Every Wednesday is Heritage Hump Day! That's because every Wednesday from now to the end of the year or before someone really big stops us, Heritage Hump Records (a temporary subsidiary of Onus Records) and New Times will be bringing you a limited edition collector's item of a much beloved Phoenix band that walked the scorched earth of Arizona before the year 2000 A.D. We will honor that band with a commemorative digital single that you, the digital public, will have only seven days to download to your computers and smart phones before this single gets marked up to an exorbitant price as determined by the mp3 collector community. When that happens, a new Heritage Hump subject will be chosen and the free-for-a-limited-time-only cycle begins anew.
A 14-year hiatus separates the currently popular band Prehab from its earlier incarnation as The Bedspins. For five years between 1993 and 1998, the Bedspins were a mainstay in the Tempe music scene, having logged in some 500 live shows. They played side stage for Def Leppard's Desert Sky show. They opened for the likes of Bloodhound Gang, Redd Kross, and The Violent Femmes. They even did some regional touring with Caroline's Spine, a band signed to Hollywood Records for a hot minute or two.
The Bedspins seemed to have it all. What they didn't have were records that would've better preserved their history for fans.
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Jason Kay, the Bedspins' lead guitarist and one of its resident singer-songwriters, recalls the band as songwriting machine working under producer Andy Barrett of Gin Blossoms and Stevie Nicks fame.
"We worked on demos with Andy Barrett at AB Recorders for two years, but we never had enough money to get a record out back then," he says.
"We were a bit different in Tempe," he says. "A bit heavier, as my brother Chris and I hail from Seattle. We did some jangle stuff but were much closer to Nirvana in sound at the end than we were to the Eagles or to country rock. It was a bit frustrating for us. We had some interest from Island Records, but nothing came to fruition."
Which brings us to this week's Heritage Hump single, a dual play. The first track is one of those original Bedspins demos, "I Thought I Saw You," which Kay says captures the Tempe sound best. On "Kiss the Dolphin," which was recorded live at Gibsons', Kay says "We then embraced our Seattle roots a bit more. We opened many shows for the Refreshments at Gibsons. We loved that place!"
In 2007, all of The Bedspins decided to write some songs just for a publishing deal but it turned into a full-fledged reunion and a new name in Prehab. The band included the Kay Brothers, bassist Chris Cantu, and drummer Jeff Bourne. Bourne later left and was replaced by former Gin Blossoms drummer Phillip Rhodes.
A first album, One Is Too Many (A Thousand Is Never Enough) came out on Aahshaw Records in 2009. For album number two, the group booked Ardent Studios in Memphis to record with John Hampton (White Stripes, The Replacements, Gin Blossoms), with additional recording, remixing and mastering work at Gateway Studios with Adam Ayan ( Nirvana, Foo Fighters, NIN, Keith Urban) for the EP I Haven't Been Completely Honest, now available at cdbaby.You can stream some Prehab tracks here.
