#81 - Three Miles High

Three Miles High

2/12/06 (#81)

"What do you want to listen to?"

The question was posed by the stranger behind the counter at Redwing, a wonderful little coffee shop just a few blocks from Expert Auto. My car was going to be in the shop for a couple of hours, and I'm always happy to have an alibi to knock back a series of lattes, so I planned to spend the duration there.

The trouble with his question is the breadth of possibilities; not knowing the collection of CDs available behind the counter, not knowing what the mood of the place is, or the style of the employees. Do this man's happiest days coincide with the release of Scott Stapp solo albums? Is he a disciple of Billy Joe Armstrong? In his mind, is the musical world subdivided into Frank Zappa and "the rest"? I was stumped---my mood was somewhat XO by Elliott Smith, or perhaps American Music Club, something organic and lyrical. But AMC are hardly a household name---what were the odds of him having one of their albums? Thus, I answered with the least confining adjectives I could think of to describe that music, hoping to leave him some room for interpretation:

"Hmmm---how about acoustic rock?"

He stared back blankly. "I don't have any of that. How about Three Mile Pilot?"

I was stunned. I have known only one other person who listens to that band, my pal Scott, who introduced them to me. My wife is familiar with them, but if the question had been addressed to her, she would have replied, "How about not?" But he didn't ask Steph, he asked me, and had inexplicably picked the one of the most arcane bands that I genuinely love. (When I got back to the shop later, the cosmic absurdity of that selection was not lost on Steven, who pretended to be the counter man saying, "And we have Moxie on tap.") It seemed so random: that I should arrive at the moment of the disc change; that he would even ask instead of making his selection before engaging me; and that he would then pull this three-albums-only mid-90s obscurity whose total national album sales could probably be fit into the trunk of a full-size Cadillac. Not just random---it felt like divine intervention, though I couldn't divine what possible message god could be sending me via a barista in a strange coffee shop and a defunct San Diego trio. I think he was stunned when I replied, "Awww, fuck yeah! Awesome!" (If our roles were reversed, I'd have thought he was pulling my leg.)

Three Mile Pilot is a bass-dominated combo consisting of an excellent drummer, a phenomenally creative bass player, and a not-perfect-but-perfect-for-the-role vocalist. (There were a couple of semi-consistent guests, but the trio was the core.) Like most bands, they're not easily pigeon-holed, but unlike most bands, they sound quite unique---forced to make comparisons, I'd say imagine Built to Spill with a stoner Flea on bass and Doug Martsch having gone to buy beer and you'll be in the ballpark. When I've played them for friends, the most common adjective heard is admittedly accurate: abrasive. That particular adjective is one that I rarely tolerate in music, but it was somehow completely forgivable in this band, even for a musically unforgiving person like me. I think of the paintings of Van Gogh---their surface is rough, but their essence is exquisite.

I have heard music, in general, defined as a delicate balance of tension and release. No tension, and you wind up with mindless ditties fit for a fat purple dinosaur; no release, and you wind up with the horrible noise I once heard at a Cecil Taylor concert, the one where 70% of the audience walked out at the first intermission. (Actually, only 40%---30% didn't bother to wait for the intermission. My friend Kassie leaned over during the performance and whispered, "This is the music they would use to torture my mother." And had that come to fruition, the torturers would have gotten whatever it was they wanted. I suspected Cecil and his "rhythm" section (I use that word far more loosely than Noah Webster would ever condone) were being cruelly humorous---the audience was the brunt of the joke.) Three Mile Pilot are masters of the delicate balance of tension and release that makes us want to hear more---there are crescendos of chaos that tempt you to quit, but before you can hit the stop button, the dissonance dissolves into an achingly beautiful resolution, a melody that simultaneously evokes yearning and loss, regret and hope; other times, they threaten to lull you to sleep with repetition, but again, it seems like a conscious technique for clearing the sonic palette before clobbering you with a sledgehammer hook. On that cold, sunny winter afternoon, there was no better band to accompany the bitter sweetness of a series of vanilla lattes. It wasn't that I loved the band, or the latte, or the coffee shop---at that moment, I loved life---completely, unreservedly. (Perhaps that was the reason for the divine intervention.)

I think the only band he could have name-dropped that would have caused an equal mixture of shock and delight is The Low Road. Hailing from Pennsylvania, I heard them when my band in Maine played a coastal club where Philadelphia native Mike tended bar. One night between our sets, I sat on the front porch breathing the fresh ocean air while The Low Road played inside---I was entranced: simple, sweet, sad and beautiful. Mike gave me the tape to dupe (ahhh, doesn't that date this story), and they became the soundtrack to my summer, and autumn, until I had stretched that 26 minute tape to a 29 minute play time. I wrote an effusive letter to the band, who kindly replaced the tape, along with a second tape and a CD reissue of tracks from both. Their songs were so intrinsic to so many memories from that period that they seemed like they belonged to me alone, that they were the soundtrack to my imagination.

Many years later, I was going through a difficult period here in Oregon, and decided to go for a drive along the Columbia gorge. I grabbed a handful of tapes, a quad latte from Coffee People, and hit the road. Late in the day, driving home, I put in The Low Road, and as Denyse Wilson had once said about Elton John, they sounded like the voice of an old friend. I sang along, the challenges of the week stirred up and soothed in the same listen, the type of musical experience that every artist hopes they might inspire in a listener---on that cold, sunny winter afternoon, there was no better band to accompany me on my literal and figurative journey.

I reached a scenic overlook, pulled the car alongside the granite blocks that kept the automobiles out of the river, and wrote a letter to the band on the spot, the gist of which was this:

Playing in a band can be very defeating---drunken bar patrons not paying attention, drunken idiots who somehow never tire of requesting Sweet Home Alabama, asshole club owners who lie about the take at the door, inconsiderate bands who take way too much time to set up and play way-too-long sets---and many bands cannot sustain the energy required to make that life tolerable. But The Low Road needed to know that there are strangers a nation away who are genuinely moved by their music, faces they have never met who consider their music an essential part of their life. An album is a stone thrown into the pond of life---when you're in the middle of it, it's hard to see or even imagine how far and for how long the ripples of that toss will travel.

It's time for me to write such a letter again. This time, addressed to Three Mile Pilot.

©2006 wpreagan

Red Wing is located at SE 6th and Market; Expert Auto is located at SE Clay and MLK. I heartily endorse both.

For the curious, I've made Slow Hand by Three Mile Pilot available for download here