Local Minneapolis powerpop group Terramara release their new LP, Dust & Fiction, with a big CD Release Show at Trocaderos this Saturday, Oct. 11 at 8 pm.

Here’s a track off the new album:
Terramara : “The Other Shoe” (mp3)

This week we had the opportunity to sit down with group leader Robert Meany to chat about the band, their sound and new album…

Who is Terramara?
Terramara has primarily been a vehicle for my songwriting over the last ten years or so. For most of those years, it has been a four-piece group with me on keys and vocals, and then bass, guitar, and drums added to the mix. There have been a lot of changes in the line-up over the years, but the current set of players has been solid for about five years or more: Karl Koopmann on guitar, David Thomas on drums, and we tag team on bass with James Towns doing the lion’s share, and Tom Larson when needed.

How has the group evolved from Jon Ken Po?
Jon Ken Po was my first experiment with writing and performing my own music with a group. It was fun at first, but there wasn’t much a cohesive sound as we had two main songwriters and very different styles. I would do my songs and he would do his and it ended sounding like two groups instead of one. I finally decided to break off and form Terramara so I could do my own thing. Looking back, I think needed Jon Ken Po as a starting point to gain experience and confidence in myself as a performing artist, but I soon realized I would be more happy focusing the band around my own songs.

It’s been nearly 10 years now. What’s new? What’s the same?
I think Terramara has always been centered around piano-based pop songs. And we haven’t really changed much in that regard. Although some of our material might sound of a certain golden era of piano pop in the 70-80s, my hope is that there is something timeless about it. I think a good song never goes out of style, and that is what I aim for every time out. We definitely are not chasing any trends. At first, I think our style was a little more jazz/prog-rock with dense arrangements, but over time I have moved more in a pop-rock direction with the songwriting. I think the early style came from my background in jazz piano and my classical training. I also think on a lot of the early stuff I was always trying to do something funky, with mixed results. Now I feel more influenced by singer-songwriters and have been honing my ability to write a good straight-forward pop song. What’s always been different about us is we try to do that with some refreshing twists and harmonies that you might not hear on the radio.

What demographic/psychographic are you finding best fits your musical genre?
We seem to have a broad appeal, but not necessarily mainstream. I guess I mean that there are a lot of older folks who like us because we remind them of their favorite bands from the 70-80s, but we are introducing a lot of younger folks to some interesting sounds that they don’t often hear these days in a new way. We also seem to have a lot fans who are musicians. I think it has to do with the level of our playing abilities and how musically interesting the tunes are to anyone who has studied music.

What’s the story on recording the new album?
This is our third album, and I wanted to try something different this time. As I said, I have been moving toward doing more straight up pop-rock songs and wanted to capture that with with a more modern production style. Part of that was making the guitars a little more prominent than on our other records. So we enlisted the help of Jon Herchert, a great guitarist in his own rite for Mango Jam and more recently with Johnny Lang. It turned out he was also quite a budding producer and had his own studio. He has produced Divorcee and Tim Mahoney among others. He really knew how to get some great guitar sounds and how to mold our songs into a modern sounding album. I give him a lot the credit for how great it sounds. We did the initial drums and piano at Winterland Studios in MInneapolis and the rest at Jon’s studio. We started recording around this time last year.

What’s the “Summer’s End” or “Running Down the Avenue” of this album?
It’s hard for me as the songwriter to pick a favorite cuz I like them all. Otherwise, why would I write them? I think Blue Revolution has the upbeat, catchy quality of “Running”, as does “On The Bus”. I am particularly proud of “The Other Shoe”. It all came to me so quickly over a period of a few hours and I didn’t have to do much editing. Those kind of tunes always end up sounding the best and the most natural. I still get excited about playing it and listening to it. No small feat when you consider I have heard it hundreds of times by now. And, well, everyone seems to like “Losing My Mind” as an old school Terramara song with a nice groove. “All That I Am”, I am told, is a strong one in the ballad category.

Tell me what’s going on with your CD release show. Horn section?
As we did for our last release, we are putting together a massive band to celebrate this CD. Although we didn’t use horns on the recording, we have incorporated horn parts into our live show and are going to be joined by a four-piece horn section at the CD Release Show. With all the studio wizardry we employed this time around, we also needed to add a second keyboard player (Charlie Peterson) a second guitarist (Producer Jon Herchert!) and a couple background vocalists to get all the parts out there.

The celebration will begin at 8 pm on Saturday October 11th at the swanky Trocoderos night club and restaurant in downtown Minneapolis. Owen Sartori, a great local popster, and his band with be opening for us. We are planning a huge two-set concert with a brief intermission. Fans can look forward to hearing all their favorite Terramara songs old and new.

Where can people get the album?
We have local (Minneapolis/St. Paul) distribution at Cheapo and Electric Fetus, and online folks can buy the CD at our website, terramara.com, or at CDBaby.com, Amazon.com or iTunes.