Aug 18, 2018
Wide Awake // The Truth // The Tune Inn 1998
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Wide Awake // The Truth // The Tune Inn 1998
Dissolve at the Tune Inn. 1999.
Into Another - Full Set at The Tune Inn. New Haven, CT. 4/15/94.
Recommendation Corner - Tune Inn: the Best Dive Bar on the Hill
What can I say? I’m a sucker for a dive bar. This recently remodeled treasure, located on Capitol Hill in Washington DC, was quite the find. From deep fried macaroni and cheese wedges to a deep fried burger, the Tune Inn had great food, cold beer and a constant Motown groove playing over the stereo. A friendly staff made us laugh and took great care of us – so much so that we went twice in our four day stint in DC. It even inspired Sean to get surreal with the photography.
Spring Heeled Jack - New Haven Advocate - 05.06.10
(Meg Herlihy photo)
In an otherwise quiet, idyllic suburban neighborhood, the muffled sound of an electric guitar escapes from someone’s basement. I ring the doorbell and the dogs inside bark like crazy, as dogs tend to do. The home belongs to Mike Pellegrino (vocals/guitar), and the band that’s about to practice is Spring Heeled Jack. They split up almost 10 years ago (my God, has it been a decade?). They haven’t played a proper show in eight years (they did one post-breakup reunion as a tribute to late drummer Dave Karcich). But now they’ve got two of ’em booked, and the dates are sneaking up fast. The first show is already sold out. No pressure, eh?
I’m gestured at to go around back, where I flip the latch on the gate and descend into a man-cave of a basement. There are two rooms. One is a cozy practice space where the guys are messing with their amps, getting the sounds right. The other houses a bar, the top of which glows like one you might find at a club that requires men to wear a collared shirt and dress shoes (the creative butchering of an Ikea lamp, I’m told).
The band members (two are out of town) file into the bar area, each grabbing a drizzly-Sunday-afternoon-in-April beer, and they immediately begin spouting memories. Saxophonist Pete Wasilewski just got off tour with Less Than Jake, his main gig since 2000. Today is his first practice back with the old band and his giddiness is infectious.
“To this day, Spring Heeled Jack is the most talented group of musicians I have ever played with,” he says. “We all pushed each other so hard creatively.”
“We still haven’t all been in the same room yet,” adds vocalist/guitarist Ron Ragona. “Not for a couple of years.”
Trombonist Chris Rhodes is on a plane, returning from Belgium with his current band, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones. Trumpet-man Tyler Jones is currently in Atlanta.
“It’s easy remembering, but the mechanics are a little tough,” Jones types, via the magic of the interweb. “And since I won’t be able to play with everyone until I fly up, it’s really tough to get that Jack feel. It all comes together when we’re all in the same room.”
As with any group of old friends, it doesn’t take long to fall back into old routines and habits, both good and bad.
“Within the first couple of songs of the first rehearsal, I didn’t even think about what I was supposed to do,” says Pellegrino. “The lyrics to ‘Addicted’ were coming right out. I guess I didn’t have to study. It was autopilot, ya know?”
Early Days
It all started back in 1991. In the beginning, there were only two ska bands in the state: Spring Heeled Jack and J.C. Superska (whom Wasilewski played sax for at the time). That was it.
Practices were held at Karcich’s parents’ house in Shelton, then as now, in the basement.
“He used to have a big ol’ waterbed,” says Pellegrino. “The Cadillac of beds. And a drum riser that was six inches off the ground. We’d set up — half on one side, the rest on the other.”
Bassist Rick Omonte (the same Rick from Shaki Presents, The Mountain Movers and Crooked Hook) recalls the scene at one of the many run-down clubs they played regularly back in the day: the Boiler Room in New Britain.
“It was run by this guy Chris, and when he found something weird, he’d spray-paint it silver or something and stick it on the wall,” he says. “There’d be like these half-mannequins that were painted with tiger stripes, sticking out of the ceiling and there was like, a giant syringe in the corner. I remember Chris Rhodes, who was new to the band, came in and he was like totally brought down. He looked so bummed out, looking at this mannequin thinking like, ‘What the fuck did I get myself into?’”
Then there was Studio 158 in Willimantic. The Sports Palace in New Britain. J.P.’s in Hartford. There was no shortage of places to play.
But there was one club, dirty as it was, that became the band’s home base. It was the Petri dish in which the ska cells were left to mingle and multiply. It was the Tune Inn, of course.
The Tune Inn
“That place was so sketchy, so cool,” says Pellegrino. “How many shows did we play there? 100? That’s not pushing it right? It was totally sketchy. I miss it. There was a burnt-up building across the street and parents would be like, ‘Where am I dropping my kid off?’”
The Tune Inn, formerly on Center Street in New Haven, was an all-ages club. It didn’t serve alcohol until near the end of its existence. It was a place for teens to go that wasn’t contrived (or chaperoned), to play, mingle and listen to music.
“The Space is probably the closest thing to it,” says Pellegrino. “They got a good thing going over there, but it smells way better than the Tune Inn ever smelled. It was the center of the New Haven renaissance. I mean, you’d go there to see no one in particular, and find the most eclectic mix of bands: Quest of the Moon Breed, Blind Justice, Thumper, Spicy Gribblets, Snapcase, Earth Crisis … it didn’t matter, people just congregated. And playing ska music then, when it was ripe, when there wasn’t anybody doing it as good as you were doing it. Yeah, that was great. I’ve had dreams where I’ve died, and when the part comes when you go to the place where you see everyone you love, I’m on stage at the Tune Inn, in my white polyester shirt, with a huge smile on my face thinking, this is it.”
Spring Heeled Jack was signed to Moon Records, the ska-only New York label which soon established itself as the epicenter of a new ska explosion. They released their debut, Static World View. Things were looking up for the band, and ska in general.
The Third Wave
Along with a new thriving scene came inevitable growth. The city of New Haven noticed the crowds and figured the best course of action would be to shut it down. Countless “Save the Tune Inn” shows and petitions somehow managed to keep the doors open for a few more years, but being constantly on the verge of extinction added extra excitement and vitality that wouldn’t have existed otherwise.
“I remember police and fire marshals coming and harassing [the Tune Inn’s owner] Fernando [Pinto],” says Omonte. “Tape measures to the doorways. Counting the kids to see if they were violating occupancy codes. They would make everyone exit the club, even if the show was starting soon, to verify count.”
“Fernando was kind of grandfather of the whole thing,” adds Pellegrino. “He housed it. He was like the only ‘adult’ that was fighting for the kids.”
And that’s when all the Skalapaloozas began happening. And the Skalloweens and Skanksgivings.
“All of a sudden it started gaining popularity, and next thing you know there’s 50 fucking ska bands,” says Ragona. “It got ridiculous,”
But sometimes it was ridiculous in a good way.
Like at the New England Ska Festival at the Nashoba Valley Ski Resort in Massachusetts where ska bands from around the country converged (including the The Pietasters who open Saturday’s show).
“I remember specifically, they said, whatever you do, don’t throw anything out [into the crowd],” says Pellegrino. “I had two garbage bags full of water balloons, a cooler full of Fla-Vor-Ice popsicles. All sorts of candy. We were beaning people in the face and they were just loving it. It was so hot out.”
There’s no shortage of road stories from this period. Another time, Omonte ate mushrooms when the band visited Disney World.
“Things got heavy,” he says. “I freaked out waiting in line for the Haunted House and ran, terrified, out of the building and right into some weird Disney security TV monitor room. Somehow I talked my way out of it.”
Mass Appeal Madness
“Once ska started getting on MTV and radio there were literally hundreds of ska bands popping up everywhere,” Wasilewski says. “All with bad lyrics and worse horn sections. ... After a while people just thought it was circus music.”
But Spring Heeled Jack was the cream of the crop, and they had big plans. A new deal with Ignition Records seemed like it could propel them to new heights.
Omonte says the band was naïve, but also skeptical.
“[We] bought into the ‘major’ idea for a minute but deep inside knew we were just product to them. We did get that silly video out of them [for “Jolene”]. That was a trip. I hoped they would push us to that ‘next level.’ That ever-elusive ‘next level.’”
The new album Songs from Suburbia was released with two epic shows at the Tune Inn in the summer of 1998.
“Two shows at the Tune Inn in one day,” remembers Jones. “I loved going home and taking a nap in between. Awesome.”
The Bosstones were topping the Billboard charts at the time, and it seemed like SHJ could be next in line. But the celebration was short-lived. Just six months into the album’s life, Ignition Records suddenly went out of business. Seemingly overnight, ska went from being the nationwide flavor of the month to being over-saturated and passe.
“We were featured on HBO, Access TV, the ‘Jolene’ video was on VH1 and MTV — and before we knew it the carpet was pulled from under us,” says Pellegrino. “It was still fun but we all kind of knew it wouldn’t get any better. That’s when Dave left, and everybody starting looking for a new train to jump before the ride stopped completely.”
Chris Rhodes couldn’t even play at the farewell SHJ show at Toad’s Place because he had already joined the Bosstones and had a show in New York that night.
Meanwhile, their alma mater, Moon Records, shut down in 2000. And then the Tune Inn itself, in January, 2002.
But then, the real tragedy — drummer and founding member Dave Karcich died suddenly from a brain aneurysm in April, 2002. The surviving members reunited for a single shell-shocked tribute show to Karcich, but the mood was somber. The wave had crashed as hard as it possibly could, and moving on was the only option.
The Reunion Shows
“We got together, 6 of the 7 members you’ll see at the May shows, for my wedding and played ‘Jolene’ and ‘Beggin’ and I think that reminded everyone how fun it was,” says Pellegrino. “Also, it sucks that you can’t buy any SHJ material unless you go on eBay and pay way too much. So when we decided to re-release our two CDs on vinyl with Asbestos Records, it just seemed to be cool timing that we’d reunite after calling it quits a mind-boggling 10 years ago.”
Opportunities for reunions had presented themselves in the past, but the timing or the situations themselves were never ideal. The idea of playing the songs without Karcich was particularly tough for Omonte.
“It is incredibly difficult,” he says. “He was the person who provided the pulse for the band. ... Thankfully, we picked our drummer for these gigs from a very short list. Not just friends, but guys who were really close to the flame. We have our boy Corky [Evans] playing behind the kit for these shows and I have to tell you, we’re all in good hands. Really. Just the other day at rehearsal, he slayed me with one of those Dave fills.”
The two shows, this Friday and Saturday at Toad’s Place, will give the band the chance to finally celebrate what they accomplished a decade ago. Now, at last, the time is right.
“The great equalizer in life is this group of people,” says Wasilewski. “No matter what anybody can ever tell you. The guys that you end up living in a van with — you don’t lose that.”
With that, it’s time for practice. Everyone grabs a fresh beer and heads into the other room. Ragona strums a familiar riff that starts the first song on the list (I’m not going to spoil the surprise, just in case it was an actual set list).
And all of a sudden it’s 1998 again.
Farside at the Tune Inn in New Haven, CT. 1/14/1995.
108 full set at the Tune Inn in New Haven. 9/4/1993.
Quicksand full set at The Tune Inn in New Haven, CT. 4/1/1993.