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Mallonee has a lot to say; so does his music

By Walter Tunis Contributing Music Writer

At the close of our interview, Americana songsmith and band leader Bill Mallonee apologized for not speaking in "short, pithy sentences."

As a wildly prolific solo artist and the past and present chieftain of the newly reformed Athens, Ga., collective Vigilantes of Love, Mallonee was genuinely concerned. Yes, he spoke politely in lengthy, detailed narratives about his philosophies of music, his life in music and the music itself, which accumulates at such a staggering rate that Mallonee needs multiple MySpace pages and Web sites for them.

But maybe the main reason Mallonee, who returns to Lexington on Wednesday for a performance at The Dame, has so much to say about his music is because the music is so worth talking about.

"I'm a real believer in the idea that if you love something, you just do it for the passion and not necessarily for the coins," Mallonee said. "I mean, obviously, you don't want to be living under a bridge, although we've come close to that over the past few years. But then, I'm 25 albums into this working life. I don't even know if I can actually do anything else."

Mallonee released his first Vigilantes of Love album, the indie project Jugular, in 1990. His first solo record, Fetal Position, followed two years later. The musicians he teamed with came from the fertile Athens music scene, entering and exiting his projects in revolving-door fashion while the music reflected, in varying degrees, a soon-flourishing alt-country movement, Mallonee's Christian faith and an epic folk-rock album, Neil Young's Harvest, that continues to inspire him to this day.

"I've probably listened to that 1,000 times," he said. "I still put it on and am still moved by it.

"The lineups of the Vigilantes were revolving-door in nature right from the very beginning. The version I guess most people would remember is the one that played on the album we made with Buddy Miller, Audible Sigh. That was back in '99. We made a few records after that that were very grounded in two-guitars-bass-and-drums Americana stuff."

Even though Athens musicians stocked Mallonee's rotating roster of bandmates, the city's fabled music scene was indifferent at first.

"There wasn't much superstructure in Athens for a band ... when the Vigilantes first hit. We couldn't get a date to play at the 40 Watt Club (the renowned Athens music haven), so we started playing out of town. We signed our deal in Austin and then hit radio in Atlanta shortly after that. Then the main clubs here in Athens said, 'Oh, you've got to play here.' Local scenes can be really fickle."

Commercial success never fully embraced the Vigilantes, even though its 1995 album Blister Soul, the finest of its major label recordings for Capricorn,) and 1999's Audible Sigh earned Mallonee considerable praise. But after 2001's more psychedelically inclined Summershine went largely unpromoted, Mallonee and the band called it a day.

"We were out there doing 180 shows a year, just four guys in a van. It became a formula for demoralization."

For the next six years, Mallonee stepped up his ultra-indie solo career, writing songs at a furious pace while touring as an acoustic duo with his wife, onetime Lexingtonian Muriah Rose.

In recent years, Mallonee has issued demo-style EP discs of his songs on his Web site, www.billmallonee.com, and on a MySpace page under the project name Works Progress Administration. The former also boasts a 2009 live recording by the re-formed Vigilantes that features country-inclined versions of Blister Soul and String of Pearls, and a cover of Neil Young's Harvest gem Out on the Weekend.

"I guess I just wanted to play in a band again," Mallonee said of returning the Vigilantes to active duty. "I wanted to see what would happen, but I wasn't holding my breath as to whether the music would actually gel or anything.

"I even went ahead and booked a gig before we ever started rehearsing. I'm not saying that the show was all that tight. But it was fun. After we all got back in the van, I asked, 'Well, do you want to this again?' And everybody said, 'Sure.'"