Topeka band Backlash will release their fifth and final CD Circling the Drain worldwide, Friday April 29.
After working in and around the Topeka area for almost 20 years Backlash; Chris Nicklay, bass guitar, Brian McGuire, guitar and vocals, Ron Prothe, drums and vocals, and Shawn Ames, guitar and vocals, performed their last show at the Jam4Dan benefit in January.

What began for Shawn Ames as an opportunity to play old school country and rock and roll covers on the weekend, blossomed into an innovative rock and roll entity that wrote, recorded and released its own material of classic rock inspired mayhem on it’s own label, Mad Dog Records while maintaining an extensive merchandise line that included t-shirts, panties, coffee mugs and teddy bears.

Although opening for the likes of White Lion, Eddie Money, Cheap Trick and Alice Cooper, offered great exposure, not to mention, a memorable experience, for the band; after awhile they began to lose the momentum needed to be successful in a competitive industry. So after four CDs, and countless gigs all across the Midwest, including an intense full scale multi-media production of Pink Floyds The Wall, the band decided to call it a day. As Ames puts it,

    “Nineteen years is a long time to be in the same band. I could keep going, but physically it was taking its toll.”

In the process of recording their fifth CD when the decision to fold was made, the members of Backlash continued to congregate to write and work on material for what would become their swan song.

Circling the Drain, the fifth and final CD is what every die hard Backlash fan would expect from the veteran rockers and much more.
Kicking the disc off with a straight ahead rocker, My Old School (Wants to Kick your New School in the A$$), Backlash flexes Rock and Roll muscles in a song that decries the advent and popularity of video games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero while real musicians get out and do it for real. Like Shawn screams,

    You buy a fake guitar

    And play living room rock star

    While I went out and payed my dues.
And if you’re a connoisseur of good old fashioned window rattling guitar feedback, you’ll love the ending when the Backlash boys let it shake for a full twenty seconds or more. Try doing that on your wii!

Coming up a little later on the disc, A Deeper Understanding sounds like something off of the 1969 Moody Blues LP, On the Threshold of a Dream, before trans-morphing midway into a mind-blowing masterpiece of a tune, sounding all the world like it could have been composed and recorded back in the psychedelic sixties.

But it’s the closer, Live All Your Dreams which is probably the most un-Backlash song to date, and a personal favorite. Sounding like it could be an outake from Neil Youngs After the Gold Rush recording sessions, Shawn seems to unload all the emotional baggage accumulated over the years of trying to make it in a rock band in a little over six minutes.

    Don’t you let nobody tell you
    That you can’t chase your dreams
    And those dreams they try to sell you
    Aren’t as great as they seem
    When you feel like you’ve been stepped over
    And no one hears your cries
    Let your head find my shoulder
    I’ll be right by your side

A melancholy ballad that reveals the emotions of an artist devoted to his work, and feeling ignored in the wake of his creativity, yet understands that despite the pain and opinions of so-called judges of our destinies, nobody can keep you from chasing and eventually realizing your dreams. A beautiful song, that appropriately brings to a close two decades worth of musical creativity.

Shawn Ames and the boys gave it a good run and should be proud of their accomplishments, and warmly recognized by the local music community for their efforts. Seveneightfive magazine feel it’s a privilege and an honor to pay tribute to this under-rated group of talented musicians, and, based on my criteria, probably the best overall band in the city.

Backlash will be having a CD release party in the Beag room inside Francis O’Dooleys Irish Pub located at 1930 Westport Drive Saturday evening April 30 from 5 to 7 p.m. The band will be autographing CDs, but no performance is planned.

Copyright(c) Jolly Rodger Music 2010 (in association with #9 Productions)

[April 2011 | Robin Cremer )
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I'm planning on writing a more in depth story about this later, but I wanted to put something out now just to (hopefully) get a few people excited. Despite the fact that Backlash is "officially" broken up, the band is releasing a final album of original material (and by original, I mean manifestly different from anything you've heard from them before - if you're a Backlash fan you will be surprised by this album, to say the least, and if you're not a Backlash fan you probably will be if you buy this album) titled Circling the Drain which will be out in a few weeks. Singer/guitarist Shawn Ames says that the band is done after this and that they almost definitely will not play this album live, which is unfortunate because, well, of every local band I've seen/talked to or whatever in the last year, Backlash seems to be doing the most interesting stuff.
Backlash, of course, has always been known for being a straight ahead rock and roll band. While they have dabbled with piano based balladry in the past, the bread and butter of the band has been balls to the wall rockers like "Bad Monster" - songs about drinking beer and rockin' out - songs that they thought their fan base wanted to hear. But the new album sees the band branching out and finally resorting to exploring their own interests. In my conversations with Ames, both for this story and personally, there was a strange sparkle in his eye as he talked about the album coming together. He continually mentioned The Beatles as a major influence on the album and Ames later said that the vocal harmonies on the new album are "pretty reminiscent" of Abbey Road. Ultimately he likens Circling the Drain to Backlash's version Sgt Peppers. As a result, though Ames says that the band has maintained their standard influences like The Who and Alice Cooper, the band has begun to explore other areas of influence that are not usually associated with your common bar band.
"We've completely gone over the edge with this stuff," says Ames. "The new album starts out as straight up the middle Backlash. Then it gets into stuff that sounds like we went into Pakistan or we went down to New Orleans. It's insane!"

Also, this is the first Backlash album to be created with only current material.

"This is the first record that Brian and I didn't cull from old material," says Ames. "We didn't go to something that I wrote five or six years ago. All of this is from October 2010 to literally this last Saturday (note: this interview was done on March 3, 2011). There's a lot that I did just this last Saturday that creeped the hell out of me. I don't know where it came from but it's creepy."

About the recording of the album, Ames insists "it's just like a regular band". Songs were written and presented to the other band members and no one said "that sucks" so Ames went with them. The songs are a mix of straight ahead Backlash style rockers with titles like "My Old School (Wants to Kick Your New School in the Ass)", to "Shake It" an infectious acoustic rocker done "completely on the fly" with a riff that "came out of nowhere", according to Ames. "Circling the Drain" is a fucked up Willy Wonka boat ride sort of experiment that will make your skin crawl, and the five layers of vocal harmonies that backbone "The Quiet Life" will make you realize why rock and roll was once important.

But it is the twists and turns in this new album that will make it worthwhile listening. "Cheap Thirlls" is an epic song that breaks from a straight ahead rock and roll song into a miasma of psychedelic exploration reminiscent of Pink Floyd. And the masterpiece of the album, "A Deeper Understanding", which Ames describes as "his baby" will blow your mind. It's full of backwards guitars, sitars and shit like that, and the breakdown of the song is like the sun bursting over the trees at dawn.

"It's about as un-Backlash as you can get," says Ames. "There's just too much stuff on here that separates us from every other band in this town."

Check it out, when it comes out, April 29th, 2011. 
Posted by Jack at 11:13 PM
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