The Modern Sounds' manual for atomic-age hi-fi listeners

Joel Paterson's work on a hollow-bodied six string or a steel guitar tends to blur many sounds of the past—rockabilly, swing, country, blues, even a bit of Hawaiian swooning—into one tastefully shellac-scented playing style. Paterson carries that whiff of the '30s, '40s, and '50s into the whole presentation of his music, putting out CDs with hysterically long-winded liner notes and covers inspired by his vinyl collection. Chicago-based Paterson often returns to Madison as part of his Joel Paterson Trio or as a guest player with blues group Cash Box Kings, and this Saturday's show at the Harmony Bar marks the local debut of The Modern Sounds, which also includes bass player Beau Sample and drummer Alex Hall. (All three members sing.) Their recently released package of two albums, Hold It Fellas... It's the Modern Sounds! and Stomp Stomp, proclaims it's "on the cutting edge of the Atomic Age" with covers of old rockabilly and swing 45s. Both come with rather mind-bending liner notes that imagine a "past" when musicians "left the studio not knowing what final mix the engineer would concoct on his personal computer" and people actually paid $14.99 for CDs. Silly as the image may seem, the packaging matches the now old-fashioned "modern" optimism with which the Sounds play old tunes like "Beer Bottle Mama" and "Bacon Fat" (which plugs a dance craze that may or may not have been real). The A.V. Club called up Paterson for more pointers on going back to the Atomic Age.

The liner notes
"Obviously that's kind of a multi-layered joke, how people used to buy compact discs and listen to the whole disc all the way through... and I was kind of pointing out the irony of us putting out a CD at the time when everybody says CDs are dead. And also the fact that you can't really charge $15 even for a CD anymore, and you could 10 years ago and people were happy to pay that price. Sometimes you need a magnifying glass to read our liner notes, but I think it definitely goes hand in hand."

Going "modern" in the studio
"'We played everything live together, the way they used to make records, hoping we could capture the energy of our live show.... It was after hours in our buddy's coffee shop. He had a nice big room, so we wanted to record it there, because we liked the way the drums sounded in that room. First thing you've gotta do is get a good live drum sound, with some life to it. You don't want it to sound like it's in a closet when you record the drums. We just all set up in a little circle around the drums, tons of bleed in all the microphones."

Being prepared
"Studio musicians, back then in the '50s and '60s, they had to play every kind of music. You'd show up at a session, and you might be a jazz guitar player, and you'd have to play blues on one session and rockabilly on another session. A lot of people think these old recordings are bands, but a lot of them are just singers playing with these studio musicians who could play all this music. To us, it's all kinda the same kind of music. I don't really separate it as much as people do."

Was the "Bacon Fat" a real dance craze?

"Well, Andre Williams wrote it, he's an old Chicago guy. It's been recorded a million times. It's kind of an R&B standard. I think every bar band back in the '50s and '60s would play 'Bacon Fat.' Our version is based mostly on Doug Sahm's. I think a lot of these songs are recorded by people trying to start a dance craze: 'Let's cut this record, call it the "Bacon Fat," and see if we can have a hit like "The Twist."' They're all trying to make the next 'Twist' and get a hit with it."