From stardom's cusp
and back
Rosemary Gates
steering career
By Steve Penhollow; The Journal
Gazette
Published: October 12, 2007 6:00 a.m.
Rosemary Gates.
Easily one of the most popular rock bands in
Even people who have never heard the band perform know the
name.
Six years ago, Rosemary Gates seemed poised to make that
rare leap from the
“J Records offered us a farm club deal,” guitarist Michael
Archbold says. “That's where they market you regionally and you play the clubs
and you build a following and if everything goes OK, they sign you nationally.
“And we said, ‘We don't need that,'
” he recalls. “Universal's calling, Epic's calling,
Then 9/11 happened.
“It stopped,” Archbold says. “All the calls stopped.”
“Yeah, but the whole world stopped,” bassist
“We're not bitter about it, of course,” Archbold says. “It
is what it is.”
Rosemary Gates, performing Oct. 20 at
Legends Sports Bar, has taken several hiatuses and lost a couple of members
since then.
Throughout 2005, the band went into the attic of lead singer
Christian Schult and hammered out its second full-length album, “Myth and
Judgment.”
“We locked ourselves in Christian's attic every Friday and
Saturday night with a bottle of tequila,” Archbold says. “It was the most fun
we've ever had.”
The musical landscape has changed enormously since 2001,
Archbold says.
A major label deal is no longer the brass ring it once was.
Affordable home studios have made expensive time at professional studios less
necessary.
Rosemary Gates has decided to pursue its career in less
typical fashion than it did six years ago.
The band has started its own label, King James Records, and
will market its music to the TV and film industries through a service called
Taxi.
Bankson says the band feels freer to be more progressive and
eclectic in its songwriting.
And Rosemary Gates is being more selective in choosing the
places it performs.
“We've decided to stop playing at clubs that expect you to
play three hours of music a night, most of it covers,” Archbold says. “We want to
play dates that showcase our stuff. It's a big stress reliever.”