Rosemary Gates: Super Re-Group
By Jen Reinking (10/26/00)

Good things come to those who wait.

While moms everywhere claim this truthful cliché as their own, no one knows that reality better than Rosemary Gates, a band which has survived numerous personnel changes and a sporadic schedule of gigs over the past four years to become one of Fort Wayne's favorite bands. With their vibrant live mix of catchy pop hooks and all-out jams, fans have waited impatiently for Jerry, B-Funk, James, Mike and Chris to release a full-length follow-up to their EP, Shining Rain.

Well, guess what, kiddos? That wait is over.

Shine, the answer to all RG fans' prayers, is a 12-volume journey into an eclectic world where radio pop, classic rock, grunge and folky acoustic blend peacefully and without pretension. Produced by the boys themselves and recorded at the highly respected and totally digital Soundmill Studios under the engineering of Neal Parnin and Wil Putt, the album not only features crowd favorites like "Shining Rain" and "Fallen," but also a soulful rendition of Lenny Kravitz's modern classic, "Rosemary." Most of the songs were written prior to the group's self-proclaimed "rebirth" in 1998 and were penned by different inter-band combinations of lyricists and composers.

The boys spared neither time nor money in the studio to get the end result for the album they know they were capable of producing and that their die-hard fans expect. Lead singer Chris Schult commented, "Let's just say we put Wil on his Harley! Actually, it took us a year and a half to record. We went in with the mentality that we were not going to think about the money portion of it. If it took one take or a hundred takes to get it right, we were going to do it until it was how we wanted it. That's how we approached it, and that is why we got the quality recording that we did."

Still, actually reaching the point of creating a masterful album like Shine has been more than just an issue of money and time. RG have seen themselves in different incarnations, but always with the same drive and vision that show in such a professional presentation as Shine.

The band originally began in 1996 when high school buds James Stocks and Jason Sheets met up with Christian Schult while at college in Muncie. The group started out playing acoustic gigs at frat parties and the like and continued to do so. It was at one of those gigs that the boys met up with an old friend, Jerry Foust, who happened to be a drummer. Not long after, Rosemary Gates became a reality when former Lost Cause bassist Scott Jackson joined. The band started playing different venues and building a strong group of followers for about a year.

Still, just like a Behind the Music episode always shows us, life in a band cannot always be a dream. Rosemary Gates had their wake-up call not long after the band had truly come into its own. Founding member Jason Sheets moved to Ohio and Chris decided to move to Washington to become a forester. With two pivotal members gone, it looked as if the band's days were numbered. Still, Stocks and Faust refused to give up, writing songs and seemingly anticipating a miracle, which did eventually happen.

In July of 1998, Christian called from Washington, saying he was ready to get back to Indiana and to Rosemary Gates. Jackson joined back up, bringing with him his friend and fellow Lost Cause bandmate Mike Archbold, but there was to still be one more major personnel change. In March of this year, founding member Jackson decided to pursue his academic career, leaving bass duties to local music scene veteran Bryan "B-Funk" Bankson, formerly of Gypsy Circus, making the journey to the present complete and the road to the future promising.

Since regrouping, Rosemary Gates have released Shining Rain, an EP containing both a studio version of "Shining Rain" and live versions of "Proud" and "Rewind," all of which have been reworked on the new LP. They have also opened for bands as diverse as Blessid Union of Souls in Nashville and Bachman Turner Overdrive in Fort Wayne, along with playing smaller gigs with local bands, including their personal favorites, Abraham.

Shine starts as many of Rosemary Gates shows do ó drawing the listener in to a dreamy world where those who close their eyes and listen can be transported, losing themselves in their own soul. The opening track, "Fallen," takes all within earshot back to the early 1990s, when great early alternative bands were busting out of the Northwest with lyrics that not only seemed to be open to individual interpretation, but also unified people in a strange spirituality that knows no race or religion. With "angry rock" saturating the airwaves the past few years, songs with the musical sensitivity of electric acoustics, as in "Fallen," are as much a breath of fresh air as the Seattle sound was 10 years ago.

The second track, "Brotherman," deals with the human desire to find a deeper meaning in life. Written by Schult, the song's message deals with using help from other people to help guide us through. Flowing with harmonicas and Dylanesque pleas ("Brotherman, will you take me to the promised land/ Sistergirl, will you show me your world/ Preacherman, will you take me by the hand/ And did you know there really is no perfect world"), the song manages to pull off the seemingly contradictory gruff vocals and rock guitar solo blended with an acoustic foundation, a feat pulled off numerous times on the album.

"Rosemary," the only song on the album not penned by the band, may seem

to be an unusual track for the collection, considering that RG have plenty of their own tunes that they could have recorded. However, the placement of this track on the disc has a lot more to do with the band than the fact that it is a song that can often be heard in their live performances. "The band was originally called The Gates, a reference to Dante's Inferno, a poem about Dante's journey through hell and, eventually, to heaven. The band quickly became Rosemary Gates at the first live performance, when Stocks introduced the band as such," explained RG guitarist Archbold. "Rosemary was just a Lenny Kravitz cut everyone liked. Plus, the name just sounded cool," he says.

Many of the songs on the album show just how much a team effort Rosemary Gates puts into everything they do. One of the newer songs on Shine, "Innocence," is a perfect example of how the longer the band is together, the more of a family they become. Penned by Archbold, the song was, in his own words, "built from the ground up. I had the ideas for the song, but sonically, the band took it to new heights. Melodically, Chris gave it the power punch it needed to convey the message."

Rosemary Gates' new baby, Shine, will premiere this Saturday, October 28 at Columbia Street with a live show and CD release party. Upcoming dates include November 10 at Broadripple, November 14 at Bill's Bistro and a Christmas party December 23 at the Dash-In.

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