Two summers ago, Solid Gold was inescapable in the Twin Cities, playing everywhere from Rock the Garden to Grand Old Day and filling both First Avenue and the Minnesota Zoo on the heels of a little international buzz.
Partly by the band's own doing, Solid Gold became close to scarce over the past year. Two members of the band's core threesome, Zach Coulter and Adam Hurlburt, spent fall and spring on tour with Gayngs. Their only local gig of note so far this summer was at Barbette's Bastille Day block party. Maybe their most high-profile work of late was tweeting from the Sade concert.
Turns out, though, there has been plenty of activity behind the scenes. "We regrouped a while ago and pared things down a bit, and now we're starting to crank it back up again," singer Coulter reported last week.
As far as the paring down goes, they split with slide guitarist Shon Troth (now in Me & My Arrow). They also stopped working with a manager in London and recruited a guy closer to home: Nate Vernon, who also manages his brother Justin in Bon Iver and worked with Gayngs.
As for the cranking up, the group has been holed up for weeks working on a new album, which Coulter described as "a little more epic and grandiose" than its predecessor. The songs are finished to the point where they're about to start feeling out possible producers and labels.
After the buzz around 2009's breakout "Bodies of Water," Coulter said, "We talked to everyone from the biggest majors down to some cool indie labels, and it just made sense to keep it to ourselves. This next one, we're a little more open, but we're still playing it by ear and happy taking it as it comes."
In the meantime, the band is getting back to being everywhere. Upcoming gigs include the Link benefit for homeless youths Sept. 3 at the Nomad, plus Summit Brewing's 25th anniversary bash Sept. 10. And Solid Gold is part of the truly stacked lineup of local bands performing Saturday at the SoundTown festival before the Flaming Lips, whose festival in Oklahoma two weekends ago coincidentally featured Solid Gold -- but the staging fell apart in a windstorm before the Lips performed, eerily foreshadowing the Sugarland tragedy in Indiana.
"So it's extra cool we get to see the Lips in Wisconsin now," Coulter said.
