Bledsoe: Roman Candle isn’t looking for fireworks, just great songs

Roman Candle has had to have patience in the music business. The group is, from left, Timshel Matheny, Skip Matheny and Logan Matheny.

Roman Candle has had to have patience in the music business. The group is, from left, Timshel Matheny, Skip Matheny and Logan Matheny.

Rock group Roman Candle has a modest goal:

“Our goal is not to write songs,” says lead singer-songwriter Skip Matheny. “Our goal is to write songs that will sound good in 100 years.”

So far, the band has had luck writing good songs with memorable melodies and hooks, but has been cursed when it comes to getting them out the to public.

The group’s ordeal began in 2002, five years after the group formed in Chapel Hill, N.C. The group released a debut album, “Says Pop,” on the tiny Outlook Records and, after winning rave reviews for both the album and performances, the band signed with Hollywood Records, which wanted to release an updated version of the disc. The album then sat in the company’s vaults for three years and the company tried to decide what to do with it. After a frustrating tenure, the group won release from its contract and the ownership of the album and signed with V2 Records. V2 released the album as “The Wee Hours Revue.” Again, the disc earned excellent reviews, but the following year, while Roman Candle was on tour in England, V2 was shut down.

In 2008, the group (Matheny, his brother Logan Matheny and his wife Timshel Matheny) moved to Nashville and signed with Carnival Records. The group released its second full-length album, “Oh Tall Tree in the Ear,” in 2009.

Matheny says Nashville is much different than Chapel Hill.

“Everybody here is making music all the time, every day,” he says. “Lots of people get paid for it and lots of people don’t. But you end up getting into situations where you meet new people and get involved in cool projects. This is the only city I’ve ever been to where you can actually get work done by going out to a bar at night.”

Matheny says, since high school, his primary interest in music has been songs.

“I’ve always been fascinated by songwriting as a craft. It’s an old art form, but very young in the actual documentation of it.”

He says the first songs that really made him pay attention was one of his parents’ 45-rpm singles:

“I think the first piece of music I really loved was Blondie’s ‘The Tide Is High,’ but my brain began opening up the first time I heard the Beatles’ ‘She Loves You,’ I just thought ‘Oh my gosh. This is just not of this world!’”

He says he’s inspired by everything from the songs of Cole Porter to Oasis’ Noel Gallagher, “and anybody who tells you they don’t like the Beatles or Bob Dylan, don’t trust them!”

Matheny says he used to listen to Kasey Casem’s “American Top 40” radio show and record all his favorite songs on a cassette recorder.

“The first 10 seconds was missing from every song,” says Matheny with a laugh.

Outside of the band, Matheny writes a column for American Songwriter magazine, which has allowed him to spend time with and gain tips from some songwriting legends.

“I got the chance to interview Tom T. Hall,” says Matheny. “I’ve never felt more like I was sitting at the feet of somebody giving me so much knowledge.”

In the end, Matheny says it’s going for the quality of songs that Hall has written that makes him keep working.

“Cole Porter sounds clever no matter who you are. John Prine, John Hartford, Morrissey ... they’re just good writers and their songs are timeless. That’s what you want to do.”

© 2010, Knoxville News Sentinel Co.
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