Miles ahead

The Reno Americana band Six Mile Station is raising funds on Kickstarter to release its debut album. We caught up with Spike McGuire, the band's singer-songwriter-guitarist during a pit stop on their current tour. For more information, including a free download or to contribute to the band's Kickstarter fund, visit www.sixmilestation.com.

Where are you?

I’m in Bremerton, Washington. We’re playing tonight [July 14] at a place called the Voyage Concert House. We’re actually playing with a band we met in Reno called Letters. We played at Biggest Little City Club with them. And it worked out in our routing, and we told them we were headed up this way and they were happy to put together for a show for us.

You’ve been on tour for a while?

Yeah. I can’t remember exactly what day this is—day 14? We’re on a 20-day tour right now.

Very cool. And the Kickstarter is live now?

Yep. The Kickstarter is live. It’s going through August 15.

Tell me about the album.

Well, this is our first album, the big debut full-length. It’s yet to be named. That’s actually one of the things you can do on the Kickstarter. That’s our most expensive item.

How many songs? Where did you record it?

Twelve songs on the album. There will likely be a hidden track on the CD version, where we have a little more time than the vinyl version. We recorded the whole thing in our banjo player John Underwood’s basement. We engineered it all ourselves. And we took all of the raw recorded tracks and gave those to Tom Gordon. And that’s part of what the Kickstarter is for. The Kickstarter is for two things at this point because we’re basically done with the recording. We need to get it all mixed by Tom Gordon, and we need to get it pressed to vinyl.

Is it possible to hear any of it?

Yeah, we have a free download, which is one of the reasons we’re on tour. We’re promoting our new single and our Kickstarter. If you go to sixmilestation.com/free, you can download the first single from the album, a song called “Why.”

How’s the tour been?

The tour’s been great. We started July 2. We did a pre-party for High Sierra [Music Festival] in Quincy at Main Street Bar. We played in Tahoe. We did a big kickoff Reno show at The Alley after the fireworks on the Fourth. My favorite show so far was down in Hollywood. We played this crazy, illegal after-hours speakeasy warehouse. We played from 2:30 a.m. to 4:30 a.m. We were on a set break, and this guy came up and asked if he could sit in on trumpet for a couple of songs. And we were like, “Yeah. Why not?” … So he plays a couple of songs with us, and it sounds like he’s played the songs more than we have—and they’re original songs that he’s never heard. So, we get off stage and the people that we booked the gig through came up to us, and they’re like, “That was the trumpet player from No Doubt!” And we looked online, and sure enough, that’s who it was. That was definitely one of the highlights.

Any other songs on the album you want to talk about?

If you watch the video for our Kickstarter, where I sit down and explain what we’re doing, at the end of that video you can hear another one of our songs in its entirety called “Heavy Lies the Crown,” which is kind of on the opposite end of the spectrum of our songwriting, the Gypsy party feel. Whereas the free download is a more traditional folk rock thing, this one swings more toward our darker side, our Gypsy side. We’re doing a homecoming show on this tour. We’re headlining the last day [Sunday, July 20] of the Morris Burner Hotel Folk Festival. So anybody who thought we sounded good at our tour kickoff. We’ve had a considerable amount of more days of nonstop playing.