In the months following the release of Candy Bars' 2006 studio debut, Cutting Tigers in Half and Understanding Narravation, the locally based trio garnered a flood of favorable press from some of the most respected taste-making online music rags around — Stereogum, PopMatters, Cokemachineglow, Pitchfork — and had reached a point where success seemed not only achievable but imminent.
They just couldn't quite keep the momentum going. "It feels like we sort of fell apart right when all that happened, because of things going on personally in our lives," singer/guitarist Daniel Martinez told me when I caught up with him last week.
Not that Candy Bars were ever truly inactive — merely flying under the radar and focusing on work, school and familial obligations while slowly working on a follow-up to CTHUH and squeezing in the sporadic live dates whenever possible, usually over the summer. (Martinez is working toward a Masters in Architecture at University of Florida, cellist Melissa Grady is a full-time music teacher at Nancy Bartels Middle School and a private instructor at Atomic Audio, and drummer/percussionist Ryan Hastings manages AJA, the upscale Channelside nightclub.)
After nearly a year absent from the scene, the trio re-emerged in June to headline the Homemade Music Symposium's live music showcase at New World Brewery. They packed the place, and not only demonstrated their continued relevance and talent with a compelling, high-energy set of their distinctive dark and dreamy experimental rock, but proved that people around here still cared about what's going on with Candy Bars.
They also played two untraditional venues this summer — Cappy's Pizzeria and Bartels Middle School, the latter a favor to Grady that turned out to be a very rewarding experience.
"Basically, the show was part of an in-school field trip, and Melissa was trying to organize local musicians from the area who'd come in and do a few clinics for the kids, and play a few songs," Martinez explained. The event was a creative staycation-style solution to a budget shortfall that kept her students from actually taking a trip off school grounds. "They ate hamburgers and were served ice cream, and we played during the ice cream part."
The performance also put her students' good-natured dubiousness about her being in a rock band to rest. "They seemed to be into it, and I think they were pretty proud of their teacher," Martinez said. "It was actually kind of fun, and it turned out to be the closest we've ever felt to being rock stars."
Along with exposing a room of pre-adults to high-quality music, "Melissa wanted to show these kids who are learning orchestral instruments that you don't necessarily have to play classical music, that you can sort of branch out and do something else as well."
The band is in the process of completing a new album that they've been working on over the last few years, "but actually focused on throughout this summer. We're starting to get to a point where we've got a lot of the raw tracks recorded. It's just a matter of finishing it and mixing it and that sort of thing."
If all goes as planned, Candy Bars should have a new album recorded and produced, with copies in hand, by the end of this year or early next year. "The recent shows have been really great and the turnouts have been super encouraging, so it kind of fuels our desire to finish this album up as soon as possible."
This article appears in Aug 19-25, 2010.