks forward, and it never stops grooving, which has always really been the point. ~ Steve Leggett