Lost Band Found: Face to Face
04/06/2006
Music Home / Entertainment Channel / Bullz-Eye Home
It’s always cool to find out that you’re not the only one looking for a “lost” band. After running the story on Boston band Face to Face a few months ago, we received several emails from other fans offering information and from former colleagues of the band. After some research, and with the help of my friend Warren Zanes (formerly of the Del Fuegos), I even got to speak to guitarist Angelo Petraglia, and found out that he lives in Nashville and is doing quite well as a songwriter and producer. Some of his credits include Tricia Yearwood’s Grammy-nominated “Believe Me Baby (I Lied)” and Patty Griffin’s “One Big Love.” He’s also had cuts with Martina McBride, Tim McGraw, Sara Evans, Brooks & Dunn and Leann Womack. As a producer, Petraglia has worked with Kings of Leon, Zanes, the Remains and Nashville buzz band Be Your Own Pet.
Petraglia said that lead vocalist Laurie Sargent is still in Boston, playing in a band called Twinemen along with Dana Colley and Billy Conway, the two surviving members of Morphine. Guitarist Stu Kimball has been touring with Bob Dylan, and drummer Billy Beard is still gigging in Boston. While I still haven’t caught up more with Angelo or with Laurie, you can check out Twinemen’s website here and you can find some background on Angelo here.
While all of this information was gradually coming together, it wasn’t until I got a random email from Face to Face bassist John Ryder that I could effectively put the pieces to the “lost band” puzzle together. Ryder was very excited after a friend had forwarded him my article, with a note saying, “See John, people still care.” So he filled me in on what he’s been up to, and on why other members of the band might be a bit more reluctant to talk about the Face to Face years.
Ryder has been gigging around Boston, doing fundraisers as a founding member of the James Montgomery & Friends band, who were nominated for a Boston Music Award in 2003. The band was put together as part of Hackel’s PH Productions, which plans charitable events, after Ryder’s good friend Peter Hackel lost a relative on one of the planes that hit the World Trade Center on 9/11. “Peter began PH Productions and we wound up doing half a dozen charity benefits a year,” says Ryder. “I’ve been a part of it with him providing production and support. The big event for the year is Music for Middlesex, which this year is May 13. It raises tens of thousands of dollars and we have folks like Steven Tyler, the J. Geils people, the Kraft family and the Red Sox involved.” For more information, please visit www.phproductions.net.
But back to Face to Face. After a year of touring in support of the last record, Ryder went back to school for electronics manufacturing, and has been working for Philips Corporation for 10 years now with a wife, family and mortgage. And as a musician, in addition to PH Productions, he’s also doing session work on various projects, including that of budding folk artist Laura Bullock. But Ryder always has a desire to reunite with Face to Face, even for an impromptu jam session.
“A year or so ago, Angelo was in town playing a gig and Laurie’s band Twinemen were also on the bill,” said Ryder. “Stu was playing with Laurie, and Billy was playing with Ang, and at one point four of them were onstage together. I suggested we all get on stage together, but no one else wanted to do that without having rehearsed.”
Ryder also talked about what might have been, and that the Harvard Business School could have done a case study on the band’s missed opportunities.
“Laurie never really wanted to be a rock star,” said Ryder. “But we had two legitimate songwriters in Angelo and Laurie, while there are thousands of bands out there that don’t have one. We had all these great people like Cyndi Lauper, John Cafferty and Steve Van Zandt record with us. I even brought Steven Tyler in to sing a demo of ‘Ever Since Eve’ with Laurie. It was unbelievable. The Aerosmith people were excited about it and Polygram was excited about it, but Billy put the squash on it because he didn’t want Steven Tyler on our record. Around the same time, Aerosmith was working on Permanent Vacation. And because we didn’t ‘finish’ the connection, they wound up using a different support band on the Permanent Vacation tour…a little unknown band out of L.A. called Guns ‘n Roses.”
Wow. So where was I? Yeah, basically history wrote a different ending than the one Face to Face fans would have liked to see. And here we are, almost 20 years after the band split up and in the age of digital downloads, and a lot of those fans are looking for the band again.
I hope that catches you up on Face To Face. Now, it’s on to find the next “lost band.”