Musical Style and Influences
The Badlees forged a distinctive sound through their formative years that fused rock and pop elements with a distinct Pennsylvania style they called "roots rock". This sound was best presented on their breakthrough album River Songs, released in 1995. Some of the band’s later efforts, especially Amazing Grace and Love Is Rain, branched out into several different sub-genres, such as new wave, blues, folk, country, and Americana.
The band members themselves drew their influences from diverse sources. Founding member Jeff Feltenberger was formally trained as a vocalist and multi-instrumentalist, with a bend towards folk, country, and bluegrass. Guitarist and chief songwriter Bret Alexander cites various influences ranging from John Lennon and the Beatles to Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, and Steve Earle. Drummer Ron Simasek is a huge fan of Frank Zappa and, along with bassist Paul Smith, the Canadian power trio Rush. Singer Pete Palladino drew his influences from a spectrum of rock and pop artists including contemporaries Counting Crows and Edwin McCain.
Read more about this topic: The Badlees
Famous quotes containing the words musical, style and/or influences:
“Syncopations are no indication of light or trashy music, and to shy bricks at “hateful ragtime” no longer passes for musical culture.”
—Scott Joplin (1868–1917)
“The most durable thing in writing is style, and style is the most valuable investment a writer can make with his time. It pays off slowly, your agent will sneer at it, your publisher will misunderstand it, and it will take people you have never heard of to convince them by slow degrees that the writer who puts his individual mark on the way he writes will always pay off.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)
“Without looking, then, to those extraordinary social influences which are now acting in precisely this direction, but only at what is inevitably doing around us, I think we must regard the land as a commanding and increasing power on the citizen, the sanative and Americanizing influence, which promises to disclose new virtues for ages to come.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)