PureVolume

On its fifth album, Pressure Chief, Northern California band CAKE took an evolutionary step forward yet the signature elements of CAKE are still evident. McCreas warm baritone, which can range from deadpan irony to deeply sincere crooning, backed by his chunky-sounding acoustic guitar, run through a battered Fender Sidekick amp. Vincent di Fiores trumpet lines, which add an oddly cinematic touch. Bassist Gabe Nelson provides a solidly pulsating superstructure underneath. The songs, mostly penned by McCrea, which wed interesting melodies to strikingly original narratives. And it is the record where guitarist Xan McCurdy, who joined CAKE in 1998, really comes into his own. Even though CAKE wrote, arranged and produced all five of its albums, which isnt all that common in pop music, Pressure Chief departs from what preceded it by sheer force of the bands newly invigorated experimental proclivities.

By the time singer-songwriter John McCrea began playing around Northern California, in the 1980s, the last remnants of the Summer of Love were long gone. But Northern California had a few other choice lines of musical heritage. Californias Central Valley, for example, was home to Buck Owens, Merle Haggard and various Western Swing transplants from Texas and Oklahoma, and their hard-twanging sound would shape such Northern California rock bands as Creedence Clearwater Revival. Jazz was quietly influential, too; Dave Brubeck had a long connection with the University of the Pacific - which went under most young rockers radar, but band-class students like trumpeter Vincent DiFiore were very aware of Brubecks contributions to music. Also in the mix was 1970s horn-band funk, like Sly and the Family Stone, War and Santana hit their mark. And, it being California, you couldnt flip through the radio dial without encountering at least one Spanish-language station playing Mexican nortenos, corridos and rancheras.

But the corporate rock sound dominated interior California by the late 1980s, and an idiosyncratic singer-songwriter like McCrea did what any frustrated musician who couldnt get noticed in his hometown would dohe took his guitar to England, but he hated the music then popular in England, so he moved to Los Angeles to pursue a record deal instead. Not much happened, so McCrea returned to his native Sacramento and subsumed his identity in a new band, CAKE, which he put together with trumpeter Vincent DiFiore, guitarist Greg Brown, bassist Sean McFessel and drummer Frank French around 1990.

Gabe Nelson soon replaced McFessel, and the new band quickly became a hot item in Sacramento's downtown club and caf scene. For a while, you could see the band several nights a week, packing small venues like Caf Montrealwhere the dance floor would be packed with waitresses from the restaurant where McCrea was waiting tables during the day. Shortly thereafter, CAKE began trading shows with bands from the San Francisco Bay Area; the ploy worked for bands like the Loved Ones, who wanted to break out of San Francisco as much as CAKE wanted to break in.

In 1994, CAKE released its debut album, Motorcade of Generosity, on its own independent label, Stamen Music. When the band signed with the revived Capricorn Records label, Motorcade was re-released, and the song How Do You Afford Your RocknRoll Lifestyle? became the bands first college radio hit, followed by Ruby Sees All and Jolene. In the spring of 1996, Capricorn switched from independent to major distribution, and CAKEs second album, Fashion Nugget, was released. One of its songs, a Greg Brown-penned tuner called The Distance, helped propel the album to platinum.

The following year, Brown and Damiani left CAKE to form a glossier pop band called Deathray. Nelson returned as bassist, and McCrea used several guitarists on CAKEs following record, Prolonging the Magic, which was released in 1998; it contained such band staples as Never There and Sheep Go to Heaven. One of that albums session guitarists, Xan McCurdywhom McCrea was long familiar with as a member of the Loved Ones, then the Supernaturals, which became the Kineticswas asked to join the band.

In early 2000, CAKE signed with Columbia Records, and in the summer of 2001, the bands fourth album, Comfort Eagle, was released, after a single, Short Skirt/Long Jacket, had charted. At the time of its release, Rolling Stone described the bands music as modern pop that is both mechanized and organica pretty apt summation.

To find out more about CAKE please visit their website www.cakemusic.com