A small sign on the door reads "Studio B," a wry joke befitting the men who make music inside its walls. Studio B is not part of some huge recording complex — there is no Studio A, no studio C or D. Studio B is a converted garage behind a bungalow in northeast St. Pete. It's owned by Brian Merrill, 44, a longtime Bay area pop-rock artist who's been a frontman for such well-regarded local bands as Barely Pink, Parade in Paris and Factory Black.
Behind the door, Merrill sits in the cluttered, track-lit studio next to Ed Woltil, 50, another highly respected rocker whose tenure on the local music scene dates back to the '80s. His band Mad For Electra regularly shared bills with Parade in Paris.
Merrill and Woltil make up The Ditch Flowers. Their new album, Carried Away, is one of the most polished, professional and, well, brilliant, albums ever produced by local musicians.
Which would be achievement enough. But the fact that it comes from two first-time collaborators well past what is considered their rock 'n' roll prime makes it an event.
And raises an inevitable question: Mick Jagger might get to run around on the stage in tights for seven figures a night, but with pop stardom seemingly reserved these days for 17-year-old American Idols, how old is too old when a band is just starting to establish itself?
Holding cups of Starbucks coffee, each man in a red T-shirt, jeans and Chuck Taylors, Merrill and Woltil look the very essence of partners. And friends. They're amused at the notion that they're long-in-the-tooth rockers.
"I have this running joke," Merrill says. "When someone wants to know my age, I ask them if they want to know my real birth age, or how old I am in rock 'n' roll years — because rock 'n' roll makes you 10 years younger."
Maybe you need to have logged a hefty number of "rock 'n' roll years" to make a record as sophisticated as Carried Away. Not that these guys are bragging. Both are by nature soft-spoken and modest, even self-deprecating; when Merrill enthuses about how good Carried Away is, he worries out loud that it may sound boastful. But ultimately he can't conceal his pride.
"About halfway through the project, I started going back and listening to the roughs, and it struck me: 'We have something really, really special happening.' It freaked me out a little bit. Up until that point, we'd mostly been doing it for fun. I thought, 'Man, this is so good. What can we do with this?'"
Merrill is quick to heap credit on Woltil, who wrote all but two of the songs and played most of the instruments. "It was like I imagined it would be like working with someone famous, like Neil Finn [of Crowded House] or Paul McCartney. Merrill says. "It was jaw-dropping at times. I was just sitting there in awe pressing 'Record.'"
Woltil, visibly embarrassed, looks at me and mutters, "Can you work that in? Something like, 'Brian enabled my genius; he's so reliable with the 'Record' button.'"
The partners grin. They both know it was a far more collaborative effort than that.
Why is Carried Away so good? Start with melody, a cache of catchy hooks that hark back to masters of the craft, from the Beatles to Squeeze to Fountains of Wayne. Both Merrill and Woltil possess clear, expressive pop tenors, with enough individual character to make their lead vocals stand apart. When the choruses hit, the guys are not shy about ladling on high-flying harmonies.
Although the Ditch Flowers disc is built on a power-pop foundation, it possesses a formidable stylistic range. For every electric-guitar-driven linchpin like "All the Time in the World" or "Since I Met You," there's a sweet, bouncy acoustic number like "Aunt Marie" or "Boys," a sentimental ode to carefree youth. Or a percolating confessional like "New Skin," where Woltil muses about the state of his life: "Christian liberal, 2.3 kids/ Alter ego on the skids/ Slippery destiny, trying on my new skin."
In all, Carried Away contains 12 very fine and varied songs — nothing even close to a dog — which is a rarity in itself. And a bonus: The lyrics have something to say. They come from the point of view of mature adults, family men — Woltil's been married 30 years, Merrill 17, both have two kids — who wrestle with problems big and small: spirituality, devotion to loved ones, alienation, regret, aging and all sorts of other stuff that swims around in the minds of grownups.
Although Ed Woltil and Brian Merrill both grew up in Pinellas County and were once denizens of a vital Tampa Bay rock scene in the '80s, they've taken divergent career paths.
Merrill, whose father was in the Air Force, moved from California to St. Petersburg when he was 5. He lived in Lakewood Estates and attended Lakewood High School, but was more inclined to graphic and fine arts than music. While attending St. Petersburg Junior College, he took a classical guitar class and met rising young rocker John McNicholas, who invited him to audition as a singer for his new wave band. "I figured I could sing as good as they were singing," Merrill says with a laugh. "I could sing like Duran Duran."
Nevertheless, he didn't pass the audition. Soon enough, McNicholas quit that band, contacted Merrill, and in the mid-'80s they put together the five-piece Parade in Paris, which specialized in the darker, synth-heavy side of new wave by the likes of Peter Murphy and the Cure. The group's keyboardist, Dave Christopher, went on to cult fame as the musical architect of the rave outfit Rabbit in the Moon.
Parade in Paris never got close to a major recording contract, but was romanced by a management company in Los Angeles. "They wanted to do this L.A. makeover on us," Merrill says, amused, "wanted us to wear green contacts. I probably would've done it, but the other guys in the band were pretty stubborn about stuff like that."
Even though PIP never landed the proverbial deal, "we would put together bills at Jannus Landing with two other [local] bands and draw a thousand people," Merrill says.
In the mid-'90s, Merrill was bitten by the pop bug. "I started getting into Big Star and Teenage Fanclub and wanted to do 'oooh-ooohs' and harmonies," he says. "I used to bar the word 'baby' from my songs, then it was 'OK, we can use the word 'baby.'"
Merrill and Ted Lukas formed Barely Pink, an unabashed power-pop band that signed to Big Deal Records, a New York indie label with a power-pop niche. BP did a couple of small tours and played major festivals like Poptopia — and even managed to sell 3,000 to 4,000 copies of a couple of albums. "We never saw any money, though," Merrill says. "The label was always recouping expenses." Barely Pink did manage to place some brief interludes on TV. Merrill says the biggest royalty check he ever received was $250 from a Japanese show; the smallest: 35 cents.
Concurrent with his early rock escapades, Merrill worked as an airbrush artist on the beaches painting "Camaros and stuff on people's shirts so they could look cool." He learned computer graphics and parlayed that into a job designing T-shirts for a variety of companies. Over the years, he built a freelance design business, and in early '06 took a contract job as the webmaster for the various restaurants owned by Outback Inc. He works in the marketing department weekdays from 9-6 and loves it. "All the while I've been making music, I've had this other career that's paid the bills, but has also been fun," he says.
Woltil's work life has not been as tidy. He was born and raised in Clearwater and in early adolescence set his sights on becoming a guitar god. "I spent a lot of time listening to Led Zeppelin," he says. "Clapton, Beck and Page were the guys."
He was in a variety of hard-rock bands while at Largo High School; one of them was called Thunderhead, which Woltil describes as a "jam band." After a spell, the ax man found his way back to his deeper influences — the Beatles, Kinks, et al — and began to concentrate on songwriting. He formed Mad For Electra in the mid-'80s, which worked "the more poppy, Crowded House end of new wave," Woltil says.
Through the remainder of the '80s and into the early '90s, Parade in Paris and Mad for Electra regularly shared bills at such now-defunct clubs as the ACL Bar, Swamp Club, El Gordo, Club Detroit and London Victory Club. Their confederates included Deloris Telescope, The Headlights, Real Cameras, Multi-Color House and others. "There was always a real esprit de corps in that scene," Woltil says. "No petty stuff."
The three-piece Mad For Electra lasted into the early '90s, after which Woltil did some solo work, launched a few ill-fated bands and became a "surrogate member" of The Headlights. Then he walked away from making music in bars. "A number of things happened that were all tied together," Woltil explains. "My wife [Laura] and I wanted one of us to stay at home during the day and be there to raise our younger daughter Roxanne. I had switched to a night job, so I was able to do it. So I had to move out of the bar scene."
Woltil had always been a spiritual searcher, so when he and his wife enrolled their kids at the Anona Methodist Church preschool in Largo, the Woltils started attending services as a family. Ed joined the worship band, then wrote and recorded a solo CD of contemporary Christian songs. "It all started resonating with us," he says. "I was exposed to church, and was reading and thinking about Jesus' life — and it dawned on me: He was my hero."
While his home and spiritual life thrived, Woltil found tougher sledding on the job. He was an office drone for a long time, until starting his own freelance graphic business about four years ago. "I'm probably not making enough [money] but it's going in the right direction," Woltil says.
Yes, he has regrets. "I got all tied up in this midlife thing," he reveals. "I was in a job that was a soul sucker, and I wasn't even making great pay. I'm getting past the regret part of it. I think that's a vicious cycle. I wouldn't say I dwell on it.
"Through it all, I've really identified myself as a songwriter. My mind is always drifting toward that. And so even though me and Brian are past our prime and all that, we're still trying to think of opportunities to get the music out there, even at our age."
It's fitting that The Ditch Flowers got together over a song called "My Next Life."
A couple of years ago, Barely Pink split up after a fruitful run. Woltil had opened for the band a few times, and he and Merrill had renewed their friendship. The two got together for lunch at Panera Bread in Feather Sound, "with no particular agenda," Woltil says. Merrill was working on "My Next Life," a kind of alt-country song. "I was happy with how it was coming along but it wasn't quite there," Merrill says. "It needed something: a bridge, another part."
Merrill asked Woltil to help out. He quickly came back with a middle section that slows the song down and changes the mood. Woltil also tweaked the chord changes on the chorus to give it more take-off. Just like that, "My Next Life" had been transformed into an immaculate pop song. "When we finished it, I thought, 'We have a great song,' and then it occurred to me that we can make exactly the album we feel like making," Woltil says. "We have the experience, the technology and the desire."
That led to regular Monday-night sessions at Studio B. Woltil went into heavy songwriting mode and began bringing in one gem after another.
Given the guys' schedules, The Ditch Flowers project took well over a year to complete, but never once did the process become arduous. "It also had the benefit of getting re-acquainted with Ed and our becoming real good friends," Merrill says. "Ed's just a joy to be around. With other people, especially ones you make music with, you can feel their ego."
Thus far, Carried Away has gotten positive reviews, including a rave from the influential website popmatters.com; the local music mag Reax, however, dismissed it as "banal." The Ditch Flowers have put together a band for upcoming gigs, but are still auditioning drummers.
In many ways, making the music was the easiest part. Finding an audience is far trickier. It's where reality starts colliding with the dream. While the Internet is the great information pipeline — and a handful of acts have used it to circumvent the traditional label system and bring their music directly to the people — cutting through the clutter is a tall order.
The Ditch Flowers have taken steps to license their music and get it into the realm where it can be picked up for independent films and commercials. Based on quality, the band should be getting airplay on adult contemporary radio, but without the backing of a major label, that's all but out of the question. The Ditch Flowers haven't even bothered sending out packages to the big conglomerates — that's a young man's game — but they do see an opportunity to hitch on with an indie imprint that markets adult-oriented rock along the lines of The Pernice Brothers or Peter Case.
"We're obviously not the next Fall Out Boy," Merrill says. "Those days are long gone. But even though producing your own record and selling 10,000 copies is a big number, whenever I think about it, it seems viable to me."
However Carried Away performs commercially, it was not a one-off effort. "As soon as we had this album in the can, we started thinking about the next one," Woltil says. Merrill, walking out of Studio B after a long afternoon interview, says, "I honestly believe we can do better."
This article appears in Jun 6-12, 2007.