Doug Powell

A protégé of Todd Rundgren, Doug Powell is a far more simple musician than his muse, even more such as XTC’s Andy Partridge. Like Rundgren, Powell got a operate of misfortune with record businesses early in his profession, but it’s better to carve out a location for oneself from the main labels than it had been in the past due ’60s and early ’70s, therefore Powell has had the opportunity to discover a prepared viewers in the American power pop underground. Elevated in Oklahoma, the kid of the physicist and a specialist flutist, Powell was raised as a enthusiast of XTC, Rundgren, and Jules Shear, whom he contacted at a single gig in Chicago using a home-recorded tape of 22 music. Taken along with his youthful fan’s function, Shear shopped the tape around to several labels and created a far more professional demonstration that arrived the youthful vocalist/songwriter a advancement cope with Elektra Information. The A&R professional at Elektra who enjoyed Powell’s tracks then finished up at RCA, for whom Powell documented his first recording, Ballad from the Tin Males. Unfortunately, by enough time the recording was prepared, the A&R professional had jumped dispatch to Mercury Information, which finally released the completed recording in 1996 just like Powell’s coach was terminated by an inbound label president, instantly stopping the recording in its paths. By this time around, Powell had fulfilled and toured with Todd Rundgren, who decided to make his second recording. After Mercury declined the demos for the recording and lowered Powell, the vocalist/songwriter (who got resolved in Nashville by this time around) placed among the declined tracks, “Torn,” on Nashpop: A Nashville Pop Compilation, an area picture compilation released from the Colorado-based label Not really Lame Information, which in turn released the complete set of declined demos as 1998’s Curiouser and commissioned an recording of all-new materials, Even more, in 2000. Also for this period, Powell installed with Sixpence non-e the Richer’s Jerry Dale McFadden, a pal from university, and additional indie pop luminaries (including Wilco’s Ken Coomer as well as the Mavericks’ Robert Reynolds) to create Swag, an intermittent side task which finally released its singular recording, Catchall, in early 2001. Though Powell had written a lot of the recording and took a lot of the business lead vocals, public understanding of the music group focused on your day careers of the additional users (who also included Cheap Trick’s Tom Petersson) as well as the group split during sessions because of its never-completed second recording. Powell adopted the Swag launch using the stopgap EP Venus DeMilo’s Hands in 2001, which designated period until the vocalist/songwriter could total 2002’s ambitious The Shed Chord, his most complicated solo task to date.