Metro Pulse/Music/The Faults

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Who:
The Faults, opening for Superdrag

When:
Thursday, April 19

Where:
Market Square, downtown

How Much:Free

Mic Harrison takes the humming pop-rock of the Faults into the studio and out on the road.

by Matthew T. Everett

The Faults are all crowded, like working-class gangsters from a mafia ring in Ohio or Pittsburgh, around a dim-lit booth at the Old College Inn on Cumberland Avenue, downing oversized happy hour Bloody Marys from beer mugs and chain-smoking cigarettes. Frontman Mic Harrison, especially, has that shell-shocked look of a bad hangover in his eyes.

But the Faults are due a small celebration. After all, they've got a debut record in the can, set for release on April 24, and tonight they'll open, with fellow locals Geisha, for Superdrag in the second installment of the Sundown in the City series of free shows on Market Square. (It was a cookout at Superdrag drummer Don Coffey's house that got them in the shape they're in this afternoon.) They hope for a CD release show sometime in May. In the last few months, they've opened for Guided by Voices here in Knoxville and played Asheville, Toledo, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Nashville, and Huntington, West Virginia, trying to build a buzz for the release of their CD, and they're planning a regional club tour for the summer. Add the built-in name recognition that Harrison brings from his days as guitarist, sometime singer, and co-songwriter—like the live favorites "Amy 88" and "Sooner or Later"—for the V-roys, and good things seem to be in order for the Faults.

"We've been practicing our balls off," Harrison says, rubbing his black-framed nerd glasses deliberately between thumb and forefinger, as his eyes regain their customary sparkle. "Well, I've still got 'em, but in the last year we've been playing a lot, and it's finally paying off. We needed this year to play and play and play. Now it's time to move to the next step and get out of town."

The Faults—Harrison, guitarist Robbie Trosper and drummer Jason Peters (both from Ramblin' Roy), and, for now at least, former V-roy Paxton Sellers on bass—first got together last spring (with V-roys drummer Jeff Bills), after the V-roys split on New Year's Day of 2000. (While the band searched for a name, they were known unofficially as the Three-roys.) After the record was finished this winter, Bills left so he could focus his attention on the fledgling Lynn Point record label (www.lynnpoint.com), which will release the Faults' self-titled debut. Peters joined soon after, but then Sellers announced that he, too, was leaving to complete his degree at UT. He's agreed to play the remaining Faults shows in town through the spring, but the band hopes to find a replacement for their summer tour.

Things have changed for Harrison since the V-roys knocked on his door in Bradford, Tennessee, north of Jackson, back in 1995. He gave up a settled small-town existence to take a shot at rock 'n' roll fame, and he's sticking to it. "I owned a house, owned a business, had a wife. I've still got the wife," he says. "Yeah, in appearance I was settled down, anyway. It's been a big change. The biggest change has been the money. I used to have it. Now I don't."

The new record—recorded with Sellers and Bills—could easily pass for a new V-roys record without any Scott Miller songs. More pop than twang, more hooks and shout-out-loud choruses than pensive ballads, but not a startling departure from Harrison's material for his former band. That's bound to change as Trosper writes more material for the band, and as Harrison extricates himself from the V-roys alt-country template. "A few of the songs were leftovers," Harrison says. "Toward the end we started writing stuff together, where you could say, 'That's definitely a Faults song.' It kind of frees me up, and I know the next one is going to be even better...For the next record, Rob's got some good songs. I wish we could have used them this time."

So does Trosper. "I really like the record. My parts are really good," he says, laughing over his second Bloody Mary. "But they left me high and dry as a creative artist."

The new songs, already worked into the live set, lean more toward the heavy alternative pop of the Pixies or Guided by Voices than the rootsy power-pop that's on the record. The GBV show also proved that the Faults are just as skilled at taking on the extracurricular expectations we all have for our rock stars. "We drank 'em under the table," Trosper proclaims, well aware of GBV's reputation for excess. "They left early because they were so embarrassed, and we drank the rest of their beer."

Asked to describe what the Faults are all about, Trosper just shrugs, holds out his hands, and wrinkles his mouth in a pose of abject bemusement. "Can you print that?"

But Peters offers a more philosophical answer: "When you have to pee for a long time, you know that euphoric feeling when you finally let it go? That's what the Faults are like."