Music	Marah by Donny Kutzbach

Ten years ago, Marah started making records in a broken-down auto garage. Somewhere along the line, the group was slated to be the second coming of Springsteen, the new Oasis and the next great hope for rock and roll.

On 2002’s oft-maligned Float Away With The Friday Night Gods (Artemis) Marah at least nodded at the lunacy of the first two notions: Springsteen contributed guest vocals and a guitar solo and the recording was produced by Owen Morris (the man behind Oasis’ career-making albums).

Marah

As for the “next great hope” thing, listen to Marah’s If You Didn’t Laugh You’d Cry (on shelves this week from Yep Roc) and all that promise is certainly still there.

On Tuesday (Oct. 25) at 7pm, Marah plays with The Drams (formerly Slobberbone) at The Mohawk Place.

Marah is and always will be Philadelphia brothers Serge and Dave Bielanko. Street poets from a mold of their own, these working-class kids with pure rock intentions can share story songs and a personal tale of rise, fall and rise again in the record biz that displays blue-collar hued dreams and nightmares come true.

The band rose from playing tiny Philly dive bars to touring the Northeast circuit, earning fans with an unusually bold and sincere “guts on their sleeve” take on soulful roots, punk and blues-flecked rock and roll. The Bielanko brothers had a passion and intensity that was clear in the records and particularly in their live shows. It wasn’t only the size of the touring van that was getting bigger as they went from indie Black Dog, to roots icon Steve Earle’s E2 label, to record industry vet Danny Goldberg’s new “mini-major” Artemis.

“When we moved to Artemis territory it was a jump to the bigger leagues,” Marah’s chief guitarist Serge Bielanko says while folding his wash at a Brooklyn laundry.

The band was coming off a pair of remarkable albums: its 1998 debut Let’s Cut The Crap And Hook Up Later On Tonight (Black Dog) and 2000’s breakthrough Kids In Philly (E2) which caught the attention of the music world and placed the band on the tipped list. Earle and E2 hooked up with Artemis and Marah was part of the package.

“They gave us the opportunity and gave us a budget to pick any producer we wanted,” Bielanko recalls. “We came off a critically acclaimed record with Kids In Philly that basically didn’t sell that much. We didn’t want to repeat ourselves and wanted to do something really different. We figured we would try to do a record with somebody that could possibly get us on the radio.”

The brothers weren’t going to waste a chance for a shot at the top.

“When we handed in our list of producers, number one on the list was Prince,” Bielanko continues. “Owen Morris was down the list more.”

They tapped Morris, famed for his work with Oasis, with the notion that he would help them refine the sound without changing it.

“We wanted to remain this scraggly band of brothers and beer drinkers that could change the face of radio: idealistic shit. It kinda backfired but it was the end of an era, in a way, and made us realize it wasn’t what we did best.”

The resulting album, Float Away With The Friday Night Gods was a high-sheen, super-octane rock take on the band. The songs were some of the band’s best to date, but the over-the-top production was too much for some.

Many of Marah’s most ardent supporters—fans and critics alike—turned on them. Charges that they’d “changed” or had “become rock stars” were levied at the brothers. Serge Bielanko still sounds crushed from the experience.

“I remember some of the things people said, people you’d bellied up to the bar with after shows, and to know that they felt so vehemently against what we’d done. It hurt. We weren’t trying to sell out, but people didn’t see it that way.”

Float Away sank and a band that had made its name as one the best young live acts around barely supported what was supposed to be its big album.

“We hardly even toured behind it: we probably played a total of twenty-five shows for that record,” Bielanko says. “They were painful times. I got really down.”

He now calls it a “learning curve.”

“More than any other record we’ve made that one had another side to it. We cut that entire record in the control room. We never set foot in the room with amps.“

For that reason alone the band’s new effort, If You Didn’t Laugh You’d Cry, might be a million miles from Float Away.

Cut entirely live and spontaneously in a span of three weeks split between non-consecutive studio days and holed up in the apartment of long-standing band member and associate Kirk “The Barber” Henderson, the album bleeds with the rawness and spark of Let’s Cut The Crap... and bears the gritty, streetwise soul and stories of Kids In Philly. It arguably bests either one of those records, showing off Marah’s most focused set of songs to date and highlighted by a sturdy balance of joyful rock (“The Hustle,” “Poor People”), rag-tag country stomp (“Sooner Or Later”) and elegant folk rock (“City Of Dreams”).

Bielanko knows, however, that those early records will never be topped in some minds.

“I’m proud of our first two records and for maybe ninety percent of our fans, those are the records that still stand out,” he admits.

“The fact of the matter is, talking about, say, Springsteen or Dylan, there’s those early albums that are the defining moments for me. You’ve gotta continue to try and reinvent yourself and continue to tell the tale. There was a long time when I thought about how we would ever top Kids In Philly, but now I like this new record better.”

And in the spirit of Marah’s continuing reinvention, Serge’s guitar is not his only leading voice. His distinct vocals are heard on three songs, including the late-night lament of down-trodden NYC lovers called “Dishwasher’s Dream.”

Serge’s arrival as a vocalist can be chalked up to brotherly love.

“I gotta give credit to my brother Dave.” Bielanko admits. “He pushed me in that direction. I’m not a huge fan of singing, partly because I can never remember the words I wrote. We cut a few of those songs with my vocals but with the intention of Dave singing them later. When we were done everybody was like, ‘We should keep that vocal.’ Out of five records and sixty songs, I’ve sung four. Fair enough!”

“I’m not into the every two and half years having a record thing,” Bielanko continues, “Those days are over for us.”

Indeed. How about three records in the last year and a half? (Or better yet, five if you count the demos version Float Away: Deconstructed and a “lost” live recording Kids In Amsterdam: Live on VPRO on their own private stock label, PHIdelity.)

While If You Didn’t Laugh comes in a little over a year after 2004’s doo wop and rock-soul-filled love letter to their hometown, 20,000 Streets Under the Sky (Yep Roc) this year is also topped by the biggest curveball yet: Marah’s Christmas album!

Indeed, the band you’d perhaps expect to be the last on earth to make a holiday record has issued A Christmas Kind Of Town (also this week on Yep Roc) for an album that mixes classic standards and fresh originals into the coolest yule LP since Phil Spector’s Christmas Gift For You.

“We’re big Christmas music fans and love the season. We needed to throw a Christmas record into the pot,” Serge says.

What will easily be the best party record this holiday season could literally be called the hottest one ever made.

“It was July and a 100 degrees in the apartment where we recorded it. Of course we had the place decorated and everything. It was the most fun I’ve had.”