Goals beyond The courts have their say on Mark Sandman's recorded legacy BY MATT ASHARE

On November 16, 2004, a tiny Cambridge, Massachusetts label named for the recording-studio loft that had once been home to the band Morphine — Hi-N-Dry — released Sandbox, a three-disc set comprising a DVD and two CDs of previously unavailable audio recordings made by the late Mark Sandman. Distribution of Sandbox was at once blocked by an injunction filed by Morphine’s former label, Rykodisc, which claimed it had the rights to six songs on the set. However, in a decision handed down two weeks ago by a New York judge, Ryko’s initial injunction was lifted, and the label’s copyright claim on those songs was denied. In the short term, that means Sandbox, which is being distributed by Kufala and Hepcat, is now legal. Beyond that, it opens the door for future collaborations between Hi-N-Dry and Rykodisc on a comprehensive Morphine box set. And it sets the stage for future Hi-N-Dry compilations of as yet unreleased Sandman recordings.

A long-time fixture on the Boston music scene, Sandman began his career playing "low-end" guitar in the bluesy Treat Her Right, a foursome who were signed and dropped by RCA in the ’80s. That experience taught him a lesson or two about dealing with the music business, but it did little to dampen his enthusiasm for music itself. By the early ’90s, Sandman, who continued to gig with Treat Her Right, was at the center of an evolving group of musicians whom he played with in guises including the stripped-down trio Morphine, the horn-driven Hypnosonics, the quirky Supergroup (with future Presidents of the United States of America frontman Chris Ballew), and the more folkish Pale Brothers (a collaboration with mandolinist Jimmy Ryan of the Blood Oranges). When Sandman booked monthly residencies at the Plough & Stars and the Middle East, it might be under the name Sandband or just Sandman.

Out of all of this confusion, the line-up that best embodied Sandman’s musical aspirations was the guitar-less Morphine, with Sandman on two-string slide bass, Dana Colley on baritone saxophone, and Jerome Dupree on drums. Billy Conway would replace Dupree as Morphine began to reach an audience beyond Cambridge. But in the beginning, Sandman had to release Morphine’s first album, 1992’s Good, on his own Distortion label through Either/Orchestra leader Russ Gershon’s Accurate imprint.

Sandman’s instincts were on target. Within a year of Good’s release, the then Salem-based indie Rykodisc had signed Morphine to a five-album deal that would include reissuing Good. By 1995, Morphine had begun to cultivate an international following and attract the attention of major labels. Before the fourth album was released, Sandman had signed a deal with DreamWorks whereby the last two Ryko albums would be partly funded and distributed by the new mega-label. In July of 1999, however, while Morphine were in the midst of supporting what would be their final studio album, The Night, Sandman suffered a fatal heart attack on stage in Italy.

In the meantime, Sandman had created his home studio and was continuing to experiment with different bands, instrumentations, and recording techniques, committing all of it to tape. As Conway recalls when I catch up with him on the road in New Jersey with Twinemen, a foursome including Colley who grew out of Morphine’s demise, "One of the things I learned while going through the all of those tapes is that Morphine was a venue for a prolific songwriter. And only the songs that fit Morphine became Morphine songs. But Mark was writing all kinds of other material for other outlets. Even Dana and I, who were around when a lot of that was recorded, were overwhelmed. I kept thinking that while the rest of us were sleeping, Mark was recording."

If anything, Conway is understating the quantity of music Sandman committed to tape. Hi-N-Dry, which was also his home, was always ready to go. Anyone who was around at the time knows that when Sandman wasn’t on the road, he was writing new material, reworking old material, and recording all kinds of ideas for his many projects. Aside from Conway and Colley, no knows this better than Paul Kolderie, the producer/engineer Sandman worked with on most of his recorded material.

Over coffee at his current studio, which is located in the space once known as Fort Apache’s Camp Street location, Kolderie, who submitted what many consider to be the key affidavit in the Sandbox case, recalls the process that went into creating the contested demo recordings. "We were working on what was going to be the next Morphine album in ’98. All summer we worked up in Mark’s loft, recording with different people, writing songs, refining songs. There was a whole pool of material that we were trying to coalesce into an album. Lyrics would move around. Sometimes he’d incorporate bits and pieces of things we’d worked on years before. So we whittled it down at the loft with lots of people."

According to Kolderie, Sandman was looking to move Morphine forward. "He was desperate or eager to expand the sound of Morphine because this was album number five and the one before it, Like Swimming, had been seen as a dead end critically. And maybe it was rightly criticized for being more of the same. It was a hodge-podge of stuff we had around because they were on the road a lot and it hadn’t been a good time for writing. But you get penalized for being consistent, because critics are looking for David Bowie/Madonna–type of reinventions. So we were incorporating piano and he was making new instruments like the tritar and unitar. Some days we wouldn’t even record anything: we’d just mess around with different instruments. It was a nice time. But things fell apart because DreamWorks weren’t into what they were hearing. They wanted hits, not moody excursions. But Mark paid for everything himself and basically did whatever he wanted."

Sandman did give in on one issue. He wanted to record the album at Hi-N-Dry; Kolderie felt the 24-track facility at Fort Apache would be better. "I sort of won that argument. But then, you know, things just kind of broke down. He didn’t want to be at Fort Apache, and it was a difficult session. We ended up transferring some of the Hi-N-Dry demos to 24-track tape and recording some stuff from scratch. We didn’t really know whether it was going to turn into a final album or not, but we were taking the next step. As with any Morphine project, you never know. I mean, Cure for Pain was recorded as a demo that turned into an album. What came out of those sessions were some roughs that I gave to Mark on a DAT. He took that DAT and wrote ‘Crappy Fort Roughs’ on it and that was the end of my involvement. He put that DAT away and said, ‘I hate everything about it. I don’t want to put any of it out.’ "

In his initial finding, the judge who heard the case agreed that Morphine had fulfilled the terms of their contract with Ryko and that Ryko has no claim to recordings that Sandman didn’t intend to release. The label may have a right to moneys generated by the sale of recordings made during the term of the contract, but it doesn’t control those recordings. "I think the best spin on this is that it opens the door for this thing to be done right," Kolderie offers. "These recordings represent a big chunk of what was happening in Boston musically during the ’90s. A lot of us who were involved in various capacities want to see them made available to people who want to hear them. We’re not trying to foist off any crapola. This is stuff that deserves to be out there."

With Hi-N-Dry now settling into negotiations with Ryko over how to proceed, neither party is in a position to comment on the court case. But Conway, who after a month on the road supporting Twinemen’s second Hi-N-Dry CD, Sideshow, will be back to play the Middle East this Saturday, is doing his best to focus on the future. "I couldn’t be more sad about the way this all went down. But at the end of the day, my comments are positive, because you can’t get caught up in the struggle. You have to keep the goal in mind. And the goal is to make Mark’s music available and to encourage Rykodisc to put out a proper box set. You know, this isn’t going to be the next big thing: it’s about tidying up and taking care of a guy’s prolific career and moving on. This isn’t something to get stuck on. And I think the saddest part is that it got stuck."

IN THE MEANTIME, the folks at Hi-N-Dry have been keeping themselves busy with other projects, like the new Downbeat 5 album Victory Hotel, a disc recorded at the loft by producer and sometime Twinemen bassist Andrew Mazzone. The Downbeat 5 were launched in 2001 by local guitar legend J.J. Rassler, who cut his teeth in the ’70s with the high-energy proto-punk group DMZ and continued to play throughout the ’80s in the oft-overlooked Worcester-based garage band the Odds before landing a job at Rounder Records. The Downbeat 5 amounted to a giant leap into the rock-and-roll deep end by his then untested singer/guitarist wife, Jennifer D’Angora. A lot has changed since then. For starters, Rassler and D’Angora are no longer married. More important, D’Angora has made up for lost time in a big way. She fronts not only the Downbeat 5 (actually a foursome with roots in ’60s British Invasion rock and classic girl-group pop) but also, with bassist Michelle Paulhus, the pop-punk foursome the Dents. So when I finally catch her on the phone, she’s on her way to NYC for a Dents gig after spending the day at a Downbeat 5 photo shoot.

"This was my first real band," she says of the Downbeat 5. "But it was something I had dreamt of my whole life. I’ve played guitar and been singing since I was a kid. But I never did anything with it because I was too petrified. I tried to manage bands. But it was very obvious that I was a frustrated musician because I really sucked as a manager. So J.J. gave me a nudge, and he wouldn’t have let me go out there if he thought I was awful."

D’Angora may have sounded like a beginner on the Downbeat 5’s rough-and-ready 2003 debut, Ism (Sympathy for the Record Industry). But in a live setting, J.J.’s guitar heroics and a tight rhythm section distracted audiences from her shortcomings long enough to let her develop into a singer who holds her own on Victory Hotel, whether she’s letting loose a bad-girl growl on a you-done-me-wrong rocker or dueting with her ex-husband on a touching acoustic cover of Rick Nelson’s "Lonesome Town" — a fitting tune given their situation.

"We went through all the crap we had to go through," D’Angora says of the divorce, "but we both loved the band enough to keep it together. It’s one of those things that’s in the past and we’ve all come out ahead. Now we’re the best of friends and musical collaborators and we almost feel like this is how it should have been all along. We’re just very lucky."

The Downbeat 5 play this Friday and Saturday night, April 1 and 2, at the Abbey Lounge, 3 Beacon Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts's Inman Square; call (617) 441-9631.