The Musical Box

bill mallonee, right, with wife and performance partner muriah rose.

At the close on our interview, Americana songsmith Bill Mallonee apologized for not speaking in “short, pithy sentences.”

As a wildly prolific solo artist as well as 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 very music itself, which accumulates at such a staggering rate that Mallonee needs multiple myspace pages and websites to make it all available.

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 itself is so worth talking about in the first place.

“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. His music reflected, in varying degrees, a soon-to-be flourishing alt-country movement, a solid Christian faith and an epic folk-rock album that continues to inspire him to this day.

“I always harken back to one of my favorite acoustic rock records, Neil Young’s Harvest. I’ve probably listened to that 1,000 times. 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 were very grounded in two guitars-bass-and-drums Americana stuff.

While Athens musicians stocked Mallonee’s rotating roster of bandmates, the city’s fabled music scene was essentially indifferent to his music at first.

“There wasn’t much superstructure in Athens for a band to get of town when Vigilantes first hit. We couldn’t get a date to play at the 40 Watt Club (the reknown 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.”

Commerical success never fully greeted Vigilantes although albums like 1995’s Blister Soul (the finest of its major label recordings for Capricorn) and Audible Sigh earned Mallonee considerable critical 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 following six years, Mallonee stepped up his ultra-indie solo career, writing songs at a more furious pace while touring as an acoustic duo with his wife, one time Lexingtonian Muriah Rose.

In recent years, Mallonee has issued demo-style EP discs of his songs on his website (www.billmallonee.com) as well as on a myspace page under the project name Works Progress Administration. The former also boasts a 2009 live recording by the reformed Vigilantes that features country inclined versions of Blister Soul and String of Pearls as well as 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 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.’”

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Wednesday’s Dame concert was originally to be a Vigilantes show but has been re-scheduled as a double bill performance featuring Mallonee and Rose with Texas song stylist Guy Forsyth. Tickets for the 8 p.m. performance are $7. Call (859) 231-7263.