The Melismatics: Everyday rock stars

ST. CLOUD -- A sign of either the smallness of St. Cloud's downtown area or the enormity of one sandwich shop's reputation, the disparate worlds of cover bands and original rock acts uncharacteristically met up over 6-inchers at Erbert & Gerbert's two Friday nights ago.

Two bands -- 10,000 Days (a Tool tribute group) and the Melismatics (pop-rockers who play their own songs) -- happened upon each other following their sound checks at St. Cloud's two main rock clubs. Neither said a word to the other, but plenty was said by how their gigs would turn out.

A couple of hours later at the Red Carpet, 10,000 Days drew several hundred people. Around the corner at the Rox Tavern, the Melismatics played to about 40, including a super-drunk guy carrying two oversized White Russians who tried to pick a fight with everyone (and thus cleared out a few of the 40).

The Melismatics themselves never back down from a fight. They learned to stand tall a couple years ago at a club in Chicago, where they and another band from Minneapolis that shall remain nameless played to a paid attendance of four. Yep, four.

"We went up there and did our regular, full-on show," recounted frontman Ryan Smith, "and the other band sort of screwed around. They even made fun of us for giving it our all."

It turned out that one of the people in attendance that night was an advertising exec who would later hand the band a $15,000 check for use of one of its songs.

"Every gig matters" was the moral of Smith's story.

The Melismatics lived up to that lesson at the Rox. Despite the meager crowd, the band played as if it was at Madison Square Garden, making a DVD and double-disc live album. Smoke machines, flying leg kicks, climbing on the drum riser, artfully arched necks -- you name it, the band delivered it all alongside their feisty, fast, '80s-poppy, '90s-alt-rocky brand of tunes.

Smith's red-haired wife, who goes by the nickname Pony, was especially animated, bouncing between guitar and keyboards, providing undeniable sex appeal. Messy-haired bassist Mark Wade stole moves from Sid Vicious and Tommy Stinson. Drummer Ron Caron even hammered out a short drum solo.

Rock 'n' roll was alive and well and thriving on a stomach of subs and Red Bull.

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A few hours before rocking the Rox, the Melismatics were huddled in their van on the way to St. Cloud, talking about everything from Kiss' worst song ever ("Shandi," which they named their van's female-voiced GPS system after) to Lollapalooza in Chicago (where they performed this summer after winning a contest sponsored by the music-promotion site Sonicbids.com) to, on several different occasions, the Jonas Brothers.

The Brothers -- America's favorite tween band of the moment, and proud virgins -- first came up in response to a question raised by Pony's school homework: "What are positive examples of sexuality in today's modern world?"

Weirder than the question was the fact that Pony is simultaneously going to school to become a sign-language interpreter (both her parents are deaf) and a massage therapist (a sure line of work). She's also still waiting tables. Oh, yeah, and she plays in a very busy band.

All the members of the Melismatics juggle everyday duties like these along with their band's ambitious schedule, which was around 100 gigs last year alone.

"We'll come home for like two weeks and really, really work our asses off," Wade explained, "and then we'll go back on the road and work just as hard there. It's nuts. But it works out."

For this band, things seem to work out in weird and unforeseeable ways -- not unlike the encounter with the ad exec doling out 15 grand (even though their song never appeared in an ad). They also met the owner of an Indy race-car team at a show in Indianapolis, one of their most-frequented cities. He wound up putting the band's logo on the nose cone of two of his cars, one of which happened to crash on national TV last month (to the band's good fortune).

"I taped the race, and lo and behold, the ESPN2 cameras closed right in on 'The Melismatics,'" Caron enthusiastically recounted.

And then there was the chance meeting last year at a gig in Austin, Texas, with the guy who wound up producing the new Melismatics record -- around the same time he was also working on the Jonas Brothers' latest, craze-heightening No. 1 album.

"I saw their set and was like, 'Wow, they're really tight, and there are real rock stars in this band,'" recounted the producer, John Fields, who hails from Minneapolis but now works mainly out of Los Angeles. "Then I saw them afterward, packing up all their gear super-efficiently in their hipster clothing. I could tell they're also a band that really works hard."

Fields asked to work with the Melismatics that very night. They wound up recording "The Acid Test," the band's third full-length album, in both L.A. and Minneapolis sporadically over the past year. In either city, they would hammer through the tracks in just a few days.

"We've been playing these songs live so much, when we got to the studio it was really smooth and fast," said Wade.

Smith added, "But it was also interesting to take these songs we'd been playing for a year-plus and have John make his mark on them, and try different things with them."

Most significant among those different approaches was moving Pony up to the microphone more, which was Fields' idea. She sings almost as much as Smith does on "The Acid Test," and together they create some lively boy/girl vocal sparring. The album's first single, "Soul Sucker" -- one of the disc's many tracks with a snide, modern-world-weary theme -- could even be called more her song, although Smith still wrote all 10 tracks.

"John thought one asset we had that we weren't fully using was her," said Smith, who was fine with the suggestion. "I've always liked bands that had a female co-singer. At the back of my mind, it's always something I wanted."

Pony herself also liked the idea. No inhibitions on her part.

"I was like, 'Finally!'" she said. "I've always wanted to have that kind of role in a band, but didn't want to push it."

Of course, such a major transition in any other band might have been more traumatic (the Pixies anyone?), but in this case the dueling vocalists in question were also a married couple, four years and counting.

"If it were anyone else, they'd probably be like, 'I don't know about that...'" said Pony (real name: Kat Hixon-Smith). "But Ryan understood what I could do as a performer."

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She and Smith -- both natives of Twin Cities 'burbs -- actually first met playing in another band, Mark Mallman's.

Smith, 31, has played with the piano-straddling rocker off and on for more than a decade (mostly off as of late). When Mallman hired Hixon, 28, into his band as bassist in the early '00s, she and Smith resisted dating at first. When they did finally hook up, they kept it a secret for several months -- their "inter-office relationship," as Caron laughingly put it.

It was mostly a natural progression for Hixon to join the Melismatics. The band had already seen a lot of musicians come and go through its ranks over 10 years, including guitarist Jeremy Ylvisaker, who now plays with Andrew Bird, and ex-12 Rods and Kid Dakota drummer Christopher McGuire.

Wade has been rocking with Smith the longest. The two met when a friend told Smith he "had to see this guy with lightning fingers." Caron, a onetime B-Sides drummer, joined around 2004 after an audition ("I was auditioning them," he said). Hixon's addition seemed to finally cement the band, and that's when it hit the pavement.

During the making of "The Acid Test," which the Melismatics will promote with a release party Saturday at the Fine Line in Minneapolis, the group spent plenty of time auditioning for big record labels. In the end, though, it remains an independent act -- and an interesting one at that.

"Acid Test" will be a good test for the post-conglomerate, MySpace-era music industry. The Melismatics have everything the fading corporate labels always used to want in bands -- a flashy stage show, a stylish look, lots of hook-laden songs and, of course, a record producer who's worked with other big-selling acts (Fields' résumé includes Switchfoot, Jimmy Eat World and Rooney). Inquiring minds can't help but wonder how far a band like this one -- vs. some scruffy shoe-gazing indie-rock band -- can go in the do-it-yourself world.

None of that business stuff seemed to be on the mind of the band members, though, as they got ready for their seemingly unimportant gig at the Rox.

"Has anybody seen the girl in the band?" Smith called out, as their smoke machine started pumping onto the stage. Showtime.

Pony emerged, and they all stormed their instruments. One might have imagined a pained look on their faces as they prepared to face the small crowd, but heck if they weren't all smiling at each other. And not long after they kicked into the opening track of their new CD, "Industry of Cool," so was most everyone else.

Take that, you cover bands.

Chris Riemenschneider • 612-673-4658