American Music Club

San Francisco

American Music Club was a San Francisco band led by the singer and songwriter Mark Eitzel. Eitzel was born in 1959 and grew up in Okinawa, Taiwan, Ohio and Southampton in England before settling in the Bay Area. He played in two short-lived bands, the Cowboys and the Naked Skinnies, each of which made one single, before starting American Music Club with the guitarist Scott Alexander, the drummer Greg Bonnell and the bassist Brad Johnson.

The group began as art-punk with a strong performance element, then took in folk-rock and country. After many changes of personnel it settled around Eitzel on vocals and guitar, Vudi on guitar, Danny Pearson on bass and mandolin and Matt Norelli on drums, with Johnson moving to keyboards. Eitzel stayed the center throughout: his singing, lyrics and themes. The debut, The Restless Stranger, came out on Grifter in 1985, and Engine followed in 1987. During the Engine sessions the producer and engineer Tom Mallon, who had been making uncredited additions to the band's tracks, joined as a full member, first as drummer.

California

California was released on Frontier Records on 10 November 1988. Mallon produced and recorded it and played drums. Pearson played bass and Vudi played guitar and accordion, with Bruce Kaphan guesting on pedal steel and Lisa Davis playing bass on the opener, Firefly. Eitzel wrote every song.

Trouser Press called it even more austere than the band's earlier records and said the emotional overload, particularly on Laughingstock, was positively anesthetizing. It also noted the record held the spitting brawler Bad Liquor. The reviewer at Head Heritage, writing in 2007, heard Vudi's guitar on Highway 5 and Laughingstock as close to the Lanois sound on Emmylou Harris's Wrecking Ball. Scaruffi said Eitzel sang in a whisper yet also moved between crooner and shouter. The album earned the band a solid cult following in Europe.

Mallon leaves, the major labels arrive

Davis became the full-time bassist after California, but her time was short, and Mallon moved to bass with Mike Simms on drums. United Kingdom (1989) was released only in Britain on Demon. It collected new material, part of it recorded live at the Hotel Utah in San Francisco. Ian Canadine of the Rough Guide called it and California the band's two unequivocal masterpieces. Soon afterward the band fell out with Mallon at a rehearsal, and he quit. Eitzel spent time with Toiling Midgets, then the band regrouped with Pearson back on bass and Kaphan on pedal steel and keyboards.

Everclear arrived on Alias in 1991, produced mostly by Kaphan with the band. Rolling Stone placed it among its top five albums of the year and named Eitzel Songwriter of the Year. The single Rise had a video that received minor play on MTV's 120 Minutes. The attention brought a deal with Reprise in the United States and Virgin elsewhere. With the drummer Tim Mooney in the line-up, the band made Mercury (1993) with the producer Mitchell Froom. It reached number 41 in Britain and Spin ranked it fourteenth among the albums of 1993. Treble later counted it among ten essential slowcore albums. A single from it, Johnny Mathis' Feet, came with a bonus live disc recorded at Slim's on 15 June 1993.

San Francisco followed in 1994. Kaphan left mid-tour, and in 1995 the band split after Eitzel asked for total control over songs and arrangements and the others refused.

Return

Eitzel continued as a solo artist, including a 1997 album, West, written with Peter Buck of R.E.M. The band reformed in 2003, and Love Songs for Patriots came out in October 2004 on Merge in the United States and Cooking Vinyl in Europe. Pitchfork called it not only as hearty as the earliest work but enriched by another decade of experience. A concert in Pittsburgh on 10 November 2004 became the live album A Toast to You. The Golden Age appeared in 2008, which Pitchfork described as a relentlessly interior record. The line-up changed again, and the band split for the last time in 2010.

Concert recordings from 1993, 2005 and 2009 are held in the Internet Archive collection of the band.