Mellow Down Easy achieves recognition, success

Mellow Down Easy's back story is about as southern-rock-loreish as it gets, founded on old schoolmates, grocery store want-ads, addictions and sour relationships.

Drummer Rodney Russell first met guitarist/vocalist Andrew Adkins after answering a "drummer wanted" flyer posted at a Piggly Wiggly in Russell's Portland, Tenn. hometown. Eight years ago, they teamed up with bassist and Adkins' long-term friend Daryl Dasher, and thereby created Mellow Down Easy.

Sometimes southern sounding but not southern, and too classic to be indie but too offbeat not to be, MDE defies the confining box Adkins dislikes so much when it comes to music and art.

Though praised by some of the highest of the high (Johnny Cash, Artimus Pyle), the band still never seemed to really have a breakthrough moment with an album, staying relatively dormant while releasing only live recordings with very few overdubs and studio work over the past decade.

All of that changed in early 2009 when, with Dualtone Music Group, the band released "Cosmisutra," the first formally produced and structured album for which Russell modestly anticipated "fans and a little more attention."

"Between Daryl and I specifically, there was so much going on outside of the band – bad relationships, addictions, crazy, excessive behavior, turmoil within the group – you name it, we were going through it all leading up to the making of this album," Adkins says. "You can hear it in every song on ‘Cosmisutra.'

"Quite honestly, the making of this album is what saved our band from falling apart," he adds.

While the album was personal savior to the band, it proved something borderline epic to listeners and the press. Nashville's Outlaw Magazine pegged it as "the most original style I've heard in the last decade."

Then the juicy labels began to be stamped onto Mellow Down Easy's sound like "jam-pop" blended with indie and country. It is difficult to decipher the appeal. "Most original" is a bold statement. That said, Mellow Down Easy is not the least original, either.

While it isn't that this band has gone outside the box with "Cosmisutra," it has almost broken the box completely by jamming every fathomable influence into the 13 tracks from Oasis and Zeppelin, to Cream and My Morning Jacket.

To trace the roots of Mellow Down Easy's influences, one would have to consider the "very eclectic home – musically speaking" Adkins says he grew up in.

"There was always music playing, be it old school country, '50s and '60s rock, '80s country, Elvis Presley, bluegrass, Waylon, Willie, Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson, Buddy Holly, just on and on," Adkins says. "The way if affected me is I don't listen to Jimmy Martin and hear ‘bluegrass music' and then listen to T. Rex and hear ‘rock music,' Jay-Z and hear ‘hip hop' – I just hear music. It's either good or bad."

Russell grew up with varied tastes that are catching up to him now.

"When I was little, I listened to a lot of rock, then metal, hip-hop, country, grunge, punk and whatever else I could get my hands on," he says.

As a result?

"When I play, I tend to favor straight grooves, but I like to throw in a little flash here and there too," Russell says.

All the sounds poured into Mellow Down Easy now its members are grown up might seem exhausting, but if one can stop asking questions about what to call "Cosmisutra."

It might be easier to see it for what it is – a folderol of easy, windows-down melodies that most often play the '60s rock card ("I Am the Universe," "Undergoing Resurrection"), and are held together with a glittering lyrical grip ("A Million Pages of Ugly Stories").

Like the music the band was raised on, Mellow Down Easy has something that people can, if not enjoy, at the very least respect.

"I like going all over the board and creating pieces of music that reflect every ounce of music that is in my head," Adkins says.

"I think our style is exactly who we are and what we become when three separate people blend their minds, musical tastes, sense of humor and emotions together in one room."