|
Gainesville, FL’s Building Rockets began as a solo project in 2003 by songwriter Sam Heath, having recently dissolved his power-pop trio Ersatz Glow. After gazing resolutely into his navel and coming up with the germs of most of the songs that eventually became their debut album, The Union Forever, Sam felt a desire, a calling if you will, to bring these pop gems to the stage and sought out members to flesh out the group.
In December 2006, Sam, drummer Scott Littler, and original bassist Russell Johnson encamped in a Gainesville chapel with two carloads of recording equipment and produced their second album, Player Piano, which draws not only on their already evident power-pop leanings (“It’s a Lie,” “Girl, You’ll Be a Lawyer Soon”) but includes forays into country gospel (“A Song For Thomas, Who Doubted”), and Irish folk (“An American Wake”). Russell left the band in 2007 and after a year without playing a note, the band ultimately drafted a successor in Dr. Cleveland M. Windsor, a master blues guitarist and covert pop-music architect with a knack for combining McCartneyesque basslines with blast furnace intensity. With its new lineup in place, Building Rockets is creating hook-filled, powerful songs that borrow ideas from all over the map, defying allegiance to a particular sound. As frontman Sam Heath said, “Our roots are in the songs we grew up with, but our eyes are on the stars.” |
