No Woods: A Chat with Stompbox

Stompbox were a hardcore/metal/rock band from Boston. Their one album, 1994’s Stress on Columbia might be one of the more obscure alt rock records that flooded the marketplace but it’s great. A lot of good riffs and plenty of attitude; unfortunately it didn’t sell and the original band were done by 1995. In 2021, in response to a friend falling ill and having massive bills, the band reunited for their first shows in almost 27 years. With this news coming out, I reached out to guitarist Jeff Turlik and he agreed to talk about the band’s history and what this reunion really meant to them.

Pete Crigler: What got you interested in music?

Jeff Turlik: My grandfather was a guitarist when he was a young man. He met my grandmother at a dance that he was playing. This was in the 1930s. When I was a little kid, my grandmother filled our house with musical toys…organs and pianos, horns, drums, you name it. When I was 11, my grandfather taught me a few chords on his guitar.  

My brother was a big influence on what I listened to…Beatles, Yes, Led Zeppelin, The Clash, DEVO, AC/DC etc. 

Pete: How did Stompbox come about and what was the Boston scene like at the time?

Jeff: Erich and Pat were in a band called Bilt Speer. I had recently moved from Pittsburgh to Boston to attend Berklee Music School. Pat worked in the school book store and struck up a conversation with me over my Bad Brains t-shirt. I tried out for their band, we played some gigs, we changed the name, parted ways with the original drummer and found Zeph through fliers we hung around Boston. This was 1990-1991.  

The Boston scene was amazing, with a lot of places to see live music and a pretty healthy loft-party scene. You could easily walk or bike anywhere in the city, see 2 shows and hit an after-hours party in the same night. It was a special time… literally every night of the week you could see something…industrial synth / goth, noise, punk, hardcore, indie rock, grunge, hip hop, metal, garage & surf rock, and of course plenty of jazz and classical music around Berklee and the New England Conservatory. You name it. Super creative place. 

Pete: How would you describe the band's sound?

Jeff: Sometimes it’s easiest to say we’re a metal band, since we have loud guitar riffs, screaming vocals. A fair amount of dissonance. I like to think we’ve got some hooks and complex chords in there too. Some unconventional time signatures occasionally. Post-hardcore is a term we use a lot…slower and more melodic than a lot of hardcore bands, but noisier and less “metallic” than most metal bands. Somewhere between the cracks of grunge, hardcore, indie rock, metal. We loved the Melvins, Fugazi, My Bloody Valentine, Bad Brains.

Pete: What was it like making the seven inches?

Jeff: At the time it was financially challenging to record and release a full-length record. This was before you could burn your own cd or email an mp3. 7” records were a great way to get a couple of songs out for radio airplay, book shows and to sell to people who bought records. Cassette tapes were common back then. We had a 7-song tape called Travis that we got a lot of mileage from. That tape got into the hands of a manager and lawyer and led to us signing with Columbia Records. We later did a couple of 7”s with Columbia as promo items.

Pete: What was songwriting like within the band and what was the inspiration for No Woods?

Jeff: Songs generally started with riffs that Pat or I would write. He’d write a verse riff, I’d come up with a chorus or bridge and vice versa. Then we’d arrange them with Zeph. Vocal parts were always last, and often not fully fleshed out until the absolute last moment before put to tape.

Songs had titles before there were lyrics. We loved making each other laugh and that’s where appropriating song titles came from, like Neil Diamond’s Forever In Blue Jeans. Abstracted as a concept…forever in blue jeans…sure. No suit and tie for THAT person. No khakis. No leather pants. That sounds like a great name for an angsty heavy metal song! (sarcasm)

No Woods was one of these appropriated song title jokes. We were asked to contribute a song for a compilation CD to benefit an effort to save Walden Woods from development (site of Henry David Thoreau’s book Walden).

The title was originally “No Woods…No Backstage Pass!”, a Dadaist take on the Funkadelic song title (No Head No Backstage Pass). We later shortened it to No Woods. 

Musically, we loved riffs that would turn around over a straight beat. Led Zeppelin’s Kashmir is a good example of that. Like Kashmir, No Woods’ riff is a repeated 3 beat pattern over drums in 4.  

Pete: How did the band come to sign with Columbia and how do you feel about it all now?

Jeff: After we recorded the Travis tape, we booked a tour around the US, playing as many places we could, usually to nobody. We had an old van that broke down every day and eventually died in Minnesota. We bought an even older van for a couple hundred dollars from a stranger at the gas station where we were stranded. We continued on and had some good shows here & there, particularly in Seattle. By the time we got to LA, buzz from a prior NYC show had spread and a meeting with a lawyer had been set up. We barely made it back to Boston in the new-old van, through crazy snow storms with a broken axle we didn’t know about.

After we returned, the lawyer and our manager set up meetings with labels in NYC and we liked what Columbia was offering.  

It’s important to note that at this time, Nirvana had just gotten huge with the release of Nevermind. This caused a feeding frenzy with all of the major record labels signing every loud underground band they could find. We got swept up in that.

I imagine the 4 of us have different perspectives about how things went with Columbia. I was mostly happy with how things went, up through the completion of the record, but at a certain point our manager was working against our A&R person and everything went south from there. We fired the manager but eventually the A&R person also left Columbia, which left us without an advocate at the label. This made it impossible to get any support - radio, print, MTV, tour support - all of it evaporated.

I also think we were generally difficult for the label to deal with…we were adamant about how we were presented, what the artwork and messaging would look like, what kinds of bands we didn’t want to be associated with etc.  

It’s possible that we might have had more success if we let go and let them make all of the decisions but that just didn’t feel right. Some of those people have terrible ideas and it’s just a day job for them.  

Pete: What was it like making Stress?

Jeff: I couldn’t have asked for a better experience when we made Stress. Sylvia Massy is an absolute joy of a person. We spent 3 months at Bearsville Studios in Woodstock NY in late summer. More time than we thought we needed but I think it paid off. The record sounds relaxed and confident to me. The material was mostly written, so we didn’t feel the pressure of the clock ticking.

Jeff Buckley was also there, making his debut album Grace. The studio is on a mountain in the woods. There was a good amount of downtime when we were tracking overdubs and mixing so we spent a lot of time with Jeff, playing Nintendo, jamming Rush and Slint songs and having a lot of laughs. Such a great talent and tragic loss.

Pete: How was it touring nationally?

Jeff: Touring was what we lived for. We didn’t always play to a lot of people but we had enough packed shows to keep us going. As a band, you get better every day. Your instrument becomes an extension of you. You exist for that hour onstage, and hope to survive the hours in between.

Our touring was in the days before cell phones, GPS and the internet. You needed maps and got lost a lot. Phone calls took place on pay phones while everyone else waited in the van.

Something happens when you spend that much time together…through thick and thin, everything gets increasingly more absurd.  It’s a test of will. Can you get through it and still laugh together? Will you eventually beat each other senseless?  Do you even still like your music?  

My favorite tour was a month we did across the central US with Kyuss. They were headlining on their album Sky Valley and we were huge fans- total nerds. We’d listen to their albums in the van during the day and then play with them at night. It was ridiculous. Sometimes we’d listen to them after the shows too (usually to just to annoy each other). But 2 songs in, we’d all be laughing, singing along.

Pete: Were you disappointed when the record didn't sell by the truckloads?

Was there a lot of tension within the band at this point?

What caused the band to ultimately split; what was the timeline on this?

Jeff: As far as record sales, I didn’t exactly know what to expect but it was clear that we weren’t getting the big major label push and we knew why….because of the conflict that our ex-manager had initiated with Columbia. We got glimpses of the potential- when our video was played on MTV the shows would immediately be packed for the following few days. Then things would quickly taper off. Suddenly we weren’t getting played anymore and ticket and album sales reflected it.  

It definitely took its toll on us. We knew Columbia had become a dead end and we couldn’t agree on the next steps. We got new management and a new lawyer who negotiated us out of our Columbia contract.

Unfortunately we were evolving away from each other musically and otherwise. Or specifically, away from Erich. Feeling disillusioned, 3 of us were wanting to get back into the trenches as an independent band. We were also wanting to take the music in a less commercial direction and it seemed like Erich wanted the opposite.

Our last tour together was with Biohazard and Unsane and those 2 bands represented the 2 opposing philosophies within our band, with Erich leaning more into metal and hip hop and the rest of us leaning into dissonance and a more extreme and less accessible vibe.  

Erich was firmly an outsider at this point. Years of subtle resentments had grown unbearable and it wasn’t fun anymore. Our last show with him was on New Year’s Eve, 1994 at The Rat in Boston.

Pat took over on vocals, we added a second bass player (Mikey Welsh) and wrote a bunch of new songs. The new sound with 2 basses was awesome. We changed the band name to Slower but had difficulty booking shows at the level we were accustomed to. We decided to do a final “Stompbox” US tour to introduce people to the new band. We had no management, no PR, no record label, no product to promote. Although the tour was a lot of fun, my enthusiasm withered and once we got home, I quit. Mikey was feeling the same way and quit on the same day.

Pete: What were you up to after the split?

How did you come to work with The Dan Band and Blue Man Group?

Jeff: After all of that, I needed a break and a new direction. I taught music for a while, played in a bunch of bands, including 3 with Zeph (Milligram, Drug War and Chevy Heston).  

In 1999 I got recruited by a couple of longtime rock and roll friends (Todd Perlmutter and Chris Dyas) who had been working for Blue Man Group in Boston. I resisted at first because I wasn’t a “musical theater person”. When I finally got dragged to a show, I fell in love with it immediately. The music was weird and heavy, the show was weird and really funny and the cast and crew were all hilarious interesting people. Oh, and I can get paid doing this? And I don’t have to move gear? Total dream job.

After a few years, I moved to NYC and became a music director and composer for them. That job took me around the world. Theaters, arenas, TV Shows, festivals, Coachella, the Hollywood Bowl, performed for the Queen of England, shared stages with David Bowie, Ozzy, Motörhead. What a ride.

The Dan Band Wedding Album is another project that I’m really thankful to have been part of.  

Through our music work with Blue Man and some mutual friends, Todd Perlmutter and I met Dan Finnerty. I had never seen him perform live before we produced his record. I’d only seen him in the Old School and Hangover movies, so I had no idea what he was capable of. His singing range is mind-blowing and he’s really hilarious on and offstage. I highly recommend his live show.

And as opposed to Stompbox and Blue Man, Dan’s album is stylistically all over the place, (bossa nova, funk, bombastic ballads with dubstep bridges) which was both a challenge and a kick.  

Pete: Was there a lot of communication between the band during this time; what was everyone else up to?

Jeff: I continued to play in various projects with Zeph over the years but I wasn’t in contact with Erich or Pat much, especially once we all left Boston.

Erich had a band in Boston after Stompbox called D-con. I feel bad because I just recently learned that Blue Man might have inadvertently broke that band up…we recruited 3 of the guys (Mike Burns, Todd Waetzig & John Swihart) to play in the Las Vegas BMG show. After that, Erich moved to LA and pursued live show work behind the scenes.  

Pat played lap steel for a while in a Boston-based band called Placer before he packed his family up and moved to the Midwest.

Zeph played with Juliana Hatfield for a record and mostly focused on his art-rock project, Chevy Heston.

Pete: How did this reunion come about and what's the excitement level for the show?

Jeff: We were asked to reunite to play a benefit show for a dear friend named Julie Duffy who was stricken with a horrific disease called necrotizing fasciitis.

Julie was not only a big fan of Stompbox when we were active but she was also an instrumental part of the Boston music scene, working first in radio at WBCN, and then for various management companies. The list of acts she has worked with is staggering…from Aerosmith to Brad Paisley. Linkin Park to Peppa Pig. Van Halen, Counting Crows, Maroon 5, Christina Aguilera.

Anyway, this disease is as bad as it gets…she spent months in a coma. 

Luckily she’s survived and on the mend, living with assistance for the foreseeable future.

So, we agreed to play for Julie.

Pete: How did the reunion show go and are there plans for anymore?

Jeff: The reunion went well.

It was really wild to be together in the same room after so many years. In some ways we picked right up as if no time had passed. I have to hand it to those guys for putting in the work. As you might imagine, it’s a pretty specific discipline- almost more like playing a sport than playing music… very physical.

The shows themselves were great experiences on a few levels.  2 sold out nights at the Paradise in Boston. These were benefit shows and I’m really happy that we were able to raise money for our friend who came down with a horrible virus called Descending Necrotizing Mediastinitis.  I won’t go into detail but it’s one of the worst things you might imagine.  Luckily she survived and is on the mend.  She was present and in good spirits at the shows, which was a huge emotional lift for everyone.

It was super fun to reunite with so many friends in bands and otherwise that we haven’t seen in 25+ years. And of course, the feeling of playing live can’t be beat.  It’s as cathartic for us as I imagine it is for people in the audience.

At the end of it all, we realized that, although a lot of bullshit went down between us over the years, we still enjoy making music together.  Now that we’ve figured out how to collaborate remotely, we’re working on new music.  As of this writing, there are around 35 song ideas being passed back and forth.  Pat is the main driving force - he’s a riff machine.  It’s different than the old days because as we’ve gotten…..ummm, let’s say more mature….we’re not so attached to a particular scene and whatever aspirations and anxieties come along with that.  We like a lot of styles of music and we’re all bringing different ideas to the table. We’re also free of any commitment or expectations from a major label.  

A New England-based label called Salt of The Earth reached out to us before the shows to see if we had anything to sell…I remixed and re-mastered our first recordings and old demos. It doesn’t include the recordings Sony / Columbia paid for but it’s a nice little retrospective of our music and process from when the 4 of us were an active band. It’s more or less chronological, including a handful of unfinished songs at the end.

We’re hoping to release new music with Salt of the Earth at some point in the next year or so….not sure if it will be an EP, full length, digital singles or whatever.  We’re taking our time.  We’ve all got careers, families & other music projects, so it’s a slow process.  

But I can say without a doubt that there will be live shows and new music in our future.


Pete: What would you like Stompbox to be remembered for?

Jeff: I’m grateful to hear from people that they still enjoy what we made, almost 30 years later.  

That’s the best that you can hope for as an artist…that something you created has value and has endured.

We weren’t your average metal band, exploring dark themes and imagery. We’re just a bunch of nerdy goofballs who liked to rock out and have fun and we wanted everybody to be in on it…to be able to join and get some, no matter where you came from or what you looked like.

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