Ithaca Journal, Thursday March 9, 2006 by Jim Catalano
Tzar rules: Brian Wilson and Michael Stark join forces on new CD
Brian Wilson and Michael Stark are two of Ithaca's busiest musicians. Wilson (aka Willie B) plays drums with Johnny Dowd and sits in occasionally with several other bands, while keyboardist Stark leads jazz trio Wingnut while playing with JSan and the Analogue Sons, Johnny Dowd, Crow Greenspun, and many other local groups.
Lately, though, the pair have been focusing on their new project, Tzar, which features Wilson on drums and Moog Taurus bass pedals and Stark on Hammond B3 organ and synthesizer. They've just completed their debut CD, which they'll debut Saturday night at the Chapter House. (Local alt-rockers Somatic Umbra open the 10 p.m. show.)
The CD was under the deadline of a looming Johnny Dowd tour. “We started backwards,” says Wilson. “Before we started recording, we booked a mastering date, then a mixing date, then a tracking date. The deadline was a tour. But I'm glad we did it that way, because otherwise it wouldn't have happened.”
The mostly instrumental CD was mostly recorded at Wilson's home studio. “About 90 percent of it was done live into an eight-track tape machine,” Wilson says. “At the time, under deadline, we didn't really know the tunes — it was more about the execution. Now, we've played the songs out enough so we can cover everything on the record. But the original idea was to do everything live.”
Wilson and Stark opted for short songs rather than extended jamming and improvisation. “The idea is to make the song and performance something that's concise and arranged,” says Wilson. “There's really not a lot of soloing, if any, on the record. It would have been an easy road to say, here's a loose form, and have Mike solo over it. But it's the opposite of what I'm trying to do in my own writing.
“The thing about Michael that a lot of people don't know is that he's a great composer and arranger,” continues Wilson. “Just to put him in that context is nice, because he has such a vast chordal and harmonic vocabulary. He would take one of my tunes, and run with it, stacking the ideas in an eight-bar section: Start out kind of bluesy, harmonize it, end with an Indian modal line.”
The songs were inspired by the European dance music Wilson and Stark heard during their tours with Johnny Dowd. “After our show, they would have a big techno dance party —thump, thump, thump was the universal beat, everywhere you go,” says Wilson. “There was a lot of cheesy synth sounds and repetitive stuff, so I would think it was cool to just put a change here and melody there and substitute the vocals with a keyboard part.”
There are also funk and jazz influences. “That tends to happen naturally—no matter what I play, I tend to swing it,” Wilson says. “So we're taking the European dance club music and putting it in a real organic context.” He cites surf-noir, Ennio Morricone, Indian melodies and Daniel Lanois as other influences.
Wilson and Stark will accompany Dowd on another European tour beginning next week, and they'll will be playing some of their Tzar songs during Dowd's shows. “He's been encouraging of both of us to do this thing,” says Wilson, of Dowd.
Both Stark and WIlson do session work as well. Wilson recently contributed three songs to a joint project between Dowd and Jim White, called Hellwood, at Dave Hinkle's studio in Willseyville. “I'm flattered that they liked my music,” says Wilson.
