Beggars can be choosers

David Renzi

Friday, Feb. 7, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.

The lead singer writes ad copy. The guitarist plays in a Beatles tribute band.

"So you can write that he does nothing," quips the drummer, who hauls bags at a hotel.

"I manage an iron shop," says the bassist, who says very little.

These are the daily toils that bankroll the Opera Beggars, a band comprised of former Boulder City High School students trying to make it and have some fun along the way.

Witness the scene on the couch, where Mike Hall, the guitarist, is whipping out a Swiss army knife and menacing Todd Whalen, the silent bassist, with a diminutive blade.

"I can make him talk," Hall threatens.

It is a blustery Sunday afternoon, and they've just completed a rehearsal in preparation for their first public performance since the release of "Electromotive," their second compact disc.

They are lounging on mix-and-match furniture inside a chilly space in an industrial warehouse, a rehearsal location rented by several bands but which today is on loan to the Opera Beggars.

"We're homeless right now," laments lead singer and songwriter Rob Catalano.

Hall, Whalen, Catalano and drummer Bryan Haraway are scrunched on the aforementioned couch, but as they're imbibing in three of their four favorite pastimes (smoking, drinking, cutting up), they evince an air of contentment.

In case you don't know them by face, the following will attempt to paint a vivid picture by describing their clothing, hair (including distinct facial growths), shoes and/or any resemblance to Valerie Bertinelli's husband.

Catalano: Long sideburns that vanish into a dull point. Black leather jacket. Cobalt blue fingernail polish (black the previous Friday). Gold Hush Puppies.

"Lemon butter," he corrects.

Haraway: Disheveled short black hair that comes to a widow's peak.

Whalen: Round glasses, ponytail.

Hall: A shock of long brown hair surrounding a face resembling Eddie Van Halen's.

Hearing this, Catalano sees an opening at Hall's expense and takes the shot.

"Because he looks old and decrepit?"

At 32, the guitarist takes a lot of guff for being the senior member of the band.

"Mike is the combined age of Todd and Bryan (both 26)," jokes Catalano, 28. He assures that the ribbing is all in fun. "Our favorite pastime is to insult each other horribly."

Learning to fly

The genesis of the band began informally, in Catalano's living room in early 1991. Just he and Haraway strumming an acoustic guitar and spanking a set of bongos respectively. Hall and the since-departed Jaycen Orgo made it a quartet, and Whalen decided to join after watching them play.

"For a long time it was just me and Bryan horsing around," Catalano says.

They all attended Boulder City High School at various times, and each knew the other from around town.

"Mike and I lived on the same street," Haraway says.

"At one point Todd did, too," says Hall.

Catalano's decision to attend college (University of Nevada, Reno) and attain a bachelor's degree in communications (advertising emphasis) delayed any musical aspirations he may have had. The others, however, were taking their first steps.

"When it was Mike, Todd and I," says Haraway, "we'd play heavy-metal songs about drinking and (fornicating). We'd take a Motley Crue song and multiply it by 10. But then Rob came in (after graduation) and he actually had some talent and started writing some songs."

Although they had all played their instruments for several years by then, Catalano says they were novices when it came to singing, melody and harmony. As such, they were forced to adopt a learn-as-you-go approach to arranging and writing songs.

Ditto promotion.

"We didn't know what to do to set up shows," Catalano says.

For their first performance outside Boulder City (at Sneakers bar in 1992), they inundated the city with fliers and hoped for the best.

"We did like three sets, played all night. And the place was packed. It was a great start."

And it was the catalyst that inspired them to keep going and progressing, although their primary objective when they formed the band -- have fun -- hadn't changed.

"We just wanted something to do," Catalano says. "We figured, 'We're in these bars getting drunk anyway, we'll bring our guitars with us and we'll play.'"

But the ante kept rising.

"When we first started," Haraway says, "we wanted to play parties. Then after we did that, we wanted to perform in bars. Then after we did that, it was putting out records."

Now they have their sights on another goal.

"It would be nice to get signed," says Hall.

That would put an end to the self-financing that funded "Electromotive" and their first CD, 1995's "Cough."

"It's difficult on a limited budget," Catalano says. "It's tough. Making a record for a few thousand dollars isn't easy. Big acts can get $100,000 or more to make a record, and we're competing for the same airplay that they are. Hopefully, we work a little longer and a little harder, but there's a big gap between us and them."

The Opera Beggars did what they could to close the gap by helping themselves -- namely, setting up a bank account funded by earnings from their performances. Playing nearly every weekend for two years, the account grew quickly and the band had a ready supply of cash to pay for studio time and purchase equipment.

"From the beginning, we didn't see the point of divvying up $200 just to have some beer money in our pockets. We thought, 'Instead of drinking a few extra beers, why not put it in an account where it will make a difference?'"

Catalano says that between studio time, pressing the CD, commissioning the cover art and creating promotional items, making a record can run the band between $8,000 and $10,000.

"We go until it gets done. There's a ceiling, of course. We reach a point where we say, 'We can't spend any more money. Wrap it up.'"

Hopeful but realistic

In the event the Opera Beggars ride into the sunset with nothing more than a tan, they can at least look back and say they had fun and cut a couple of CDs.

"I mean, I'm sure there would be a certain level of regret and thoughts of, 'Could I have worked harder?' There would be that, I suppose, but there would also be the satisfaction of knowing we did the things we did. If nothing ever happened, it would be a little bittersweet," Catalano says.

"In the back of our heads, (we think) it would be completely awesome to make music for a living and to be known. I supposed other bands will look at this and say, 'You've got to give it your all and risk everything.' We do. We do take risks. We work really hard, but I think we have a pretty good grasp of the reality of the business because we make our own records and balance the books. We know what it takes to be in this business, to a certain degree."

That knowledge keeps them grounded, he says.

"The bottom line is making music people like, which is probably the hardest part. If you write music that people enjoy and find stimulating, you may end up somewhere and you may not. There are eight zillion good bands out there that nobody ever heard."

In their attempt to avoid becoming eight zillion and one, the Opera Beggars are engaging in means both musical and promotional to pull away from the pack.

The most notable is a website, which the band hopes to have up and running next week. Catalano believes a band trying to succeed needs extra impetus in addition to good material.

"Where the hard work comes in is thinking of new and different ways to expose yourself to the listening public -- whether it's making a record or putting out a demo tape or a 7-inch vinyl or building a website and launching that," Catalano says. "It actually takes thought trying to work out a little plan."

The website will include the band's discography, audio clips of its music, photos of the band members and their friends, interviews, reviews, gossip and "flat-out lies," he says.

"We just want the website to be a lot of fun. Some of these websites you visit are so boring. We want it to be like one of our shows. You have to provide your own alcohol, of course."

Catalano wouldn't call theirs a cult following, but allows that they've been lucky in regard to fans.

"I attribute it to having loyal friends, who not only come to the show but spread the word about us and our records. Going to high school in Boulder City, I don't want to say we're a tight-knit group. We don't see each other socially, but they know us and our music (all original songs) and they're more than happy to come out and spread the word."

He says the size of the crowd at one of their shows depends on the night.

"We do all right. It seems that no matter what kind of venue we play in, we get a respectable crowd -- at least in size if not in conduct."

Mark Huff, a local musician who has played on many a double bill with the Opera Beggars, says it isn't unusual for the band to draw upward of 150 people.

"That's pretty good for these kinds of rooms (typically bars)," Huff says. "When we used to play Mad Dogs on the Boulevard (Las Vegas Boulevard), we would get 300 or 400 people in there. We've had some big turnouts."

The band has also earned a reputation for its raucous and unconventional release parties -- or, more accurately, its raucous and unconventional release party. The Beggars threw it in 1995 when "Cough" came out.

Says Catalano: "We could have just gone to a bar that we play at and had a release party and played. Nothing special. But we thought, 'Let's get an odd place.' Well, the Glass Pool Inn (a motel on Las Vegas Boulevard South) is fairly odd and they have a bar. We decorated the place ourselves and hired a DJ."

The bar was crawling with cheesy characters -- belly dancers, an Elvis impersonator, a magician, a clown, a juggler in a loincloth. But perhaps the most unusual touch was the band's decision not to play.

"People were saying, 'What do you mean you're not going to play?' We said, 'We don't want to. We want to hang out, sip on champagne and glad-hand everybody. This one night we're gonna be big-time rock stars.'"

This year's release party is set for the Champagne Cafe, but the band isn't revealing its plans.

"You'll have to come and see," Catalano says.

Musical matters

The Opera Beggars record for Huff's Exodus Records.

A longtime member of the Las Vegas music scene, Huff met the band about five years ago at the entrance to a bar in which he was playing.

"I was waiting to go on and these guys came in and they said, 'Are you Mark?' Yeah. 'Well, we're the Opera Beggars and you're going to be hearing from us.' I'm thinking, 'Yeah, right.' I didn't think much about it.

"About six months later, someone gave me a tape. He said, 'You gotta hear this.' I said, 'Who is it?'"

Well it wasn't the Sausage Hostages. Huff popped the tape in his cassette deck, and while the sound quality was that of a home recording, it didn't detract from what in Huff's opinion was impressive singing and songwriting.

A call to the number on the cassette box begat a friendship with the band and, at times, musical collaboration.

"They've come a long way," Huff says. "There's a lot of potential there."

He is working at securing some European distribution for the band and trying to interest some of the bigger labels in the CDs.

"I'm hoping we can go in the same direction the Gin Blossoms have gone. That's what I'd like to see happen."

Catalano calls the Opera Beggars a pop band, but over the course of a compact disc all manner of musical influences are evident -- from straight rock to punk rock to country. He says the band hasn't yet found its definitive voice.

"I've had people say to me, 'That song doesn't really sound like the Opera Beggars.' We've made (two records) so far. I don't think we've broken ground on this totally new sound. We're expressing ourselves in the way we feel the most comfortable playing, and playing what excites us. It's all about what turns us on.

"We've never been good at learning other people's styles of playing, and we're bad at learning other people's songs. We're not good at sounding like Stone Temple Pilots or Boston. We're not good mimics, so we're kind of stuck with being ourselves whether we like it or not."

Though the band performs only original material -- all of it written by Catalano -- it did attempt once to perform covers, with disastrous results.

"We were playing every Friday and Saturday and I said, 'Instead of doing our songs, let's take a weekend and we'll learn a whole hour and a half of covers and we'll do a tribute set.' We rehearsed all week long and it wasn't going together that good. We went to the show and man, every song was a train wreck. We blew every song. Every single one."

Catalano also writes the arrangements, but leaves ample room for interpretation.

"I look to those guys to add a personal touch to what we play. I want their style injected. I know Mike's going to give it a little different flair than Todd. Bryan's going to add something that I didn't think of. It's like wolves jumping on a piece of meat. We all jump on and tear off our pieces and in the end we have a song that sounds like the Opera Beggars."

J.J. Johnson, who produced their last compact disc and has produced records for the Del Fuegos and the Cocktails, lauds Catalano's songwriting ability and the band's appetite for pizza.

"We ate a lot of pizza (during production). We always seemed to be eating pizza."

That aside, he thinks their strength as a band lies in their familiarity with each other.

"They seem to get along and have a fairly stable relationship. All of them, this was basically their first rock band. They're homeboys from Boulder City and they've managed to stick it out. They've been together since 1991. That's a long time."

Catalano agrees that their friendship is the foundation of the band.

"That's the best part," he says, adding that it would never occur to him to form a band and take out a classified ad seeking a drummer or guitarist. "We all like each other."

In the end, being spoken for was more than he could bear, and Whalen finally spoke for himself.

"I hate 'em all."

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