Silos – Back in the New York groove
Hardly. Cuba and Lagartija, Salas-Humara’s solo debut of 1988, earned acclaim across the board. Soon, the band was hitching its pony to RCA, which resulted in their self-titled major-label debut of 1990 (often referred to as “the one with the bird on the cover,” although Salas-Humara tends to call it “the one we did for RCA”). Recorded almost entirely live on the stage and in the kitchen, hallways and tiled bathrooms of an old Florida theater — “We were so anti-technology at the time that we didn’t want any reverb units or anything,” he says — the album was the Silos’ highest-profile and most mainstream-minded release.
With secret weapon Rowell leaving the flock and taking her wondrous violin contributions with her, Salas-Humara and Rupe — who contributed two smooth-as-good-whiskey lead vocal tracks — leaned more overtly on Stones riffs, folk and soul to get the job done. Though it didn’t contain the mystery that enveloped the first two releases, the album was a rewarding listen nonetheless.
Not that many people ever got a chance to hear the thing. The album actually sold well initially; “They printed 60,000 of them, and they were pretty much sold out of them only three months after the release,” Salas-Humara said in a 1994 interview. But RCA was in turmoil; president Bob Buziak, who had brought acts such as the Silos and Lucinda Williams to the label, was dismissed, which basically sounded the death knell for the artists he had signed.
Frustrated, Rupe who had relocated to Richmond, Virginia, when RCA signed the band, quit the Silos. (Later, he hooked up with Gutterball and is now bassist with Cracker, but there has never been a Rupe solo project to be found. What is it about that place anyway? Between him and former Long Ryder Stephen McCarthy, there’s some fine talent in Richmond going unheard.)
Salas-Humara, meanwhile, went west to Los Angeles. From that point, things got a bit murky for the Silos. Shunned by the major labels, Salas-Humara released Hasta La Victoria! on German label Normal in 1992; it was issued domestically by Watermelon in 1994. It featured the rhythm section (bassist J.D. Foster and drummer Brian Doherty) and keyboard player (Kenny Margolis) who had played on the RCA album, as well as the return of Rowell and guests such as singer Victoria Williams and guitarists Jon Dee Graham and Manuel Verzosa.
Tragically, Verzosa — previously a member of Portland, Maine, band the Walkers — was killed on a tour in November 1993 when the Silos’ van hit a patch of ice in Wyoming and spun off the highway. His final recordings with the Silos surfaced the following year on the Watermelon release Susan Across The Ocean, which closed with the Tom Freund song “Fallen Angel”, a memorial to Verzosa. Susan also featured a handful of choice covers such as Michael Hall’s “Let’s Take Some Drugs And Drive Around”, Lucinda Williams’ “Changed The Locks” and Jonathan Richman’s “I’m Straight”, as well the striking title track, which Salas-Humara rightfully considers “probably the best ballad I’ve ever written.”
Also surfacing on Watermelon in ’94 was a self-titled album by the Setters — a collaboration between Salas-Humara, Hall and Alejandro Escovedo — that had been released overseas the previous year on German label Blue Million Miles. Among its 13 tracks were different versions of four songs that ended up on Susan: “Let’s Take Some Drugs”, “Nothing’s Gonna Last”, “Susan Across The Ocean” and “Shaking All Over The Place”. In 1995, Watermelon issued Ask The Dust, which combined About Her Steps and Lagartija along with a handful of previously unreleased tracks.
Despite this flurry of activity, the Silos still seemed to be fading from the public’s consciousness. This was partly due to the fact that Hasta La Victoria! and Susan Across The Ocean came out in Europe before they surfaced in the U.S.; furthermore, both of those records ultimately paled in comparison to what the Silos once were.
Salas-Humara’s second solo effort, Radar, came out on Watermelon in the fall of ’95 and found him digging in again artistically. It’s frequently a complex, insular affair: “I was really, really, really, really deep inside it,” he says. “It’s little more difficult to listen to, probably for everybody.” Yet it delivers moments that remind fans why they cared about the artist to begin with. “I Won You Won” and “Rejuvenation” pierce the soul; “Evangeline” uplifts with its Pavement-loving main character.
Still, Radar barely registered a blip on its namesake, and in its wake, the Silos seemed equally difficult to track. Salas-Humara played occasional gigs, either billed as himself or as the band: It depended, really, on whether he needed to earn some money, as the Silos were the best means to that end, but such inconsistencies only served to confuse those who still sought signs of the group’s existence.
Even so, some of those shows were remarkable, despite the unpredictability of his accompanists. At the North By Northwest conference in Portland, Oregon, in 1997, Salas-Humara played under his own name but was backed by a Portland band called The Planet The, whose members included Salas-Humara’s nephew. The resulting band consisted of four guitar players and a drummer, with no bassist; yet what seemed like a recipe for sonic disaster turned out to be a transcendent musical moment.