The Badlees
The Badlees are an American roots rock band from Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania that formed in 1990. They released several independent albums and achieved national success with their 1995 album River Songs. In 1998, after recording a follow-up album, Polydor/Atlas was sold to the Seagram Corporation, which delayed the release of the album and eventually led to the Badlees being dropped from the roster.
The group has continued to perform and produce albums independently, releasing the double album Epiphones and Empty Rooms in 2013 and their self-titled 2022 album The Badlees. The Badlees and its individual members have inspired, mentored, advised, produced for, and performed with artists throughout the Pennsylvania music scene.
History
Beginnings (1981–1989)
Three students from Mansfield University in north-central Pennsylvania met while attending the school's music department in the early 1980s. Singer and multi-instrumentalist Jeff Feltenberger was a vocal performance major, drummer Ron Simasek was a music education major, while saxophonist and future Badlees manager Terry Selders was a music merchandising major. While at Mansfield, the three played in various pickup bands with names such as The Leaky Sneakers and Secret Service.After graduation, the three initially went their separate ways. Selders went to New York City where he managed a recording studio. Simasek went to Florida at first but then later joined Selders in New York where he became drummer for the band Kaos. Feltenberger entered the teaching profession and reunited with the band that he formed in high school with his brother Steve Feltenberger on bass and guitarist Clint Barrick.
In 1988, Jeff Feltenberger contacted Terry Selders about making a professional recording with his band. Selders was in the process of forming an independent record label with producer Bill Grabowski and thought Feltenberger's music would be a good fit for their first project. He convinced Simasek to join in as drummer and the new band, known as Bad Lee White went into Grabowski's studio to record the initial album for the new A Street Records. The studio was called Susquehanna Sound and was located in Northumberland, Pennsylvania. There, the band worked with the studio's chief engineer, Bret Alexander.
Alexander was a high school football standout who went on to play defensive end for three seasons at Bucknell University. A guitarist in the band Masque, back in his home town of Canton, Pennsylvania, Alexander took a credited internship at Susquehanna Sound while a student at Bucknell and eventually gained employment at the studio after graduation. While working on the Bad Lee White album, Alexander added some guitar overdubs, and the band asked him to join as a permanent member.
What Goes Around by Bad Lee White was released on A Street Records in November 1988. It contained four originals, three co-written by guitarist Jeff Feltenberger and producer Bill Grabowski, with "Boomerang" written by another A Street prospect, Charlie Crystle. However, A-Street soon ended its short run as an independent label, which kept What Goes Around from reaching a second pressing.
Formation and early years (1990–1993)
After the release of their debut album, Bad Lee White guitarist Clint Barrick left the group and was later followed by bassist Steve Feltenberger, who enlisted in the Marines. Susquehanna Sound became a hub for the remaining members as Bret Alexander continued on as chief engineer with Jeff Feltenberger and Ron Simasek frequently joining him to work on sessions or rehearse new material.One day, a local band named Anthem from nearby Susquehanna University came in to record at the studio. The band's singer, Pete Palladino, was eventually offered the lead vocal position in Bad Lee White. Soon after, the newly revised band officially changed their name to what fans had begun commonly calling them at shows, The Badlees.
With the addition of Palladino, the band's audience began to grow, due to his stage antics and classic front-man image. This was important because the band was determined to concentrate on original material. Alexander became the group's chief songwriter, working with Mike Naydock, a disc jockey from Hazleton, PA. Their partnership began with the first Badlees EP, It Ain't For You in 1990 and continues to the present day, with Alexander writing the music and melodies and Naydock writing the lyrics.
On October 10, 1990, the Badlees released the four song EP It Ain't For You, which was Bret Alexander's debut as producer. It was released on Terry Selders' newly formed independent label, Rite-Off Records and it received positive press, such as Billboard Magazine's famed Critics' Choice award The Album Network, a weekly, well-respected music industry trade paper, invited the Badlees, as an unsigned band, to participate in their CD series called Tune Up. On the strength of the EP, the Badlees landed a gig opening for the band FireHouse, then at the peak of their brief national fame at the Metron in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
Terry Selders returned to central Pennsylvania to be manager of the Badlees full-time and, in 1991, Paul Smith joined as the band's permanent bass player. The Badlees set up headquarters in Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania, and began recording a full-length album.
The result was Diamonds in the Coal, released in January 1992. The album contained much décor such as philosophical quotes accompanying each song's lyrics and a cover that uses a classic photo from a local historical society. The single "Back Where We Come From " was the first to receive prominent airplay on Pennsylvania radio stations and the closing title song, "Diamonds in the Coal" was the first example of a distinct sound that would come to define the band called "roots rock".
They were invited to perform at the SxSW Music Festival in Austin, Texas, and soon landed a corporate sponsorship with Budweiser. They produced special cassette singles with remixed versions of their songs to sell at shows, while directing audience members to a local retailer to buy the full-length album, a strategy employed by Selders to gain credibility for the Badlees among the major record chains.
By 1993, as the Badlees prepared to work on their second full-length album, they decided to take a different approach, hiring Jack Pyers, formally of the band Dirty Looks as producer. Pyers approached the Badlees, promising a sound that more accurately reflects the energy of their live shows. The resulting effort was called The Unfortunate Result of Spare Time, recorded in the summer of 1993.
National success (1994–1996)
In 1994, Bud Light, the band's primary sponsor, offered the band the opportunity to play a series of dates in China. The Qingdao International Beer Festival, an annual event in the Chinese city of the same name, was held from August 14 through the 18th in 1994. The Badlees were the only western entertainment performing that year, playing about ten shows over the course of those five days.Soon after the band returned home, they headed back to the studio to start on their third full-length album. The band had not been completely satisfied with The Unfortunate Result of Spare Time and planned on naming this next one simply "The Badlees" as a deliberate signal that they were returning to the "roots rock" sound. Inspired by the daily commute along the Susquehanna River to the recording studio in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the band decided instead to name the album River Songs.
Released independently in February 1995, River Songs was originally rejected by several major record companies, But after selling over 10,000 copies in its first few months, some of these same companies began pursuing the Badlees. One of these companies was A&M Records, who expressed interest in signing the band after a Philadelphia-based executive noticed the inordinate amount of airplay this independent band was getting on Pennsylvania radio stations. The songs primarily receiving airplay were "Angeline Is Coming Home", a song by Mike Naydock about a heroin addict returning from rehab, and Bret Alexander's "Fear of Falling", which would eventually be used by NBC during coverage of the 1996 Olympics. The Badlees were ultimately signed to the A&M subsidiary label, Polydor/Atlas. The deal was for two albums, a future album and River Songs, which was accepted by the company "as is", with no further production required for the national release. The record went on to sell 250,000 copies.
The band would spend the next year and a half constantly playing, usually as a supporting act for a national headliner. Their first really big show was opening up for Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page & Robert Plant at the Buffalo Memorial Auditorium in Buffalo, New York, on Thursday, October 19, 1995. Later they would join tours for Bob Seger, Gregg Allman, The Gin Blossoms, and Edwin McCain, among others and perform throughout North America.
They also produced a couple of professional music videos, one for "Fear of Falling", directed by Dieter Trattmann and shot in and around Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and one for "Angeline Is Coming Home", directed by Anthony Edwards, an actor then starring on the television drama E.R. Edward's co-star on the show, Julianna Margulies, was cast to play the "Angeline" character in the video, which was shot at Charlie Chaplin Studios in Hollywood in March 1996. The production of the "Angeline" video was covered in national publications such as People Magazine and Rolling Stone Magazine as well as the nationally syndicated television show Entertainment Tonight. It premiered on VH1's Crossroads program, but was not well received by fans, critics, nor the band itself, who came to call the video a "very expensive mistake".