LEFT EXIT
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The music of Left Exit is available on all streaming platforms.
THE LEFT EXIT STORY
In April of 1990, Jersey Shore natives, Jim Malone and John O’Neill, along with their bandmates Jeffrey Buhl, Steve Giles, Samuel Mann, and John Leedes, drove their maroon, half-sized school bus up from the band’s home base in Chesterfield, VA to a small recording studio in Long Branch, NJ. The six piece was the latest incarnation of Left Exit, the band Malone had formed three years earlier while a senior at the University of Richmond. Mann, the son of composer David Mann, was the 3rd bassist, after Chris Gibson and Michael Loprete; and O’Neill was the second percussionist after Cliff “The Blister” Nicholson left a year earlier. Like one of their favorite bands, Little Feat, the ground breaking band they would find themselves opening for that summer, Left Exit favored groove-oriented jams with an upbeat vibe they achieved via a solid drummer (Buhl) and a tasteful percussionist on congas, timbale, and a host of assorted noise makers.
The band had garnered a reputation as a prodigious party band at the beginning of what would become the jam band craze soon to be popularized by Dave Matthews and Blues Traveler and maintained over the years by Phish and Widespread Panic (bands with whom Left Exit would also share the stage), but the reason for their trip was not to play another raucous, mind expanding show, it was to record what would be their first album, Do It Anyway.
It’s hard to imagine in today’s technology-driven, DIY world of music creation how bold it was for an unsigned band to self produce a CD in 1990, but the band had more than an album’s worth of original material, and a thrilling opening slot for Edie Brickell and New Bohemians had recently lit a fire under them. It was time. They had tried, and failed, in a handful of Richmond studios to capture their sound, so Malone suggested they try Shorefire, where he had interned as a teenager. And so, after pooling the funds from a few more frat party gigs, they loaded up the bus and headed to Springsteen country.
The entire 12-song album was recorded and mixed in 100 hours over 2 weeks. The band was well rehearsed and rose to the occasion. And while nothing could capture the excitement of one of their live shows, these sessions finally revealed the band’s unique chemistry and originality. One listen to the cassette tape they rolled from the original mixes and brought back to Richmond, and it was clear. The band was full of promise. The album crackled with energy. The opening track, A Hundred Miles/Clam Jam, along with Lewiston Today and Do It Anyway, affirm the band’s rightful place in the jam band arena, while Watch Yer Step and Take Your Time unleash an old school R & B influence. Songs like Melanie, with its bubbling calypso palate, and the reggae-infused, I Ain’t Your Man, give the album a depth not usually found in a young band’s first offering.
Sadly, it would be their finest hour. The following year, the band broke up.
Before Left Exit even got a chance to shop the CD to any label, major or otherwise, they were offered a deal with a new indy label in Virginia Beach, Cellar Door Records, an offshoot of the regional booking and production company of the same name. The band didn’t take the one-sided deal, but since they were eager to release the CD, they took Cellar Door up on an offer to have their first 1000 copies manufactured. Cellar Door was, after all, their booking agency. What could go wrong?
With the CD and artwork off to the manufacturer, the band planned a tour that featured a string of “CD Release Parties”. But the shows were missing one key element: a CD to release. Cellar Door couldn’t seem to get the release delivered from the manufacturing plant, for over 9 months.
With the excitement of Do It Anyway waning, the band began to fall apart. And while they attracted some amazing talent to replace defectors in their last year—Don Bogut and Ralph Goodenough on keyboards, Dave Mosick and Brian Long on guitar—only two original members remained when the CD was finally released in January of 1991—Malone and Buhl.
Along with the dissolution of the band, there was another disappointment. The CD was never mastered (an essential final step to bring all the levels and tones up to the industry standards for playback on stereos and radio before a CD or vinyl record is printed). Hence, Do It Anyway, played at about 4-6 decibels lower than every other CD out at the time. To say it lacked impact compared to all other recorded music would be an understatement. Until now! The 2022 re-release has been mastered for streaming and download, and finally, after 30+ years, sounds the way it was originally intended.
In 1996, Malone and O’Neill would reunite on Manhattan’s Lower East Side to form the alt-country band, Standpipe, releasing 2 critically acclaimed CDs. Left Exit would reunite several times over the decades that followed. The last time, in 2011, resulted in the recording and release of The Exit Reunion: Recreation—a 14 song collection of new and old numbers recorded over a few weeks in Brooklyn, NY. The album showcases the inherent chemistry of the band, but skews a bit more singer/songwriter than jam band, an obvious influence of Malone’s solo career which he has maintained, off and on, in the years since Left Exit’s heyday.
With the benefit of hindsight, Left Exit’s unlikely, sole CD’s title, Do It Anyway, is almost prophetic in its defiance of what would transpire for the band over the year that followed, as if to say, the odds are against us, but we’ll do it anyway. Fortunately, they did, anyway, and, in its 2022 mastered version, it now sounds better than it almost did back then.