Ron Gallo’s “Heavy Meta” (New West) is one of those albums that both energizes and polarizes. It was largely written at a time when Gallo’s life was going through an emotionally exhausting transition.
“I was in a relationship with someone struggling with self-abuse issues,” he says. “I got to the worst of the worst while living with someone who was going through this, and it was like I was leading a double life. It was hard to deal with.”
Gallo had been playing for several years in the Philadelphia roots-rock band Toy Soldiers after graduating from Temple University in 2010. “I look back on it like I was a different person – I realize I was barely scratching the surface of what I was trying to do with music,” he says.
When things bottomed out with his relationship and his girlfriend moved out, “I realized I had been kind of wasting my time,” he says. “I started to tap into who I was and what I really wanted to say with music. I realized I had just been fooling myself up until then.”
Two weeks later he moved to Nashville, Tenn., and started putting together a new band to play his new songs in all their anger and unvarnished honesty. Their raw, guitar-driven sound was in part inspired by the punk and postpunk artists he embraced with new fervor as his life was falling apart in Philly: Richard Hell, Patti Smith, the Stooges. “I was touring with my old band and I was surrounded by the great rock ‘n’ roll underbelly in America,” he says. “I was getting into those shows or playing in the same shows with people like Ty Segall. I revisited (the Stooges’) ‘Fun House’ and it blew my mind, it was so freakish and relentless.”
Gallo realized his new songs really didn’t suit Toy Soldiers. He gave free rein to his guitar in tandem with lyrics that poured out of him as he tried to make sense of where his life had taken him. “It led to a lot of inquiry about what’s around you, and I started to figure myself out,” he says. “It’s like the first 27 years of my life were chapter one, and this was chapter two.”
“Heavy Meta” struck a chord, unlike anything Gallo had recorded previously. It was released in the first few weeks of this year, and the song’s themes were broad enough to mirror the post-election turmoil in America.
“There was a weird timing there,” Gallo says. “We played these songs on tour and people who were ticked off about the political climate were responding. The fury seemed to resonate with people in a way that I hadn’t intended when I wrote these songs.”
The twist on that tale is that Gallo now finds himself in a better place than when he wrote songs like “Kill the Medicine Man” and “Please Yourself.” After his troubled girlfriend walked out, “she went to a rainforest in South America and transformed herself from the inside out,” Gallo says. “It inspired me to see what she had done. It instilled some belief in me about what human beings are capable of. It’s a miracle this person went from the bottom to where she is now. When all that stuff started, it gave music a purpose for me. Now I feel like I need to let people know what’s possible, that there is more to life than how those earlier songs sometimes sound. That’s what fuels this quote-unquote ‘mission.’ “
To perform some of the songs on the album, Gallo tries to bring a different perspective. “I was a miserable person when I wrote these songs, and I was ticked off at humanity, which means I was really mad at myself,” he says. “There’s a sense of aggression and honesty and freedom in it, but those songs don’t really represent how I feel now. So I try to dig out the humor, the off-the-cuff feel and tread the line between light and dark and not be overly serious about it. I want people to know that we’re in this together and that we can get through it.”
Several songs sound downright nasty, the work of a once-unhappy guy a little too eager to point fingers. They include “Why do You Have Kids?” In the song, the narrator takes out his frustration on a parent who clearly isn’t embracing the responsibilities of rearing children. Gallo agrees that the song is overly judgmental, a snapshot of a moment on the street that upset him so much he turned it into a scathing indictment of “accidents having accidents.”
“We’ve stopped playing it because I have an infinitely more compassionate perspective on all human beings since I wrote those lyrics,” he says. On the plus side, Gallo says he hears from listeners who have told him the cathartic moments on the album helped them through their own personal difficulties.
“I like when people find hopefulness in that music, because in a way I was looking for a little hope and meaning myself,” he says. “I’m happier now, so what does that really mean? The idea is that by changing yourself, that’s how you start to change the world around you. That’s what you can control, and that’s why I’m excited about the next album. It’s going to come from a lot more positive place. But it’s still going to be the truth, as unfiltered as I can make it. Otherwise, it’s pointless.”
Greg Kot co-hosts “Sound Opinions” at 8 p.m. Friday and 2 and 11 p.m. Saturday on WBEZ-FM 91.5.
When: 10 p.m. Friday
Where: Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western Ave.
Tickets: $18; www.ticketweb.com
When: 2:10 p.m Saturday
Where: Lollapalooza, Grant Park, Monroe Avenue and Columbus Boulevard
Tickets: Sold out; www.lollapalooza.com
Greg Kot is a Tribune critic.
greg@gregkot.com
Twitter @gregkot
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