Kansas City rockers find success by including 'little bit of everything' on CDs
Sunday, May 30, 2004
By CHRIS WELCH
Times Entertainment Writer, chrisw@htimes.com
The year was
1998 when Wes Scantlin, lead singer of the rock group Puddle of Mudd, was ready
to punt his music career and move from Kansas City.
He was fed up
with the members of a previous band and had tried everything else -
construction, plumbing, waiting tables. So, he figured he'd head down to New
Orleans with his girlfriend for a new start.
His car was
packed and ready to go, but friends convinced Scantlin to go to Korn's Family
Values Concert at Kemper Arena. He grabbed the last copy of his demo tape and
headed out the door. Once there, friends had fake backstage passes and Scantlin
managed to find one of Limp Bizkit's bodyguards, a guy named Richie.
Richie promised
to give the tape to Limp Bizkit lead singer Fred Durst. Scantlin, down on his
luck, didn't think he'd ever hear from Durst, so he and his girlfriend headed to
New Orleans.
Douglas Ardito,
bassist in Puddle of Mudd, picks up the story.
"Wes and
his girlfriend were as far as Mobile when his pager just started blowing
up," Ardito said during a phone interview before a recent concert in
Wichita, Kan. "It was like 911, 911, 911. When Wes called the number, it
was his friend Dave in Kansas City who had heard a message on Wes' answering
machine. It was from Fred Durst.
"Wes
thought it was a joke."
It was no joke.
Durst loved Scantlin's voice and signed him to his own label, Flawless Records.
The two recruited Paul Phillips (guitar), Ardito (bass) and Greg Upchurch
(drums) and Puddle of Mudd was born. The band's debut, "Come Clean,"
sold over 5 million copies, including 116,000 copies in its first week of
release - a record for a new rock act.
The album
produced four No. 1 singles on Billboard's Modern Rock chart -
"Blurry," "Control," "Drift and Die" and "She
Hates Me" - and "Blurry" earned the American Society of
Composers, Authors and Publishers award for most-played song of the 2002 on
modern rock radio.
Puddle of Mudd -
the name actually came from the band tromping through a flooded parking lot to
get to its Kansas City studio - built up a big following with relentless
touring, opening for The Deftones, Staind and Godsmack. The group's reputation
as live performers and the national attention it got from radio stations around
the country helped its debut record.
"I think we
touched people in different places emotionally," Ardito said of the
successful "Come Clean." The group opens for Kid Rock on Thursday
starting at 7:30 p.m. at the Von Braun Center Arena.
"Each song
had a different story," he said. "Some were punk, some up-tempo,
others were crazy party songs, others sentimental and melancholy. We had a
little bit of everything, including the funny song 'She Hates Me.' "
The group
released its second album, "Life on Display," last November and the
first single is "Away from Me." The new album retains the quartet's
no-nonsense anti-formula sound and brings a more defined and occasionally dark
edge to the songs.
" 'Life on
Display' was written while we were on tour," Ardito said. "It's the
only thing to do if you're on a bus or train. You have an acoustic guitar, sound
tracks and you jam. It took 11 months to make and there's a lot of blood, sweat
and tears in it.
"Is it as
good as 'Come Clean'? I don't know how to compare it. I guess the way you look
at it is, 'Will it cross over to the Top 40 and do what 'Blurry' did or what
'She Hates Me' did? We just make music, that's what we do, and don't really
think about anything else."