The 'next big thing,' feeling small ~*~ Pyrogirl 13

NEW YORK (AP) -- On a soft summer night last year, Dave and Serge Bielanko stood with Bruce Springsteen before 55,000 raucous fans at Giants Stadium. The beaming brothers, guests of the Boss, backed him on a cover of "Raise Your Hand."

A few weeks later, the pair sat alone on a stoop outside Dave's Brooklyn apartment, facing the possible demise of their band, Marah. They were broke, and nearly broken down.

"We've been so low I could never tell you, and I would never talk about it," Dave Bielanko reflected recently over a cold beer. "We've been low, man. And we've been low in more ways than just no success."

The band's bad times were bookended by better days. It was just four years ago that Marah was on the cusp of "next big thing" status, hailed by Springsteen and signed by singer-songwriter Steve Earle to his record label.

And it was just last month that the brothers Bielanko released their latest album, "20,000 Streets Under The Sky," where Marah once again interprets classic rock through iconoclastic ears.

But during the years in between, the band's future sometimes seemed shakier than a railbird's tip on an 80-1 longshot.

There were savage reviews and angry fans after the band opted for a slicker, new sound on its third album. Bandmates came and went. Last summer, the tapes of "20,000 Streets" were nearly stolen, and Dave broke his hand in a bar fight.

"We were bottoming out," Serge Bielanko explained by phone from Marah's home base of Philadelphia.

And then they were bouncing back. The new Marah album received kudos from fans, critics, and the band itself. The Bielankos signed with indie label Yep Roc, while launching their own PHIdelity Records.

"My brother and I have a boxer's spirit, an underdog mentality," Serge continued. "The more you punch us in the face, the more you knock us down, the more we want to get up and go another round."

Recording in a repair shop The pair first bounced up off the canvas as kids, brothers raised by a single mother in suburban Philadelphia. Most of the fights back in the day pitted Dave, now 30, against older brother Serge, 32.

"We fought our worst battles then," Serge said. The fraternal infighting dissipated when the brothers launched their band, Marah -- a Biblical term that translates to "bitter." The Bielankos, the band's only permanent members, wrote all the songs.

In 1998, they turned heads with their first album, "Let's Cut the Crap (And Hook Up Later On Tonight)," recorded on the second floor of a South Philly auto body shop.

Downstairs, dents were banged out of fenders. Upstairs, the Bielankos listened to Phil Spector tunes and banged out their own wall of sound, with banjos, bagpipes, bass and brass.

"It was archaic and insane, it was folk and it was street, and I'm super-proud of it," Dave said of their debut. "But I don't know where it was coming from. We had no idea."

Whatever it was, it worked. The band was recruited by Earle for his label, Artemis Records, and returned to the body shop for round two.

"Kids in Philly" amped up the buzz as the Bielankos fine-tuned their songwriting, serving slice-of-city-life lyrics about barstool boys and mob boss Angelo Bruno.

Music critics quickly anointed Marah as the first great band of the new millennium. "Imagine the Replacements' 'Pleased to Meet Me' with Springsteen at the mike," read one typical rave.

Marah's live shows -- sweat-soaked romps where their tunes mixed with covers of Sinatra, the O'Jays or the Ramones -- reinforced their reputation. They toured as Earle's opening act, taking the stage to the "Rocky" theme.

Yet success left the Bielankos uncomfortable, fearful of getting pigeonholed. And critical acclaim didn't translate into record sales; Marah remained the best rock and roll band you'd never heard.

'We were running from something' Their radical solution?

In 2002, the pair abandoned Philadelphia for Wales, where they joined Oasis producer Owen Morris (who told the brothers he loved their lyrics, but hated their music). Together they produced -- some said "overproduced" -- a new album, "Float Away With the Friday Night Gods."

"We were running from something," Serge said of the project. "The second album was critically acclaimed. We were confused and anxious to try something else."

Gone was the band's rootsy rock, replaced by a more bombastic sound. Not even a guest appearance from Springsteen could save the band from the backlash. Rock critics were unimpressed, and hardcore fans appalled.

"I've never actually seen a record destroy grown men's lives like some of our fans," Dave said.

"Float Away" floated into obscurity, and the band split with Earle's label. The brothers were now living far apart: Dave in Brooklyn, Serge in London, trying to figure out their next move.

It took a trans-Atlantic phone call and an unusual new song to kick-start their next album.

"Feather Boa" tells the story of a cokehead transvestite hooker -- "the only character in our old neighborhood who had it worse than us," Dave said. Serge wrote the song in 30 minutes, then played it over the phone from London for his brother.

"It'll never be that great again like it was right then," Dave said. "Right there I knew he had written something that made a lot of sense for us."

The brothers reunited above Frank's Auto Body, and went back to work. But between the threatened theft of their recordings by an engineer on the project and Dave's broken hand, things turned grim.

The brothers finally met in Brooklyn last fall to figure things out.

"Just me and Serge sitting on my stoop: 'Can we pick up the pieces at this point?' " Dave recalled. "And slowly we started to put it back together."

The resulting "20,000 Streets" is darker than their previous work; happy endings are not guaranteed. The protagonists of "Soda" and "Body" are both violently dispatched by song's end.

"This time around, we'd lived a few years -- a lot of ups, and many, many downs," Serge explained. "We wanted the record to portray that."

The ups are represented, too. "Freedom Park" is a churning sing-a-long, while "Sure Thing" offers a perfect three-minute pop song and "Pigeon Heart" returns the banjo to Marah music.

The band even received a boost on The New York Times' op-ed page, where best-selling author and booster Nick Hornby hailed their "ferocious, chaotic and inspirational" music.

"It's almost slightly embarrassing," Dave said of the band's well-known fans. "Reaching people to us is the most important thing. I'd trade one Nick Hornby for 10 regular people to like our band."

Still, it doesn't hurt to know the rich and famous. Dave Bielanko recalls discussing Marah's fortunes with Springsteen.

"Essentially it came down to the super-stupid question, 'Bruce, what should we do?' " Dave said. "And Bruce is like, 'You know, if I was you guys ... I really don't know what I would do.' "

So the Bielankos did one of the things they do best: returned to the road. A tour of Europe started in July, with additional U.S. dates throughout the summer.

After that, who knows? The resilient brothers are ready for anything.

"It would be interesting to do two things in the future," Dave Bielanko reflected. "It would be interesting to be really successful. And it would be interesting to not.

"Both of those things are really good options."

<3Keri

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