PrintSep. 17--DURHAM -- Stephen Ineson, the chief vocalist and songwriter for the Raleigh-based band Milagro Saints, said he and the band find themselves in a good place these days. In late 2008 the band released "WarmSoulSunshine," and recently released a limited edition CD titled "Blue Halo Valentine." They are working on a new set of compositions, and later this year might release a live recording that Ineson said shows off the band's more improvisational side.
They recently added a new bass player, David Kaminski of Carrboro. "He volunteered his services after we played at Weaver Street Market," Ineson said during a phone interview this week. Milagro Saints also are becoming more musically integrated as a band, he said.
Music listeners can hear some of what Ineson is talking about this weekend, when Milagro Saints plays at Centerfest and the Carrboro Music Festival.
The band has been together for about 11 years in some form or other, Ineson said. It dates back to when Ineson and Lee Kirby (Hammond organ, piano and harmonica) met in New York City. Vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Joyce Bowden also was a founding member. The band later moved to Raleigh, where it has released several recordings, including the 2006 release "Let It Rain," from which the song "Jack Kerouac" came. The lyric of that song proclaims Kerouac "the ghost writer of America."
That song also led to an invitation for the Milagro Saints to play a concert commemorating the 50th anniversary of Kerouac's novel "On the Road," held in Kerouac's hometown of Lowell, Mass.
Ineson is from Sheffield, England, and has been in the United States since 1995, and he views "On the Road" through that prism. "I'm English, so for me it symbolizes what America is about," Ineson said. "You drive 2,000 miles and you're still driving. In England it's all over after 1,000 miles, and you're done." The original teletype scroll on which Kerouac wrote the novel "is part of the feeling of freedom you get here, because it goes on forever."
Ineson was led to Kerouac through another American influence, poet-songwriter Bob Dylan, whom he first listened to at age 14. "He's very much an American," he said. "He had the freedom to push the boundaries of what song writing was about, which is all part of the expansiveness of the culture."
The band's current roster is Ineson, Kirby and Bowden (who plays on recordings but not in concert), Kaminski, Roberto Morales on guitars, Smitty on lap steel guitar and Ed Root on drums and vocals.
The band is very much steeped in what is now called Americana. Other influences on Milagro Saints' sound are the Allman Brothers, The Band, The Grateful Dead -- music that draws heavily on American musical forms such as country, folk and the blues in addition to rock. "We're kind of stuck in that time bubble a little bit, but we like it," Ineson said. "I'm not ashamed."
At the same time, the band has a different sound when it plays live, and the ensemble has reached a point where they can take their songs and vary the arrangements. "Sometimes when we're playing, without having a previous agreement ... we decide to stretch a piece out. You get to a point in a band" where you can do that, Ineson said.
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