Tips from the Top: Chris Collingwood of Fountains of Wayne

Momentum may be the key to success, but don’t tell that to Fountains of Wayne. Issued in 1996, the New York-based band’s self-titled debut garnered critical raves and an alt-rock hit in “Radiation Vibe,” but by the time they released 1999’s Utopia Parkway, nu metal had made the market all but impenetrable to power rockers of their ilk. FoW waited a full four years for the air to clear, then re-merged in 2003 with Welcome Interstate Managers, an album brimming with sleek guitars and great hooks and propelled by one enormously catchy single, the pre-teen angst anthem “Stacy’s Mom,” which dented the Top 20. FoW’s on-again-off-again strategy worked so well that a clueless Grammy committee wound up nominating the eight-year-old group as “Best New Artist” in 2004.

Typically, FoW (named for a lawn-ornament shop in New Jersey) seized the moment by going another four years before finally delivering a fourth album of new material, Traffic and Weather, this past April. Produced by bassist and songwriter Adam Schlesinger at Stratosphere Sound (the downtown New York facility Schlesinger co-owns with musical partner Andy Chase and Smashing Pumpkin’s James Iha), Traffic and Weather, like its predecessor, succeeds by utilizing smart production craft in service of some smartly written songs. For pure pop, it doesn’t get much better than lead-off single “Someone To Love,” a melodic rocker that fuses jagged guitars, irresistible call-and-response vocals and a chorus driven by a disco backbeat, of all things. Like past FoW classics “Mexican Wine” and “Stacy’s Mom,” “Someone to Love” is a study in audio contrasts, with a lo-fi intro that abruptly gives way to an onslaught of pounding drums and bass.

“The lo-fi thing is something we’ve done before; actually, the initial version of ‘Radiation Vibe’ had a cool beginning like that,” says guitarist Chris Collingwood before a recent tour stop. “It was just me singing through an SM57 mic in this rehearsal space with everything feeding back; it was a horrible vocal performance in mono, and from there it just segued into the high-fidelity part of the song. It was a technique that worked.”

Schlesinger and co-writer Collingwood typically go their separate ways between projects (Schlesinger recently penned several songs for the Hugh Grant-Drew Barrymore flick Music and Lyrics), and, despite being jointly credited, all of the material on Traffic and Weather was written individually. Rather than cut home demos in advance, however, the two simply arrive at the studio and let lead guitarist Jody Porter and drummer Brian Young add their own input. “Back in the old days, we used to demo quite a bit, but it’s not really convenient anymore for everyone to get together beforehand,” says Collingwood. “There have been songs like ‘The Valley of the Malls’ [from Utopia Parkway] that have a lot going on compositionally and arrangement-wise, and in those situations I might do a demo ahead of time so that everyone can hear what I had in my head before we go in to record. But it’s rare when that happens - most of the time we just prefer being in the same room and having a rough idea of what we’re going for, and then just let the band come up with the arrangement. We worked that way almost exclusively for this last record.”

Though Collingwood has had his share of home-studio accessories over the years, when working up new material the western Mass resident often prefers taking the simplest route possible: Traffic and Weather‘s “Hotel Majestic,” for instance, was written without the aid of any instruments. “I just kind of hear the song in my head and figure out a guitar part afterward,” says Collingwood. “Not that I’m actually hearing chords - it’s more that I’d rather find them later on after the melody is already in place. That’s really the only way I can work these days, given some of my limitations as a guitarist and especially as a piano player. But I also find that it frees me up a bit.”

For the Traffic and Weather sessions, Collingwood - the “voice” of FoW - spent some time choosing a mic that would best capture his unaffected vocal sound, and wound up going with Blue’s Baby Bottle large-diaphragm condenser. “For whatever reason, it seemed to be a more responsive mic for me,” says Collingwood. “The Neumanns tend to grab a bit too much of the lower end - they tend to make me sound less like Neil Finn and more like Jim Morrison.” While the band tracks directly to Pro Tools and uses its share of synths and patches, most of the guitar tones on Traffic and Weather were achieved organically. “We’ve got about 10 different Gretsch models that we had lined up in the studio, not to mention James Iha’s collection of guitars, and we’d just use whichever one best fit the sound we were after,” notes Collingwood. “In other words, if it sounds like a Gretsch, it is a Gretsch, if it sounds like a Les Paul, it’s one of those, too.” The band also kept a row of amps up and running throughout the sessions, “so if it wasn’t happening with one amp, we could just plug into one of the others and experiment until we got it right.”

For FoW info, go to http://www.fountainsofwayne.com the video for “Someone to Love” can be viewed at the band’s MySpace page, www.myspace.com/fountainsofwayne.