As the hottest band to break out of Seattle in more than a decade,
Maktub walks a high road of expectations. To come out on top in that market, to
be voted Best Band in the Seattle Weekly over
hometown heavies like Pearl Jam, to more than hold their own while opening for
headliners like the Dave Matthews Band Earth, Wind & Fire and Coldplay,
Maktub has to be that good.
More than that: They've got to be different even as they draw from artists like Prince, Led Zeppelin,
and Sly Stone -- those who also channeled multiple influences into a sound
unlike anything played in their time.
Maktub's new CD, Say What
You Mean, compresses the diversity of their first two releases, Subtle Ways and Khronos, into an exhilarating, high-impact style. Locked into a
taut groove behind singer Reggie Watts (known throughout the Northwest for his
passionate vocals, riveting presence, live onstage sampling, and spectacular
Afro) the band digs down to its essence and comes up with a sound that's
original yet accessible to the widest range of listeners.
Think of it as a Soul sprinkled with psychedelia and a
high-octane, pop/rock blend. Better yet, don't think at all until you give Say What You Mean a spin. The thundering
drum lick that kicks off "Promise Me," the Memphis heat and teasing
beat of "Say What You Mean," the crescendos that whip the choruses of
"20 Years" into explosions of emotion -- whatever you want to call
this music, it's impossible to ignore and even harder to forget.
Producer Bob Power had something to do with this. His work with A
Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, India.Arie, Ozomatli, and The Roots is all
about getting to the heart of the artist. But, bottom line, Say What You Mean captures a great band at
a critical moment. Everything that comes before is preparation; from this
point, Maktub starts making some serious history.
Rewind to 1996 … Seattle teems with musicians who fall in and out
of bands, all of them wondering how to make their imprint in a city known for
its homegrown musical giants. Kevin Goldman, just off the bus from Phoenix with
bass in hand, meets Davis Martin. They play together the next day; it feels
right.
Davis calls on Reggie Watts, a young singer and student at Cornish
College of the Arts. Born in Germany, Watts grew up in Great Falls, Montana,
the son of an African-American Air Force officer and his French wife. Hoping to study jazz vocals and see what lies
beyond the flat Montana horizon, he moves to Seattle, spends a few months at
the Art Institute of Seattle, drops out, and begins performing with -- in his
word -- "gazillions" of local bands. After just a few minutes with
Martin, Goldman, and original keyboardist Alex Veley, Watts realizes that this
combination is unique. Before the end of the day they write their first song.
"The balance just felt right,"
Watts remembers. “Kevin and Davis are a
deep-pocket symbiotic rhythm section. Kevin came from a dub background. Davis
had played a lot of in-the-pocket, trip-hop stuff. And I've always been into
pretty much everything."
They hatch a plan: commit to each other. Cut down on other gigs.
Hold down day jobs to buy time as they develop the band. Don't record or
perform until they're ready. And call the group Maktub, an Arabic word that
Watts lifts from Paul Coelho's novel The
Alchemist. Translated as "it is written" or "destiny,"
it has a ring of inevitability that keeps everyone motivated as they settle
into the wilderness of rehearsal.
Time goes by, bringing changes. They finish their first CD, Subtle Ways, as a quartet, with the
talented Alex Veley on keyboards. Response is immediate: The album hits number
one on KCMU and later on the soul and urban charts at MP3.com and earns them
Best R&B Album at the Northwest Music Awards. They start picking up fans as
far away as England, though Subtle Ways isn't
available there.
Then they expand again, this time recruiting Thaddeus Turner on
guitar and Daniel Spils on keys. Thaddeus' scorching guitar work and Americana
roots along with Daniel's signature keyboard work add precisely the sweetening
they all want. The circle is complete.
"Daniel is really solid -- for lack of a better word,
German," Watts explains. "He learns everything perfectly and plays it
perfectly. He's added cool sounds, a good aesthetic, and is a great songwriter.
Now he's playing guitar too, which gives us even more to work with. And
Thaddeus adds the chaos that we need within that order: He plays beautiful
solos, he's really great at textures and soundscapes, and as a rhythm player he
adds that extra juice. He makes us rock hard."
Khronos, recorded
during one two-week stretch, follows in 2001. As more than 20,000 copies sell,
Velour Music in New York takes notice and, a year later, re-releases Khronos nationally. They take off on the
road for six months at a time, touring obsessively until they blow the trailer
spindle on their Chevy van -- for the third time. Taking this as an omen, they
head back home to write songs and demo most of them with their minidisc recorder
and a single button microphone. Winter sets in; wrapped now in long johns and
scarves, they start tracking Say What You
Mean, with Bob Power out from New York to produce. It's summer by the time
they're done, with the band's basement studio now a hotbox of creative fever.
From the heat of a Seattle summer comes Say What You Mean, the perfect distillation of Maktub, the herald
of their breakthrough as a vital new force. "When I look back," Watts
says, "I can say that we came out of the trip-hop scene -- Portishead and
all that. Now we've come to understand that this is just part of what we do.
There's still something trippy in what we do, but the songs have become
starker. There's always been a rock element in what we've done, but on the new
album that's our foundation. The next record will be even more rock -- more
stripped down and straight up."
“I guess this makes it easier to reach more people," he
muses, "but I've never thought of that as a conscious goal. I don't worry
about my image or feeling pressure from the industry to be this way or that.
It's more important that I never lose my connection to people on the darker
side, who like to experiment with all the parts of their lives, musical or
otherwise. That's where I get my inspiration. Really, all we want to do is rock."
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