Full TAOSD Review: May 1, 2002

Review: The Art of Self Defense by Pepper Donovan of the Syracuse New Times


Actually a quartet from Ohio, the Stepford Five amounts to better-than-average art rockers who worried more about making a good album instead of the perfect single. For instance, "Aquarium Blues," which is far removed from the 12-bar variety, captures the attention with its inherent energy. In many ways, the foursome sounds like an updated version of the Replacements, offering the same rock drive, superior arrangements, lyrics and Midwestern honesty, all dressed up with more modern guitar effects. Not a masterpiece from a band probably capable of making one, The Art of Self-Defense is a disc worth knowing about before everybody else does. 4 out of 5 Stars (denotes a damn good album and one worth considering).

Full TAOSD Review: February 11, 2002

Review:

Full Review: January 12, 2002

Review: The Art of Self-Defense by Heidi Drockelman at Indie-music.com 

Opening this package and popping The Stepford Five’s new disc into my player has proven to be a very therapeutic and uplifting experience. Perhaps not “uplifting” in the sense that many of you may be thinking… you see, I’ve been waiting for a good guitar rock record to come my way for quite some time. And after having taken a short hiatus from reviewing, I’ve found the perfect CD to get my motor running again.

With the release of The Art of Self-Defense, I’ve found something much better than a great sophomore album, I’ve found a reason to be hopeful for the next wave of progressive, solid, aggressively confident songwriting to come from the Midwest. I’m not going to kid ya, there has been little more than lackluster showings going on here in the cornfields, but like any fertile breeding ground for malcontent rockers, I see a shining beacon of sonic light burning brightly within the confines of this album.


It’s no secret that their last album, MESH, is housed quite snugly within my permanent collection of rock discs, but this latest effort, bears a more polished, focused attention to detail that puts many other releases of 2001 to shame. The Stepford Five’s approach on this disc is very confident, and while there are still some nods to their predecessors—Afghan Whigs, Catherine Wheel, the Replacements—some new noise has popped into place and given this band a sound all their own. The “polish” isn’t all studio tricks and production work (although that particular element is well crafted and only adds to the total sound of the band), there is simply a cleaner, sleeker feel to the whole offering and an obviously attentive touch to maintaining the raw energy that keeps this band’s sound fresh. The guitars are a little less raunchy, replaced by a crunchiness and bright glint that reels off of the melodies and leaving ‘80’s and ’90’s sounds far behind. 


This more modern version of the band feels very comfortable, and their comfort and confidence in their performance shines clearly through the material. “Pretty Exit”, while it does throw back to SubPop/Whigs’ (think “Turn on the Water”), seems to serve as a reminder of what the band is all about while making the transition into a new chapter of their progression as artists. I could easily say that I stumbled into something great when I listened to this record over and over and over again, but I honestly waited and wanted to hear what came out of the studio next. Boasting a tighter sound with songs like “Continental Drift”, “Foot Soldier”, “The Fall”, and the closing track, “Showing Through”, I have reason to anticipate that The Stepford Five will be ready to show their audience, and anyone who will listen, what it means to rock the joint in the future. 

Their style is heavily influenced by their favorite artists, like many musicians, but their ability to draw inspiration from, rather than imitation of, a varied landscape of musicianship, and then twist it up like a lightning rod to spark their own sound is a key ingredient to their current and future success. They will have a long career in the music business, at any level, if they wish it so. Talent, songwriting ability, ingenuity, and appreciation for rock music will help any band ascend the boundaries placed upon them—whether geographic (c’mon people, Bjork and her Sugarcube mates are from Iceland!), sonically speaking (take a page from Bowie and Radiohead), or simply having the balls to strike out of the “mainstream sound”. The Stepford Five aren’t the second coming, I realize I was building up to something quite enormous there for a second, but they’re a damn good start. One of the best releases for 2001—LONG LIVE ROCK!

Full TAOSD Review: December 18, 2001

Review: The Art of Self-Defense by Ben Ohmart, Music Dish


Not alt-rock, but ROCK. Rock with that old-time religion ingrained on its harsh, ciggie-smashing heels. Rock that increases muscle tension through loud, prolonged attacks on the most mundane functions, so that you can't love, can't sleep, can't toss 'n turn, can't take a piss without seeing the veins in your arms, forehead and dark meat of the legs.


This is The Stepford Five, a 4 man (that's right) band that is heavy, heavy on the guitar, but one of those promising young groups that lets you actually Hear the bass player through all the distortions and twisting tracks.


Listening to 'Foot Soldier' is like climbing onto hard rock without any shoes. The guitars blast, then disappear as fast as they insinuate themselves into your paltry psyche. But next up, finally, is what (compared to the others) could be called a cool down. Of course if 'Expectations' is a ballad, even those are hard to guess, considering the amount of sane but energetic drumwork swimming through.


Keith Jenkins - vocals, guitar
Jason Dziak - guitar, keys, vocals
Tim Minneci - bass
Mark Kovitya - drums


There's not a single underworked martial arts expert involved. Though the guitars bear the brunt of the battle (and battle is seems to be at times), this is unquiet, revolving door stuff that never fails to lick the envelope with a mad grin and stamp the indie stamp on with a bleeding, ashen elbow.


I remember these guys from their previous, debut album, MESH. They were shouting from deserted windowtops then, and they are still honing their impressive, rock-indie talents now, growing up more, and keeping the cap tightly on the bottle, while shaking, shaking..

Full TAOSD Review: November 15, 2001

Full review and gig preview from November 15th, 2001 in the Columbus Dispatch from the book Are You Making A Sound? The History of The Stepford Five.

Full TAOSD Review: November 15, 2001

Review: The Art of Self-Defense by Aaron Beck and Curtis Schieber, the Columbus Dispatch


On The Art of Self-Defense, the second album from the Stepford Five, the Columbus band grabs the baton from the broken- up Afghan Whigs and runs with it. 


Hard-driving, menacing music played by bassist Tim Minneci, guitarist Jason Dziak and drummer Mark Kovitya is the layer upon which lead singer Keith Jenkins addresses lovers past and present. 


Throughout the disc, recorded during the past year with Pretty Mighty Mighty's Neal Schmitt at Workbook Studio in Columbus, the band fluidly incorporates farfisa organ, timpani, drum loops, backup female vocals and goofy time signatures. The result is a sturdy next step in the band's ascent to heavy FM rotation.

Full TAOSD Review: November 8, 2001

Review:

Full TAOSD Review: November 1, 2001

Review: The Art of Self-Defense by Rob Harvilla, The Other Paper


"All I want is somethin' beautiful," declares Stepford Five vocalist Keith Jenkins a few minutes into The Art of Self-Defense, the much-hyped sophomore disc from four guys committed to expertly crafted guitar rock ugliness.

Self-Defense is a tightly wound, creatively produced and relentlessly murky-affair. Wrapped in emotive, twin-guitar indie rock, it'll coat your immediate visual world view in thick, murky blacks and grays. Picture yourself trudging through North Campus late, late Saturday night, penniless and freezing, mulling over the day's events: Your girlfriend left you, the Bucks lost by 20, your car's on fire. This record replicates drab, cruddy Ohio weather with astounding clarity.

That's a compliment. The Stepford Five bristles with grungy, discordant rock energy, well represented here by tunes like Pretty Exit and Foot Soldier. All this ain't pretty, but it's got unmistakable drive, and the five-star Workbook Studios production treatment suits it well. Weird guitar effects, random patches of aural weirdness, disembodies backup vocals, cool drum sounds - it's almost too much, to the point where you wonder if Self-Defense would sound very different (and very plain) without all the hoo-hah.

It very well might, but it doesn't have to, and the tunes resonate accordingly. Expectations is a slow-burner that avoids dragging on, thanks to a huge vocal assist from Miranda Sound hootmaster Billy Peake. The Fall is a well-placed bomb in the album's second half - 2:36 of less complex pop sensibility with a melodic outro that hits the bullseye and gets the hell outta there. In fact, Self-Defense works best after the hook's buried and the lyrics dealt with - the set ending Showing Through starts slow but ends on a similar instrumental high.

Neither the structure nor the vocal matter here rates as particularly transcendent - basically the Five are a roughed-up, pissed off hybrid of Goo Goo Dolls-style guitar rock. But this time out, they're very much in their sonic element, and committed to making the most of it. The Art of Self-Defense is quite high art indeed.

The Art of Self-Defense went on sale today exclusively (dude!) at Virgin Megastore in Easton. Buy it there or online at Stepfordfive.com. The band's next show is Friday Nov. 9 at Bernie's.

Full Article: October 4, 2001

Article: Team Players - Record labels, local and national, help spread the word about Columbus releases (Part 4 of a 4 part series) by J. Caleb Mozzocco of the Columbus Alive

It's been about seven years since Pete Cline and his bandmates nearly ran over a husky puppy on their way to band practice, having just recently abandoned "Silo" as a possible name for their band. Since then, they've given the name Silo to the lucky little dog (and then named their band after him), went through some lineup changes and hooked up with San Diego-based label Cargo Records.


While inking a deal with Cargo was a good thing for the twangy Columbus rock band, it didn't fulfill all of Silo the Huskie's wildest dreams. The quartet, like many bands, have a rather modest goal-making a living from making music-and while Cargo has made making music a little easier, the simple fact is label support isn't quite the same as winning the lottery.

"You think that when you sign this contract, it will put an end to all your problems," Cline said. "But you really just replace old problems with new problems."

The Stepford Five have heard similar stories before. So although guitarists Keith Jenkins and Jason Dziak first fell in love with music while watching the cock-rocking hair bands of the '80s on MTV, the pair realizes that a record contract won't necessarily allow them to quit their day jobs and live like Mick Mars and C.C. DeVille.

"A lot of bands think a label is like a fairy godmother who's just going to wave her magic wand and solve all their problems," Dziak said. "Small labels are all different in terms of what they can do for you; some have money, some of them are mostly good at grassroots, street-level promoting."

Same with bigger labels. Cargo, home of MTV's favorite pop-punk band Blink 182 before MCA snatched them up, has given Silo the Huskie financial support, but has probably helped most by promoting the band.

The San Diego label first reached the band through the Internet ("We thought it was some sort of cruel hoax," Cline said, "but it all ended up being true"), and offered to re-release the band's album Fight, trimming it from 16 to 12 songs and re-christening it Silo The Huskie. Cargo re-pressed and distributed the album and provided tour support, spotting the quartet $50 a show.

After doing the road warrior thing for a while, the band headed back to Workbook Studio (aside from some four-tracked stuff, all of Silo's material has been recorded by Workbook's Jon Chinn) to work on Friends, Enemies and Neutral States, slated for an early 2002 release through Cargo, provided the current contract negotiations work out.

While the studio and engineer haven't changed pre- and post-Cargo, Silo the Huskie has noticed some definite differences in the recording process thanks to their relationship with the label.

"Time and money," Cline said, listing the two major factors. "When you're on a tight budget, when you're self-financed, you go in when you can, you go to free places like the Chillicothe Recording Workshop, and you kind of drag it out… When you're doing a nine-to-five job and trying to be a rock musician, the bills can rack up pretty easy.

"When you're not self-financing [because of label support], you can block as much time off as you need and make the best record possible in a short amount of time."

Aside from taking some of the financial pressure off a band going it alone-like, say, The Stepford Five, who've spent the better part of the year in and out of Workbook producing the upcoming The Stepford Five and The Art of Self Defense-a label can go a long way toward promoting the band around the world.

"There's been a surprisingly large amount of reviews worldwide, from Europe and Japan," Cline said.

"It's cool to sit down and go on the Internet and read about what people think of your record across the pond or across the ocean. They've helped us with that distinction, getting our name out there."

This brand recognition and band promotion can be the biggest advantage of label support-even if it's just the label down the street, like locals Break-Up! Records or Derailleur Records.

Break-Up! is pretty much a one-man operation, with Pat Dull serving as CEO (or whatever title he feels like assigning himself on a given day). Dull and partner Jerry DeCicca started the label as a bit of a vanity project, pressing a seven-inch single with Dull's then-band Pop Rocks! (exclamation marks are Dull's favorite punctuation) on one side and DeCicca's band on the other.

Dull had a taste for seven-inch platters, "the perfect format for music," and stuck with the label, releasing a total of 20 different hook-filled power pop records so far, among them Columbus' Media Whores (Dull's current band), Manda and The Marbles, 84 Nash, The Pop Quiz and Dogrocket, Big Hello from Chicago and The Heartdrops from New York. Dull's even "bowed down to the beast" a little, releasing the Media Whores' and Manda and The Marbles' albums on CD instead of his cherished vinyl.

Dull doesn't always have six grand to drop on recording other bands' CDs, but he does help financially with pressing singles, asking bands to kick in a hundred bucks and repaying them with 100 singles. But Break-Up!'s main function is often helping bands get their feet in the door with distributors or media outlets. "Distributors will look at my label and they know I was there in '96, and I'm still here today," Dull said. "I've got the tentacles out there."

Tentacles can be very helpful-just ask any octopus, or even a Turkey.

"We could have put our album out on our own label," Jive Turkeys drummer Justin Crooks said of the band's April 2001 release, "like Joe Blow Records or whatever, but that's potentially more work for us. With someone else's label, there's already a framework set up and someone else is helping you out."

The Jive Turkeys are being helped by Derailleur, which, like Break-Up!, started with a local music lover-in this case, Brad Liebling-wanting to help bands he liked get heard.

Since its inception in 1998, Derailleur has released albums by The Velveteens, Pretty Mighty Mighty, Bigfoot and Bob City, and the label is currently pushing recent self-titled albums from Grafton and The Jive Turkeys. Next up are releases from Salt Horse and The Honeys.

Lou Poster, guitarist for Grafton, first got involved with the label when it released his album. By virtue of always asking what he could do to help out, he's moving more towards running things while Liebling becomes less involved to focus on his graduate studies and day job. Derailleur has evolved into a sort of collective where all the bands help promote each other's releases.

"It's really about who's got the contact info, who's stuffing envelopes, who's making calls and so forth," Poster said. "If we do fuck up a little bit, we're all buddies, rather than being strangers, so it's nice and easygoing."

Working with your friends can be nice and easygoing, and doing everything yourself-a la The Stepford Five, Miranda Sound, and tons of other locals-allows for a greater amount of control (as well as a greater amount of work and drain on your resources). Silo the Huskie could have taken either route, but when the opportunity of support from Cargo presented itself, the band didn't want to let the chance pass them by.

Cline said they've heard repeatedly from other local musicians that they didn't make the right decision, but they're glad they went for it.

"People say why would you sign a contract for almost no money," Cline said. "The way I look at it is, if there's an ice cream truck coming down the street, and it's the only ice cream truck that's been down the road for days-if not years-and if all they have is a rocket pop, you're gonna take the frickin' rocket pop."
As tasty as that rocket pop has been at times, Cline's practical about where Silo the Huskie sits in the grand scheme of things.

"Even at this level, it's still like playing in the minors," Cline said. "It's like playing for the Akron Aeros."

And if making rock 'n' roll is like playing ball, then label support-whether it comes from an A&R guy you meet at a music conference or the guy you met at Bernie's after your set-is like having someone else on your team.

Full Article: September 13, 2001

Article: Wheelers and Dealers - Distribution is the final arduous step in getting records from bands to listeners (Part 3 in a 4 part series) by J. Caleb Mozzocco of the Columbus Alive

When Manda and The Marbles were finishing their second album, 2001's Seduction, they weren't ready to be quite as DIY as they were for 1999's Rock's Not Dead. The decision had more to do with the rigors of putting together CD packaging than it did with punk politics or rock 'n' roll ethics, however.

The trio of Columbus punk poppers copied, cut, folded and inserted the packaging material for all 500 copies of their debut album themselves, which amounted to a hell of a lot of work. And more work is something a band can do without when creating an album.



Once an album's been written, recorded, mixed, mastered and pressed, there's still more to be done-it's time for the band to make sure their work is heard, which means it's time to sell, sell, sell. Distribution is the final step in the process of getting music from the heads and hearts of musicians to the ears of listeners, and with this one more potentially arduous step in the recording process left to take, extra folding and jewel case stuffing is something many bands can do without.

The Stepford Five have distributed their own album once already with their 2000 debut Mesh, and they're gearing up to do it again with this fall's The Stepford Five and The Art of Self Defense.

As hard as recording the music can be, distribution can be just as hard for some artists. "Musicians don't all have the natural ability to wheel and deal," said Jon Chinn, guitarist/vocalist for Pretty Mighty Mighty and one half of Workbook Studio, where The Stepford Five have created both of their albums. "The type of personality it takes to make good music isn't generally the type it takes to make a deal."

Certain deals are easier to make than others, however. Like negotiating a CD sale with a fan at the merchandise table after your set.

Selling CDs at shows is probably the most effective way for a local band to get their records to their audience, and that's certainly the case with The Stepford Five, according to bassist Tim Minneci. "At shows your music has the most immediate impact," he said. "If someone liked what they just heard, they can just walk over and pick up a CD."

But rock bands, like prophets, are often without honor in their hometowns. If The Stepford Five can move one or two Meshes after a show in Columbus, it's considered an above-average night, while sales on the road are always much better.

"We'll play a show out of town, and there may only be 10 people there, but all 10 will buy a CD," Stepford Five vocalist/guitarist Keith Jenkins said. "We could play in front of a hundred people in Columbus, and no one will buy a CD."


Does familiarity breed contempt? Well, if not contempt, at least consumer apathy.

"It doesn't take long before everyone who comes to your shows has either already bought an album and they aren't going to buy another one, or aren't going to because they didn't want to buy one in the first place," Minneci said.

The Marbles have encountered the same phenomena. Hometown sales may be lackluster, but the band cleans up when they play for appreciative audiences at all-ages shows in under-entertained small towns.

The trio-bassist/vocalist Manda Marble, guitarist Joe Damage, and drummer Mark Slak-often take weekend-long tours of small Pennsylvania and New York towns like Meadville, Oil City, Jamestown and Warren, playing shows sometimes set up by teens at venues vastly different from the Columbus High Street bar circuit.

"We'll play township buildings and fire halls," Marble said, "and we always sell a lot of stuff, a lot more than at 21-and-over bars. I guess people at bars don't plan on buying music, while these kids plan on going there and buying things in these little towns where there's nowhere else to go and hear music."

Of course, selling CDs out of the back of your tour van or a suitcase in the back of the club, though effective, can be so 20th century. The advent of the Internet has changed the unloading of one's albums just like it's changed everything else. "The Internet has really fucked things up in a lot of ways, both good and bad," Chinn said.

Aside from obliterating the business plan bands needed to follow to be successful half a decade ago, the Internet has given every band a way to reach every potential fan in the world, and electronic access that equals that of the major labels.

"Our website takes up as much space as Warner Brothers'," Chinn said. "I tell [bands looking to record at Workbook], 'Don't even call me again until you have a website.'"

Homepages can serve as little merchandise tables in cyberspace, but local bands can also unload their albums on larger sites. In addition to dishing copies of Mesh from stepfordfive.com, The Stepford Five distribute albums on consignment through sites like CDNow.com, Amazon.com, and CDBaby.com. For an application fee and a small cut, the warehouse-type organization Orchard can hook bands up with

Amazon and CD Now, and CD Baby works similarly but features all independent bands.

Finally, there's your friendly neighborhood record store-"Your local record store can be your best friend, we learned," Minneci said-many of which carry the work of local musicians.

With various self-distribution avenues available, coupled with the scores of copies sent off for review or as demos (The Stepford Five mailed out about 200 copies of Mesh, on top of what they've sold), it's easy to avoid the situation all bands dread-filling their closets with 964 unsold copies of their album.

But just because a band gets rid of most of their discs doesn't mean they'll all be appreciated. "Our ultimate fear is that we'll go to somebody's house and find them using our album as a coaster," Minneci said.

Full Article: September 6, 2001

Article: Mixed Up - Recording Tracks for an album is just a prelude to hours spent mixed and mastering (Part 2 of a 4 part series) by J. Caleb Mozzocco of the Columbus Alive


"Neeur, neeur, neeur."

Neal Schmitt vocalizes a guitar part, nodding and neeur-ing along to the music that plays through the mixing board in the back room of Workbook Studio.


In the next room, Stepford Five vocalist/guitarist Keith Jenkins is trying out his last couple of ideas-a pick scrape, a sonic burst resulting from guitarist Jason Dziak turning Jenkins' tuning keys while he plays, and a little bluesy guitar part which the other members of his band and producer/engineer Schmitt decide is just a little too bluesy.


And that's that. The Stepford Five has recorded everything they need to produce their upcoming second album, The Stepford Five and the Art of Self Defense.


But it's not time to break out the champagne just yet. Though recording is by far the longest, hardest part of the process for the band, it's still only a part of the process.


The 10 songs and one short noise burst that will eventually make up the album still need to be mixed and mastered, and then packaged for distribution before they'll be spinning in anyone's CD player. With the tracks all recorded, the next step is mixing, one of the easier parts of the recording process-for the band at least. "It's basically sitting and listening to a track over and over," bassist Tim Minneci said, "slowly figuring out what levels everything's going to be at."


The band left a lot of that figuring out up to Schmitt for their debut album Mesh. Schmitt definitely has the least biased ear, the band members agree, since he won't be mixing anything he himself played. "Whatever your instrument is, you're going to be like, 'Let's turn that up a little,'" Minneci explained.


"You don't want to have too many people in the kitchen," drummer Mark Kovitya said of mixing. The mixing process isn't a totally hands-off thing for The Stepford Five, however. For 2000's Mesh, Dziak took a week off work to sit in on the mixing, and for The Art of Self Defense, the band and Schmitt have been mixing tracks (and in some instances, remixing them) since last March.


As for mastering, the band was even less involved with that process for Mesh. At Schmitt's suggestion, they took the album to John Schwab Recording, a popular studio for local bands to have their mastering done. "We petty much just dropped it off [at John Schwab] and said 'We're a rock and roll band, here's our CD, make it sound like a rock album,'" Minneci said.

This time around, the slightly older and slightly wiser band will be having the slightly older and slightly wiser Schmitt master The Art of Self Defense for them at Workbook, giving them a little more control than they exerted last year. As tasty as the album ends up sounding-reflecting over nine months of work from four talented musicians, their producer and several guests, and boasting production values of about five grand-it's still not done. 


Just because an album's self-published doesn't mean it has to look like a demo or a pirated and burned batch of Napster tunes. While some of their favorite bands like Smashing Pumpkins, Jeff Buckley and Afghan Whigs have had the art departments of major labels sweating this stuff, The Stepford Five have only themselves.


Luckily, Dziak's day job as a designer comes in pretty handy when putting together their liner notes and packaging. For Mesh, he used some art he had lying around, coming up with a blue pair of lips on a gray field for the cover and a blurry woman in a swimsuit model pose for the back. The inside was fairly standard stuff-track listings, a band photo, credits and thank yous-along with a special thanks section listing the band's legion of influences. With that done, the band sent the layout and mastered album off to the cheapest place they could find to print and press the disc. The design for the new album, like everything else, will be more elaborate.


The band noticed a common theme of defending yourself on various levels in this new batch of songs (though the new album is not-repeat, not-a concept album), and thus decided to tie them all together with the title and packaging. The art for The Art of Self Defense will be something of a family affair for Minneci. His mother Coni will draw up some self-preservation diagrams (like what to do in the event of a plane crash, how to put yourself out if you catch on fire), based on pamphlets provided by his fireman father James (this isn't Coni's first design work for her son's band; she also designed a flyer featuring caricatures of the quartet).


After Jenkins' last little guitar experiment, the too-bluesy blues guitar burst, Schmitt turned halfway around in his wheeled chair and asked The Stepford Five if they were ready to break out the champagne.


But they're keeping a cork in the bottle for now, and Schmitt swiveled back to the board to begin mixing. Even once they get their 500 CDs, jewel cases and liners mailed back to them, they still have to get The Art of Self Defense to their potential listeners. Because until then, all of this work has been a tree falling in the woods (and any celebrating would be just a cork popping in the woods).

Full Article: August 30, 2001

Article: Natural Birth - Creating something out of nothing is a labor of love in local recording studios (Part 1 of a 4 part series) by J. Caleb Mozzocco of the Columbus Alive


It may be biologically impossible for Keith Jenkins, Jason Dziak, Mark Kovitya and Tim Minneci to know exactly what it feels like to carry a child to term. But after entering a recording studio, the four musicians who make up The Stepford Five could probably hazard a pretty good guess.


Making an album, like having a baby, has taken the band nine months and demanded a massive amount of time, energy and money. While it's happening, it's all you think about, and when it's finally over, you have to let your little one out to face the world on its own.


The Stepford Five re-teamed with producer Neal Schmitt and returned to Workbook Studio last December to begin work on the follow-up to their 2000 debut album Mesh. The band also gave Columbus Alive a peek at the man behind the curtain, to help demystify the recording process and see just what it takes to get the songs bouncing around local venues and rehearsal spaces onto little silver platters and into listeners' hands.


It's a drizzly Saturday morning in January, and many throughout Columbus, like people around the country, are talking about President Bush's inauguration, scheduled for later that afternoon. The subject even creeps into the back room of Workbook Studio, where Stepford Five drummer Mark Kovitya is having a brunch of Arby's roast beef sandwiches and bassist Tim Minneci eats a more traditional doughnut while they wait for their bandmates to arrive.


Neal Schmitt, whose day job as co-proprietor of Workbook Studio doesn't stray too far from his night job as drummer for local power pop outfit Pretty Mighty Mighty, hovers above the massive mixing board, talking to Stepford Five frontman Keith Jenkins, who is on the other side of the foam-covered, soundproof door, singing "If you feel like you're ever getting lonely" over and over into different microphones in an attempt to choose the perfect one.


Soon, guitarist Jason Dziak enters with his recording notes and plops down on the big leather couch, and Schmitt plays back bits of the song Expectations for them to hear. Talk of Bush's rainy day inauguration quickly dissolves in favor of more pressing topics-like the first note of Minneci's bass attack and Jenkins' pronunciation of "without you." "I can hear the spit in your mouth," Schmitt says excitedly into the console.


"That's not spit," Jenkins says flatly into the mic. "It's Jack Daniels."


"That sounds good," Schmitt says, spinning on his wheeled chair to face the other Stepford Fivers, who, after laying down their respective tracks earlier, are hanging out to listen to Jenkins' vocals. "You can hear the spit in his mouth, I love it. It's like Tim says, we want this track to be really personal."


"Not that personal!" Minneci objects with a laugh.


Schmitt spins back around and speaks into the board again: "Let's play around with it a bit." Over the next eight months, Schmitt and The Stepford Five would spend a lot of time together in the campus area house-turned-studio, decorated with old arcade games, Derek Hess prints, and some stray Star Wars paraphernalia, playing around a bit with the 10 songs that will be released as The Stepford Five and the Art of Self Defense this fall. All of this meticulous playing around adds up to a lot of work, but it's necessary to make a self-produced, self-released album that the four self-confessed music geeks can be happy with.


It's the sort of work the quartet would do all the time if they could.


Though their first album was released only 18 months ago, and they still have plenty of copies of Mesh to sell (of the 1,000 discs pressed, they've sold about 200 on top of the approximately 450 that were sent to clubs, radio stations, record stores and magazines for review), they all felt like it was high time to head back into the studio.

"You have to go in and make your best effort," Dziak explains, "and make it a stake in the ground to move forward from." Returning to Workbook proved a no-brainer for the band, as they had such a positive experience recording Mesh there. Back in 1999, when Dziak, Jenkins and Minneci first came to Columbus from Bowling Green (and added Kovitya to the rhythm section), they knew they had to head into a professional studio if they wanted to make a decent album, and they chose Workbook because they liked what the studio had done with other young and hungry local bands like Templeton and The Velveteens.


"We wanted to work with musicians," Minneci explained of choosing the studio run by Pretty Mighty Mighty's Jon Chinn and Schmitt. The pair proved so invaluable that Schmitt was given credit as producer, and Chinn lent his vocal talents to a track.


It would have been a disaster if we would have gone to a studio where they just turned the mics on," Dziak said. "Jon and Neal saved us from ourselves a lot."


There're a lot of chances to screw up, given the amount of time spent recording, and the stakes can be high, given the price tag involved.

The band spent about 120 hours over a four-month period recording Mesh, the most grueling days coming in the one weekend Kovitya had to record drum tracks (20 hours is a long time to spend drumming in just two days). For The Art of Self-Defense, the band spent about 150 hours in the studio-but spread out over a longer period of time, 254 days from their start on December 16 to their finish on August 27-and that's before the mixing and mastering, pressing, packaging and promotion are ever even started.


If time is money, The Stepford Five spent a fortune on their albums even before factoring in the actual cost in dollars. Mesh ran about $5,000 (with $3,000 going toward recording, $200 for mastering, and $1,200 to press the CDs). They're on target to spend about the same for Art of Self Defense, though if that seems high, it's about average for a good album, says Workbook's Chinn.


"It costs about $2,000 to $6,000 to make a pretty tasty record," Chinn said. "It costs money, and it costs time which costs money."


"It's not one huge chunk," Minneci says of the expense. "It's 50 bucks here, 100 bucks there, 50 bucks there. You don't really notice it while you're spending it."


The Stepford Five could have saved money with more of DIY approach, but they wouldn't have been happy with the results. "We're not really a lo-fi, Guided By Voices kind of band," Kovitya said. "Our sound is pretty high end." And they could have easily spent a lot more money by going to a more expensive studio, but even then they may not have been happy. "You could pay $350 an hour and still sound like shit," Kovitya said.


So Workbook became a kind of weekend home for the band, and Schmitt a sort of unofficial band member, as they laid down track after track, then convened behind Schmitt in the back room to listen to playback, tap their pens on their notebooks, throw out suggestions, shoot bad ideas down, give the good ones a try, and take the many necessary baby steps to put an album together.

The process requires a high level of dedication and commitment to the music, and if there's one thing The Stepford Five has to spare, it's a love of anything and everything having to do with music, though their feelings toward recording vary from member to member."I don't like it at all," Kovitya said. "When you're [playing] live it's unbelievable, it's very emotional and powerful, but the studio's a very sterile environment. You do something, stop, and do it over."


Kovitya has the most reason to dislike the recording process. He was the one who spent a couple of 10-hour days banging the hell out of his kit. If the amount of time one spends recording determines how much one likes it, then that should explain why Minneci loves it.


He plays the least by far, and thus spends the most time planning out the process and thinking up possible sonic tangents to suggest to the others. "Tim will throw out 100 ideas," Dziak said, "and we'll use like two of them."


For Dziak and Jenkins, the meticulous attention spent on every aspect of recording is a welcome way to focus on what they're doing and how to improve. Obsessing over how "what you" sounds like when sung will do that.


"I get a lot of gratification just out of creating something from nothing," Dziak says of the process. "Like, there was a blank tape there, and now something that we created is on this piece of plastic forever."


Creating something from nothing, and getting that something recorded, may be something of a Herculean labor in itself, but even that process is just the first step in turning songs into CDs.