The four songs on FleshPop, the debut EP from the troubadour-roots trio My Wooden Leg, are uncommonly assured, guitar-charged mini-canvases full of enigmatic characters, shifty motives, and desperate situations. “Times” is a Neil Young-ish lament about threadbare living whose unexpected rhythmic shifts, from monster stomp to playfully skittish cymbal flourishes, mirror frontman Michael Maftean’s snarly, sardonic take on the blues. “Hell’s Half Acre” is a gypsy-fired rockabilly romp about the baddest neighborhood on earth, with a nostril-flared Maftean offering, “Don’t you know that we ran that place? / And don’t you know that we done ran it down?”
The relaxed command of outlaw mythology, the odd ability to make four or five different instruments sound like a restless street orchestra, should come as no surprise: Singer-songwriter Maftean was lead guitarist for Catfish Whiskey until that popular long-time ensemble went on indefinite hiatus last year. With Travis Dixon (also a Catfish alumnus) on bass and backup vocals and Scott Vernon doing drums and vocals, the snaky, loopy beats and sly ‘n’ sinister carnival quality of FleshPop are drawn from a time-honored place: the Romanian folk and spiritual tunes that Maftean heard his parents play while growing up on the south side of Chicago. His mother and father had left their homeland in the late 1970s to escape the cruel domestic policies of the notorious dictator Ceausescu. Michael and his brothers were born here, but Romanian was his first language.
“The closest [U.S.] comparison I can think of is bluegrass,” said Maftean, 25, while trying to describe the rhythmically sophisticated accordion, violin, guitar, and flute-laden Eastern European traditionals of his earliest memories. “There are a lot of songs about work and children and romance. But not just romance between men and women — it can be an old man’s love for his front porch.”
The ever-changing lineup of the music group known as Taraf de Haidouks — still the most famous international exponents of Romanian folk and pop — was very popular in the Maftean household, as was disco, Louis Armstrong, Frank Sinatra, and, last but hardly least, Michael Jackson. (Jackson’s 1992 stadium concert in Bucharest, the first by an American pop star after the 1989 Romanian revolution had installed democratic elections, made him a big-time cultural hero there.)
The other big musical influence on Maftean, who began messing around with guitar, keyboards, and saxophone as a teenager, was the Sunday service at the Romanian Pentecostal church in Chicago that his family attended regularly. The services, he said, “were in this ridiculously huge church with giant pillars outside.” The preaching was fiery American revivalist style, while the music “followed the traditions of the old country, but it was a much, much bigger sound. There was a full orchestra and a full band, and each had about 40 people. They added little pop, electric touches. It was incredible, like a stadium concert every Sunday.”
After high school, the idea of working as a professional musician wasn’t on his radar. Instead, he followed his uncle, who worked as a fleet mechanic at American Airlines, down to Fort Worth. Maftean enrolled at Tarrant County College’s northwest campus to earn his A&P (that would be airframe and powerplant) license. He wanted to become a commercial airline pilot, but the pull of music scrambled that idea when he met Keegan McInroe while the two jammed at a bar called Scooner’s on University Drive. Maftean joined McInroe’s band, Catfish Whiskey, in 2003 as lead guitarist and background vocalist.
The onstage chemistry in Catfish Whiskey was great, as longtime fans can attest. Recording and performing for a slowly growing national audience was like getting a master’s degree in musical confidence for Maftean. His reserved stage presence belied the energy he poured into the guitar, coaxing out swampy rock, twangy blues, and frayed arena-metal notes. His vocals grew stronger and more distinctive, too. (Maftean’s young, quiet telephone voice sounds nothing like his gritty, cheerfully malevolent singing on FleshPop.) The one thing Catfish Whiskey didn’t rely on him for was songwriting — the band’s sole Michael Maftean-penned tune was “Lullabye for the Wicked” on Catfish’s 2008 release, Blood & Bones.
By the time McInroe released his solo CD and announced that he was sidelining Catfish to take on family responsibilities, Maftean had already begun writing in earnest. All four of the tunes on the My Wooden Leg EP were written during the year he lived above Cadillac Cantina in the Stockyards. “I saw all of these characters, rodeo guys and country musicians and country audiences,” he said. “I had access to four or five different bars at once. The good things about that scene, and the dark things, are in those songs. All the characters I sing about are real – they’re just sort of exaggerated.”
Maftean, bassist Dixon, and drummer Vernon are currently moving forward with My Wooden Leg as a serious band, not just a side project. They’re planning to record and release a full-length by the fall, hopefully again in Chris Swicegood’s Fort Worth studio with Evan Jones at the knobs. Maftean is determined to overcome any natural trepidation at being the frontman, the one largely responsible for carrying a show.
“I’m still known for being shy onstage,” he said. “But I’m getting more comfortable. I couldn’t imagine doing this without Travis and Scott. That’s why we’re called ‘My Wooden Leg’ and not ‘Michael Maftean and The Wooden Leg,’ because the songs wouldn’t sound like they do without those guys.”
Contact Jimmy Fowler at jimmy.fowler@fwweekly.com
