Coming Home

Brian Templeton lives life after
the Radio Kings to the fullest

by Don Fluckinger

Although they played their final gig in the summer of 1999, the sun never set on the Radio Kings, a Boston blues favorite since 1991. The band had broken up several months before that swan song, when guitarist Mike DiNallo announced he was leaving to play country-roots, but the Kings decided to honor a tour commitment in Finland, where the sun literally does not go down from May to July. Against this eerie backdrop in a town above the Arctic Circle, the band pounded out an emotional set.

"We were playing with all kinds of emotion," says former Kings vocalist Brian Templeton. "It was a very weird day. We were doing a big band festival, so we took some horns with us, including Gordon Beadle. It was a good way to go out, but for me it was a bittersweet ending."

In the year since that last gig, Templeton took some time off, signed on as the inaugural artist for Maine's Stone Cold Records label, and discovered a musical soul-mate in guitarist Mike Welch. Together they'll be playing the Autumn Airfest in Fitchburg on Friday, September 15.

After the breakup of the Radio Kings, Templeton set up solo gigs and hired Welch to play with him. The two discovered a common love of the Beatles and 1970s dinosaur-rock acts. Templeton had known about Welch's considerable guitar skills for years -- having played with him back in the early '90s on Monday nights at the House of Blues in Cambridge.

Welch, who first gained popularity as a teenage bluesman (and has since dropped the "Monster" prefix to his name), is now attending Berklee and studying to be a recording producer and engineer. He and Templeton are blues artists at the core, but they also enjoy rocking out and exploring rootsy country flavors.

"I don't think of him [as a child prodigy] any more," Templeton says. "Once I started riding to gigs with him, I realize that in a lot of ways, mentally he's older than me."

So when it came time to put together his new album, Home, Templeton gave the producing job to Welch, his first. Welch turned around and hired the same rhythm section from his own 1998 Catch Me album, and Templeton invited singers Vykki Vox and Anita Suhanan to sing backing vocals.

"With the Radio Kings, I never had anybody to sing with," Templeton says. "Anita and Vykki work together unbelievably, and the three of us are doing some unbelievable harmonies together."

The result is still a blues album, but flavored with Latin, country, and Memphis-soul influences. Two all-out rockers in "Four Crows" and "She's My Baby" owe more to the Aerosmith school of blues than to Fred McDowell's. "Katelyn Marie" is a Cajun waltz. While the CD features nine Templeton originals, the covers tell the story of the sound: Hank Williams's "Long Gone Lonesome Blues," Little Milton's "Dead Love," and Marvin Gaye's "Trouble Man."

Templeton is clearly the frontman of his studio creation, singing with more expression and dynamic range than he ever did with the Radio Kings, and, of course, heavily featuring his harmonica. But Welch is given considerable opportunity to showcase his own nonpareil playing, incorporating all kinds of effects and wizardry, down to recreating an entire horn section on his guitar on "Dead Love."

The seven-piece band that made Home, is more or less Templeton's main backup group, and they'll join him and Welch at the Fitchburg airport Friday night. While Vox and Welch have their own bands -- and Welch continues his studies -- Templeton is looking for weekend gigs where they can all play together.

During the week, Templeton says, a four-piece version of the band will pick up shows here and there, and he'll also play in a Radio-Kings-esque blues band he formed called the Ripchords. That band, too, could record an album, perhaps next year.

But for now Templeton is concentrating on the Home band, promoting the album out of his own home for Stone Cold Records. "I'm back at ground zero, but not totally. I'm not a completely unknown entity. . . . I look at my career as a series of events to have fun playing music. I'm not looking to become a star overnight, but I'm realistic. You have to have fun in the moment of the gig."

The Brian Templeton Band appear at the Autumn Airfest Music Mix Festival 2000 on Friday, September 15, headlining a bill that includes Tomo Fujita and Blue Funk, DeepDownDirty, and the Installers, from 5 to 10 p.m. at the Fitchburg Municipal Airport, Crawford Street (Exit 32 off Route 2), Fitchburg. The festival runs nightly September 14 through 17. Tickets are $5. Call (978) 345-9695.