Badlees Biography
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An incredible opportunity arose for the band in 1994. Bud Light, the band's primary sponsor, offered the band the opportunity to
play a series of dates at the Qingdao Beer Festival in China. The Badlees, the only western entertainment performing that year,
played about ten shows over the course of five days, many being short, unplugged acts sets in a huge tent that held about 2,000
people and one full, two-hour outdoor set to a crowd of about 8,000.
Soon after the band returned home, they headed back to the studio to start on another album. They planned on calling this
next one simply “The Badlees”, as a symbol of their commitment to hit the "reset" button and return to their roots musically, but
soon found a more fitting title as they commuted to the studio each day along the Susquehanna River.
The new album would ultimately become River Songs, and would be the catalyst that finally propelled the Badlees into the
national spotlight. Right from the jump, River Songs displays it dedication to the "roots rock" musical tone, opening with "Grill
the Sucker", a down home blue-grassy tune fueled by a mandolin riff with acoustic guitars, banjo, harmonica, jaw harp and stumpf
fiddle. The short instrumental served as a deliberate, unspoken statement by the band as to the direction they were headed with
this new album. The album would also spawn three national hits and two professional videos for the songs “Fear of Falling” and
"Angeline Is Coming Home".
After its release by Rite-Off Records on February 28, 1995, River Songs rose meteorically, selling over 10,000 copies
independently in its first few months. This caught the attention of Fred Shades, an executive at A&M Records based in Philadelphia.
Although The Badlees were now receiving attention from several major labels like Columbia Records, Shades was able to convince the
band to sign with the new A&M subsidiary label Polydor/Atlas.
On July 18, 1995 the entire band was flown to Los Angeles and given
the "star" treatment while Selders and the lawyers worked out a record deal for two albums, River Songs and a future album.
Further, River Songs was accepted by the company "as is", with no further production required for the national release.
The Badlees would spend the next year and a half constantly playing, usually as a supporting act for a national
headliner. Their first really big show was opening up for Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page & Robert Plant in front of an audience of
about 17,000 at the Buffalo Memorial Auditorium in Buffalo, NY. Later they would join tours for Bob Segar, Greg Allman, The Gin
Blossoms, and Edwin McCain, among others and perform throughout North America.
In March of 1996, the band shot a video for "Angeline Is Coming Home". The video was directed by Anthony Edwards, an
actor then staring on the television drama E.R. Edward's co-star on the show, Emmy award-winning actress Juliana Margulies, was
cast to play the "Angeline" character in the video. The video was shot on the famous Charlie Chaplin soundstage, where many famous
music videos were created, such as "Every Breath You Take" by The Police, "Ghostbusters" by Ray Parker, Jr., and the star-studded
video for "We Are the World" in 1985.
Between the various national tours, the band booked shows back in Pennsylvania to work out new material for their much
anticipated follow-up to River Songs. These shows were often festive and light, with entertaining, improvised medleys and always
packed to the hilt.
By the end of 1996, the band took a and hoped to turn their attention to writing and recording their next album. It had
been over two years since the band produced River Songs, the longest duration between albums since the band's inception, and they
had a respectable array of new material and were anxious to get the professional recording process underway. This second national
release on Polydor was originally slated for late 1997 but, at the request of the parent label A&M, which had many of its major
artists releasing albums for the Christmas season that year, the release date for the next Badlees album was moved back to
February 1998.
The recording process finally began in Autumn of 1997 when the band entered the Bearsville Recording Studio to record
material for the album that would be titled Up There, Down Here. The state-of-the-art, multi-million dollar studio was in a rustic
location in the Catskill Mountains, just outside the artist community of Woodstock, NY. It had been the site of previous recordings
by artists like The Dave Matthews Band, Blues Traveler. and R.E.M.. and it was a unique experience in the long history of Badlees
recording and producing.
Badlees Biography
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