Meekly tucked behind the main street in Bay View is Burnhearts, a nautical-inspired tavern at 2599 S. Logan Ave. that Group of the Altos considers one if its favorites. The twelve-piece Milwaukee band is known at Burnhearts for overindulging in whiskey and over-exalting Katie Rose, 29, the “bartender-extraordinaire,” she said with a laugh.
There, three of the 12 Altos met to discuss their second album, “Altos,” which they released digitally on Dec. 27 and which is currently being pressed to vinyl. Given the album’s 15 minute-length tracks and experimentation with sound and space, one might expect myriad conversations in the media regarding the band’s uninhibited melodies.
But there aren’t — and that’s just how they want it. Group of the Altos has avoided formal interviews since 2004, when they first came together. At that time, making a record was never their intention.
“The idea was just to keep working,” guitarist Daniel Spack, 36, said. “We would write one piece of music, perform it, toss it out, and then start writing another one.”
Spack has stood as the band’s leader since forming the group as one of “two boys in a basement banging rocks together,” he said with a laugh.
Since then, the band has acquired trumpet, piano, guitar, upright and standard bass, percussion, violin, viola and vocals. Even with such a large group, they may even hire two more musicians in the future. “Who knows?” Spack said with a laugh. Spack shares a similar carefree sentiment toward the band name, which has shifted from Group of the Altos to Altos to Some of the Altos and back to Group of the Altos, again.
Unlike the band-naming process, actually making music requires stringent planning and loving humility. The three describe it as an “agreeing process” that comes with joining the band, an agreement that eliminates all ego from the group and leaves no room for embellishment or improvisation.
Guitarist Ken Palme, 45, and vocalist/violinist Marielle Allschwang, 26, joined Spack in discussing the romance behind their music-making process. The three share a warmness that only Allschwang’s hot toddy could rival.
“That’s solely any reason why this band is together,” Spack said, “From the intimacy of knowing each other.”
Palme and Allschwang nodded in agreement, and Allschwang blushed while sharing how Group of the Altos has shaped her as a musician. “You can write a song and gift it to others and be completely comfortable with it being changed,” she said. “It’s an amazing, mind-blowing thing that I would never have known about if I hadn’t had met these people.”
Group of the Altos recorded with Brian Josephs and Jaime Hansen, two engineers/producers, in Eau Claire, Wis. in May 2011. Spack, Allschwang and Palme sing high praise of Joseph and Hansen. Palme questions if they would ever work with anyone else.
Hansen shared a similar sentiment of the “wonderfully down to earth people” and “relaxed, summer camp-y recording process.”
“The tracking session went so well you could really let the music be what it is,” he said. “(Group of the Altos) have such a unique thing you don’t really want to put your own footprints on it.”