"I was really hesitant to start this band in the beginning," says the 25-year-old Toland of his North Mississippi combo, which includes bassist Thomas Storz, 23, and drummer Andrew Denham, 19. "I was really afraid of doing something cheesy and overdone and not authentic. I didn't think I could play blues, or do any of the things I really liked musically. But I met the right guys who were able to help me understand the hybrid of what we could do and still be authentic."
Now, a couple years into its still-fledgling career, the Dirty Streets is set to celebrate the release of its debut disc, Portrait of a Man, with a concert at the Hi-Tone Cafe on Friday, as part of the annual Shangri-La Records Christmas Party.
The Dirty Streets launched in late 2006 when Desoto County natives Toland and Storz met through mutual friends. The pair quickly bonded over a shared love of the Hill Country blues of R.L. Burnside, the proto-punk of the Stooges, the 70's boogie rock of Humble Pie and Cactus and old soul favorites like Wilson Pickett and Otis Redding.
"I showed him some of the stuff I'd been working on," says Toland, "these stripped-down blues-soul things that I'd been writing and he really liked them and we started playing together and writing more songs."
Toland and Storz soon hit the stage, aided by succession of different drummers. The band's lineup finally stabilized in 2007 with the addition of Andrew Denham, a naturally powerful trapsman fresh out of high school.
The reconstituted combo was soon turning out a batch of fresh songs and starting to make a mark as an explosive live act. They became virtual fixtures at Midtown's garage rock drinking den, Murphy's. "We played there all the time. We played 50 something shows in and around town the first year," says Toland. "We basically never turned down a gig. We played house parties in Clarksville, Tenn., and we played in weird places in North Mississippi. Just whoever would have us."
The constant gigging tightened the band's sound considerably and the group was quickly considered one of the must-see young acts in the city. For a group of relatively young musicians playing classic rock and blues, the comparisons that often get made have been confounding.
"If you're playing anything that sounds like rock and roll during the last few years, people are gonna automatically compare you to Jet and Wolfmother and a bunch of stuff we don't listen to or really sound like," says Toland. "I think the difference with us is we wanted to go to the source of inspiration that the bands we liked listened to -- a lot of pre-war blues, classic R&B and that type of stuff."
Given their growing reputation, several producers expressed interest in working with the band, but the group instead chose to forge ahead on their own with the assistance of local DJ and sound engineer Andrew "Buck Wilders" McCalla.
"We felt that on the first album we wanted to record these songs in their purest form, so we basically did our own pre-production and reworked the songs ourselves," says Toland.
The band cut the basic tracks on the stage of the Hi-Tone Cafe, and finished overdubs at McCalla's home studio. "We wanted to get a really room-y sound to fit the feel of the songs," notes Toland. "We didn't want things miked too close, or to have it sound too compressed, because we felt it would kill the feeling of the songs."
The resulting Portrait of a Man plays like a perfect survey of Toland's record collection, combining the minimalist aesthetic of Hill Country blues, with the fatback rumble of classic rock, and the high velocity energy of punk.
That stylistic merger has helped The Dirty Streets be embraced by the local music scene's old guard. "A lot of the people who've helped us out and been interested in the band are people who are 10, 15 even 20 years older than we are," says Toland.
"That's the cool thing about Memphis: There are people and other bands willing to get behind you even if you have really odd ideas about how to record stuff, or the kind of sounds you make. That doesn't happen in every city."
For Toland, it feels, in many ways, like the Dirty Streets story is just beginning. "We've always had very definite goals since the beginning of the band. The main goal is to be as good as we can as musicians and keep writing songs," he says.
"Now, we want to get on the road," Toland adds. "The three of us are in a place where we don't have any responsibilities or obligations. So we realize this is the best time to do what we want to do."
Shangri-La Christmas Party with The Dirty Streets and Glorie
Friday at 9 p.m. at the Hi-Tone Cafe, 1913 Poplar Ave. Tickets are $5. For more information, call 278-8663.
Credit: The Commercial Appeal, Memphis, Tenn.