Pressure Men

Band reunites for a cause -- and a bit of fun

Eight o'clock in the morning isn't a very rock 'n' roll time of day -- unless, of course, you were up all night and never went to sleep. Back when their 1980s-vintage band Pressure Boys ruled Chapel Hill, John Plymale, Bryon Settle and Greg Stafford put in plenty of sleepless nights.

But that's not why they're gathered over biscuits and pancakes at a Chapel Hill restaurant on a recent weekday morning. Between work and kids and everything else, 8 a.m. was the only time that all three men could get together and talk about their shared Pressure Boyhood.

The band is about to enter the present tense again, temporarily, with two reunion shows next weekend to benefit The Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. So they're revisiting music they haven't played in 20 years, trying to shake off the rust.

"Today, after this, I get back on the horse," Settle announces. "I've gotta go practice."

"Yeah, I've been playing a lot of trombone, trying to get that back," Plymale says. " 'Soul Chip' is not coming together. Neither is 'Queensland' -- can we change the key on that?"

"You just need to practice harder," Settle kids, drawing a dirty look from Plymale.

"In all seriousness," Stafford interjects, "I've forgotten how to read music."

"And play music, too," Plymale says.

"Ha ha."

Kick-starting the Pressure Boys back to life has not been simple. Frontman Plymale, guitarist Settle and saxophonist Stafford live in the Triangle, but the other three in the reunion are scattered across the country. Trumpet player Je Widenhouse lives in Asheville, and drummer Rob Ladd and bassist Jack Campbell both reside in California. So they're having to rehearse when they can (including this week).

It's worth doing because it's for a good cause. It's also worth doing because the Pressure Boys' legend has grown in the 20 years since the band broke up, landing members everywhere from platinum jazz band Squirrel Nut Zippers to onstage with Don Henley.A lot has happened in those 20 years -- marriages, kids, career changes, even death -- which makes conjuring up the Pressure Boys' old youthful exuberance a challenge for a bunch of rockers in their 40s. And of course, the present keeps intruding.

"My son's band wants me to play with them," Settle says. "They had their guitar player bail because he's playing Merlefest."

"Are you gonna?" Stafford asks.

"Probably," Settle says. "It's just hard-core, so it'd be pretty easy. But if I do it, I want to put a La-Z-Boy onstage."

Back in the day

Pressure Boys formed in the fall of 1981 at Chapel Hill High School. They sounded like what they were, marching-band geeks who had picked up on British new-wave ska music -- a combination of sped-up reggae rhythms and punk attitudes.

They got by on enthusiasm the first few years, eventually growing into a sound akin to English new-wave pop band XTC. By then, Pressure Boys and Raleigh's Fabulous Knobs were at the top of the local alternative-music totem pole.

"In the mid-'80s, they were pretty much the main Chapel Hill band," says Peter Cashwell, a longtime fan who teaches English at Woodberry Forest School in Virginia. "A lot of that had to do with the fan base they had at Chapel Hill High, which is where their first core audience came from. Early on, they were heavy on energy with a good choice of covers, a lot of the British two-tone ska stuff like Madness or Specials. But by 1982, they were putting together original songs with some weird elements that went in other directions."

Pressure Boys didn't sound much like anyone else in the Triangle back then. But they fit right into the burgeoning rock underground that was coming together in Chapel Hill, Athens and other Southern college towns. And they had a particularly valuable secret weapon: They were less pretentious and more fun than just about anybody else.