With another brand-new EP successfully dropped barely a year after the last one, multiple major festival appearances and two more recording projects already in the works, more than ever, Three Star Revival is on the move.
When BLANK caught up with singer Ben Gaines before Holler Jake’s raucous late Sunday night close-out set at Rhythm ‘N Blooms on May 19, the Three Star boys had just played a massive, celebratory hometown show on the Kid Curry Stage on Jackson Avenue that evening to smiling, dancing masses of festival-goers, after an intimate acoustic “Secret Show” at the new and buzzed-about Bluhen Botanicals retail space next door earlier that afternoon.
Gaines said he was elated but dragging after having stayed up late dancing and partying to the ebullient Tank and the Bangas set the night before and seeing music all day that day. He went to go get some air on the Barley’s porch and promised to catch up again before the band’s coming release shows.
Later in month, in the middle of the week leading up to Three Star’s album release show, BLANK touched base again and Gaines was sounding out of breath after moving a storage unit full of furniture to his new Nashville place and dealing with a “plumbing fiasco” as well, on top of working on “20-30 hours a week” these days on booking, social media, promotion and more for the band’s new “Reset EP,” which came out June 11, with packed release shows at Mercy Lounge in Nashville Friday May 31, and Scruffy City Hall in Knoxville the next night, June 1, with openers Hedonistas. They went on to play Bonnaroo for the second time on the Plaza 7 stage a few weeks later and release their music video for single “Floatin'” just after returning from the festival.
“It’s been a hectic week,” Gaines said just before the string of release shows. “Anytime you think you’re done, you’re not,” he laughs. “We are still handling everything,” he says of the band’s relentless drive in the independent self-managed realm that so many start-up touring bands are painfully familiar with–which has paid off so far: the repeat Bonnaroo invitations, the headlining sets at major venues in Nashville and Atlanta and the Three Star crew recently had one of the biggest opportunities of their young career, playing the stage just outside Nissan Stadium to huge crowds of partying tourists as part of the NFL Draft Weekend festivities in Nashville back in April.
“It was pretty cool,” Gaines says. “It was the biggest stage we’ve ever gotten to play on.” And the Titans even made each of the Three Star boys limited-edition jerseys with their names on them.
This is all on the strength of the band’s past albums and their most recent EP, the groove-rockin’ “Fade Away” (2018), which Blank talked to the guys about last May (https://blanknews.com/2018/05/three-star-revival-run-emotional-gamut-on-fade-away-ep/). Since then, they’ve continued to play relentlessly throughout the Southeast, building their fanbase and industry contacts.
Gaines says this “Reset EP” is less of an evolution or game-changer than it is a continuation of what they started with “Fade Away,” continuing to refine their sonic palette in the studio, finding their groove and sound.
With catchy, upbeat, sparkling funky soul-rock singles “Floating” and the “The Way That it Used to Be,” it’s clear Three Star Revival have a lot of the same mojo that they found on “Fade Away” and have continued to grow over the years (several friends of BLANK’s who attended the set at Rhythm ‘N Blooms having only heard the band’s name or seen them back in their earliest days came expecting roots rock or folk and were surprised, with multiple comments on the ‘sexiness’ and soulfulness of the tunes).
The rhythm section of Bo Kiztman’s drums and Tyler Reddick on bass continues to feel full and heavy with rumbling fills, yet smooth at the same time as it settles down and interacts with Greg Walton’s silky keyboard and organ runs and swells and Cam Moore’s controlled, jazz-and-blues-infused psychedelic rock guitar licks and solos, soaring when need be but always landing back with the band to groove with the rhythm or complement Gaines’ vocal melody. With some indie bands, lead guitar or drums will be used a weapon or as punctuation mark, effects used to challenge the listener and create a sense of cacophony or cognitive dissonance. With Three Star Revival, even when they’re taking the listener high on a really rocking build-up, the smoothness of it feels like cresting a wave on a catamaran with really adept sailors, so the listener is never jarred by transitions. The vocal/lyrical hooks are sticky and keep the songs coming back to the forefront of the mind (and Gaines’ ability to harmonize with himself and the production quality they’re getting on his vocals is superb). Gaines says the songs thematically aren’t meant to be conceptually linked but the sonic flow of the collection being so complementary makes them great to keep on stream and repeat driving around town or on a playlist.
Gaines says “it’s a continuation in the sense that we’re still honing in on our sound… Cam and Greg are starting a lot more of the tunes and that’s the….natural direction they’re heading..we kinda of want to write groovy tunes..get closer to what we want to sound like and who we are. We can’t say we’re ten different genres.”
“Undercover Love” is a sultry jazz groove with keys, sax and some soulful crooning from Gaines. The drums, bass and guitar stay subdued until the end when they walk up and down with the other instruments to a nice instrumental crescendo before dropping back down to repeating the hook and a nice soft fade-out.
The title track, “Reset,” showcases the band’s ability to build a groove around Moore’s and Walton’s crisp guitar/key riff-age. “Can’t we just reset?/Don’t take it all away” Gaines begs on the chorus, harmonizing with himself in reverb-drenched majesty, begging a lover to stay.
The EP starts with “All The Life,” a laid-back groove based around a simple chill drum-beat and what starts out as a simple piano chord riff and then gets keyboards and horns and guitars stacked with more self-harmonized stacked vocals. In the last review we compared Gaines to Justin Timberlake among others, but in their retro soul-funk-and-jazz homage sound, he often also comes off in moments like Michael McDonald-in a good way, on the higher-register end of that spectrum (think his more funkier soul-pop fare like “What a Fool Believes” or “I Keep Forgettin'”).
“It’s just been a lot of fun,” Gaines continues, talking about the bigger opportunities the band has earned as they’ve created a bigger sound and drawn a larger crowd. “It’s always fun having people coming out and dancing and stuff, it’s nice to work hard and have people come out and respect the fact that you have worked hard and come out and dance with you and it’s a good feeling, it’s a good sign.”
The immediate future plans for Three Star Revival? Gaines says possibly two more EPs this year–he says keyboardist Greg Walton may lead the band through producing one in the more modern pop style (built around programming beats, hooks and layering for a super-catchy, fun and slickly-produced sound), and then the other EP will go back to their full-band live-tracked traditional style, and the band is scheduling dates early and all throughout the summer.
“We’ve got pretty deep pockets in terms of the songs we want to get recorded,” he says.
“I think the nice thing about an EP, it’s good to be able to put out new music more and more often, so instead of maybe putting out a new CD every year and two months, you can play one big gig and make enough cash to go in and get five songs done,” Gaines says. “Also with an EP it’s almost just a collection of singles sometimes, it’s not so much a concept-driven thing as much as here’s what we’re listening to and thinking about, it’s kind of like a mixtape and it’s on a shorter time frame.”
So while Three Star Revival gets busier and busier and they may have to stop sometimes to wipe some sweat off their collective brow, pause and take a breath, it seems for Ben Gaines and the rest of the crew there’s no slowing down for the moment and they’d not have it any other way.
“It’s fun running around like crazy,” Gaines says. “it’s like [heck] yes, we just did this.”
The “Reset EP” is now available on all streaming platforms and online retailers. They’ll play next at Lafayette’s Music Room in Memphis June 27, July 19 at Aisle 5 in Atlanta and July 20 at Wanderlinger Brewing Company in Chattanooga.
