WYEP’s recent poll of its listeners’ favorite songs — topped by “The Weight” — demonstrated that Pittsburghers do indeed love The Band, the iconic group that was part of the foundation of what is now the Americana scene.
It’s a sound that’s tough to replicate, and while The Dead End Streets doesn’t set out to do that, per se, there’s a heavy Band influence on the Pittsburgh outfit’s new album, “Seems I Survived,” coming Friday.
The Dead End Streets is a Pittsburgh supergroup of sorts, featuring two former members of The Frampton Brothers — drummer Tom Hohn, who was also in The Cynics, and bassist Ray Vasko, also of Fungus — keyboardist Bill Maruca (Sandoz, The Pawnbrokers, Billy Price), guitarist Alex Hershey (Bluebird and The Message), singer Heather Catley and The Weapons of Brass Destruction, aka trumpeter Greg Eggert, and saxophonist Jake Werkmeister.
Fronting the band is singer-songwriter Matt Aquiline, who started out here in the early ’90s as a solo acoustic artist influenced by the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Steve Earle and John Hiatt, with whom he shares a strong vocal resemblance. His debut album, “Dice Roll,” featured members of Norm Nardini and the Tigers and the Granati Brothers.
Then he disappeared from Pittsburgh for about 20 years, relocating to Washington, D.C., where he fronted a band called Kid Goat. He returned in 2013 and three years later assembled an earlier version of The Dead End Streets to release the 2017 roots-rock album “Coming Home.”
“And we were going good,” Aquiline says. “I was surprised that I was able to quickly put together such a good band and then, of course, the pandemic hit and our last show before the pandemic hit was going to be at Mr. Smalls’ big stage, which would have been the biggest show we ever played.”
Emerging from the pandemic, the guitarist, bassist and drummer all split, leading to the new lineup for “Seems I Survived,” which was recorded at his home studio, mixed by Jake Hanner and mastered by Dave Gardner at Infrasonic Sound Los Angeles.
As noted, Springsteen and Earle were influences, along with The Jayhawks, one of the standouts of the late ’80s/early ’90s alt-country movement.
“I don’t know if we get there, but we also reach for The Band in what we do,” Aquiline says. “We incorporate the horns, and there's a lot of the big Hammond organs and hopefully good songwriting. That's sort of a thing we aspire to as well.”
The songs, with shared vocals by Aquiline and Catley, who has her own bold delivery, have some of the rough-and-tumble charm and surprising melodic twists that we love about The Band.
Comparing the two albums from Dead End Streets, Aquiline says, “I think this is more who we are as a band. This is what we sound like live, and that one was a little more contrived than this is. I’m always trying to reach for authenticity, and this feels like the authentic band that we are.”
First Published: October 7, 2022, 10:00 a.m.
