Steve Wynn of the Dream Syndicate, Matt Piucci of Rain Parade and Vicki Peterson of the Bangles on UK Tour

The Paisley Underground, the Eighties rock ‘n’ roll answer to the Sixties psychedelic movement burned bright then ended too quickly. The core bands of the scene: Rain Parade, the Dream Syndicate, the Bangles, and the Three O’Clock checked in with well-crafted songs that centered around vintage styles mashed up with the contemporary sounds of that time. 

The songs hit home with the Bangles blast of American beauty while Rain Parade made adventurous motions as the Dream Syndicate had rumblings under its hood that occasionally defied classification. More often than not the pop sugar of the Three O’Clock would have charmed your ears by making a personal impact.

Members of three of the four Paisley Underground bands including Steve Wynn of the Dream Syndicate, Matt Piucci of Rain Parade and Vicki Peterson of the Bangles are touring the United Kingdom in March 2023.

Throughout their career, the Dream Syndicate has played London many times usually as part of a more extensive European tour but March 2023 will mark the band’s first-ever full UK tour. Long-time friend Vicki Peterson of the Bangles will be playing lead guitar at each concert as a member of the Dream Syndicate.

Support for this tour will be Rain Parade, in a special acoustic setting featuring co-founders Matt Piucci and Steven Roback. Rain Parade’s 1983 debut LP, “Emergency Third Rail Power Trip” is internationally recognized as a psychedelic masterpiece with numerous groups citing it as an influence.

March 7 Bristol: The Fleece

March 8: Liverpool: District 

March 9: Leeds: Brudenell Social Club

March 10: Glasgow: The Hug and Pint

March 11: Glasgow: The Hug and Pint

March 12: Newcastle upon Tyne: The Cluny 2

March 14: Manchester: Band on the Wall

March 15: London: The Lexington 

March 16: London: Colours 

Your correspondent reached out to Steve Wynn (Dream Syndicate, Baseball Project), Vicki Peterson (Bangles), Matt Piucci (Rain Parade, Crazy Horse) for a landmark group interview via email to pose a few questions. An edited transcript of that conversation follows.

WG: How did this tour come about?

Matt:  I’m not sure whose idea it was exactly, other than that Pat Thomas and Steve Wynn asked Steven Roback and I to join the Dream Syndicate on this brief UK tour.

Steve:  Hard to believe but we’ve never done a full UK tour before and now that we’re on a UK-based label with a new album it seemed like a good time to do it.  Once the idea was in place, our facilitator (as he likes to be called), Pat Thomas had the idea of bringing Rain Parade out with us.  They have a new album coming out so it has a bit of that combo of nostalgia and forward-looking as well.

Are you road testing any new songs?

Matt: Since it will just be Steven Roback and I, you won’t get the full band treatment on either new or old songs. But we will be playing some music from our new LP, as well as older material in this format. 

Vicki: Some of the songs we’ll be playing come from the Dream Syndicate’s newest album, “Ultraviolet Battle Hymns and True Confessions,” but since we are also celebrating a re-release of their seminal debut “Days of Wine and Roses”we’ll be living back in the early ’80’s for part of the show as well. 

Steve: Not this time around–of course, we’ll be playing songs from our latest album “Ultraviolet Battle Hymns and True Confessions” but, if anything, this tour will be a bit of a career recap especially with such good old friends like Matt, Steven and Vicki Peterson joining the festivities.

Who is the most interesting person on this tour?

Matt: Difficult answer in the abstract, a lot of interesting people involved. But for this tour, it has to be Vicki Peterson. The Dream Syndicate‘s usual lead player, Jason, can’t make the tour. They are both very good guitarists. Jason has more of a downtown NYC style. Vicki has more of a pop sensibility, and I’m very excited to hear what she will bring to the mix. She and her sister Debbi also sang on a couple of our new songs, and I’m hoping to talk her into joining us for a song or two.

Steve: Ah, that must be a trick question.  Everyone on this tour is interesting! We’ve all been through much over the years, together and separately, in the world of music and in other worlds as well.  Each night will be a Petri dish of the elements we all bring to the mix.

What is something people may not know about the Paisley Underground?

Matt: Hmmm. Members of Rain Parade, Green on Red, the Long Ryders and Dream Syndicate regularly played par 3 golf back in the day. Not very exciting, huh? Steve McCarthy did get a hole in one.

Steve:  That we really were an honest to goodness scene.  I think sometimes people think any musical scene, ours included, must be fabricated by the press and convenience but we were all friends, mutual fans and actually spent a lot of time together. 

How has your band shaped the Paisley Underground genre?

Matt: That is for others to say. But I’d like to think people appreciated our approach to songwriting and orchestration, the breadth of song types, and our use of atmospheric sounds to complement and enhance the music.

Steve: We were the dirtbag distant cousins.  Noisier and often more difficult than the rest.  I’d say of the core Four bands of the Paisley Underground, we were the least inclined to ever invoke The Beatles.

How did the bands feed off each other?

Matt:  Originally, everyone started out in a vacuum, developing their sounds in private. But once everyone was out and about, I think we all picked up on the cool things others were doing, and incorporated those ideas into our own music. Personally, I took bits and pieces from each of the groups.

Vicki: We shared time in clubs together, playing on the same bill, or just coming in to watch each other’s set but also spent quite a bit of time together offstage, hanging out or hosting backyard parties. Some of us literally shared living spaces and therefore were acquainted with personalities, album collections, mood swings, breakfast choices…we got to know each other pretty well. But musically, for me, i got an education in fierceness and attitude from the Dream Syndicate, mood and atmosphere from the Rain Parade, charm and precision from the Three O’Clock, and how to respect yet reinvent an era from the Long Ryders. None of the bands played the same kind of music, but since we were all inspired by the sounds and scenes of the 1960’s and 1970’s we connected and inspired each other.

Steve:  Much like you hear about bands from the 60’s, we were all creating quickly and in parallel times so that any time any of the bands had a cool new song or album or guitar pedal, we’d all take note and volley back with something

interesting of our own.  We were all playing close attention to each other

Ultimately, what was the genre’s impact?

Matt: Again, hard for me to say. But I’ve heard later groups say that we were an influence- Ride, My Bloody Valentine, the Stone Roses in the UK. Brian Jonestown Massacre, Beechwood Sparks in the US, and even groups like R.E.M.

Steve:  I guess we kept guitars, garage rock, sixties music and a more overall organic approach alive at a time when it was very, very unfashionable. 

Where is the most unusual place one of your songs has been played?

Matt: I haven’t the slightest idea. I’d like to think someone at the Space Station or at the bottom of the ocean spun a Rain Parade tune.

Steve:  It’s not a Dream Syndicate song but my solo tune “Amphetamine” was in a mainstream movie called “Bandslam.”  It was about a high school battle of the bands and my song was played from start to finish by the actual actors in one of the bands.  They did a great job.

What song should everyone hear?

Matt: For me, I would say “No Easy Way Down.”  I don’t think anyone else sounds like that and I hear some of that in newer bands.

Steve: Of ours?  I’d say, “The Regulator” from our 2020 album “The Universe Inside.”  I’m probably more proud of that than any other song that I’ve release over the years.

What was behind the album: “3 x 4: The Bangles, The Three O’Clock, The Dream  Syndicate, Rain Parade”?

Matt:  It’s pretty remarkable. Most things in life follow the second law of thermodynamics, they fall apart. To reassemble something 30 years on is unusual and beautiful.  For different reasons, each of the four bands (who are not exclusively the Paisley Underground) who all played together in 1982 had gotten back together on their own. Rain Parade rebooted in 2012 to play a show in support of Bobby Sutliff of Mississippi’s Windbreakers, who was badly injured in a car accident. Sadly, he passed last year. 

I think we all started going to each other’s shows again. The Wild Honey collective in Los Angeles, who organizes charity gigs in support of Autism research and treatment, had used members of some of the groups for their shows. We all played together in Los Angeles for this cause, and did another show at the Fillmore in San Francisco, and it was a blast. We wanted to continue the good vibes. Touring with everyone seemed daunting and messy, so someone (Vicki? Steve Wynn? Danny Benair?) came up with the idea we could record each other’s songs, since songs are what brings us all together anyway.

 It was great for us, as Steven and I started writing together again, and getting the recording machine up and running again with covers first was a great idea. I think it turned out really well.

Vicki: The idea formed during a phone call I had with Matt Piucci after we had all played a couple of reunion concerts in Los Angeles and San Francisco. It was just too much fun and Matt and I were trying to find a way to continue the adventure. We were talking about putting together a tour, but that seemed an impossibility, so the album idea floated to the surface. Of course, we thought about writing new songs, but the idea of covering each other’s songs felt right in that it honored our past work and relationships, but allowed for new interpretations and styles. And it had to be out on vinyl!

Steve: The four bands did a pair of shows together in California back at the end of 2013.  We had such a good time and wanted to keep it going somehow and doing more shows was really tough logistically so we kicked around the idea of a collaborative record and this was the concept we all liked the most.  It was a blast to plan and a blast to play.

What’s next on the agenda? Or Years from now what will they be saying about you?

Matt: Rain Parade just finished recording and mixing a new LP with our dear friend and producer Jim Hill. We will have a new single and a short CD sampler of these new songs available for our UK tour, with the LP “Last Rays of a Dying Sun” to follow. We are on the verge of finalizing a record deal with an old friend, and I don’t want to jinx it, so we will keep that undisclosed for now. We intend to try and record some more new material later this year. I’m not sure what else beyond that, but there will be shows with the full band, bringing this new material to life.

As for years from now? I hope for myself that I will be respected as an original sounding and distinct guitar player, and for writing good songs that hold up and stand the test of time. 

Steve: Next on the agenda for me is a new album with the Baseball Project, coming out in June but I’d say the Dream Syndicate will have some kind of new album or project in 2024.  As far as what they’ll be saying about me years from now?  I just hope that some crate digger in some throwback vinyl shop 100 years from now happens upon one of my records, shrieks in surprised delight and then takes it home for some fun, antique listening.  That’s a nice thought.