When he’s not on stage tearing into his guitar to the screams of rabid fans, Dave Gutter occasionally throws on a smock and helps out at his father’s meat market in Windham. For customers of Dave Gutter’s Meat Market (named after the father, not the son), the only sign that the man behind the meat counter is really a rockstar in disguise are the tattoos scrawling up his forearm and his brisk sense of humor.

“I started playing music when I was nine,” Gutter said. “I was playing bars before I was old enough to drink and then when I was old enough, there was no turning back.”

This June, Gutter and his band, Paranoid Social Club, will be take a giant step forward toward fame and fortune. On board a 75-foot tour bus, Paranoid will be hitting the road for their first national tour as a band. The tour, sponsored by Rusty Surfwear, will begin in California, trek up the West Coast, zig-zag across the country to the East Coast and end with a final show in Boston.

“We’ve learned a lot,” Gutter said, “I’m actually glad that it’s not until now that we are starting to obtain national success because we’ve matured as song writers and as performers.”

For over three years, Paranoid has been playing the local music scene in bars and clubs across the Northeast to a loyal following fans. Gutter describes the music as “rowdy rock ‘n roll”, but refuses to “pigeonhole” Paranoid’s sound into any specific genre.

“The first albums I ever bought were ‘Purple Rain’ by Prince and Quiet Riot’s ‘Mental Health’,” Gutter said. “I think that says a lot about Paranoid because my style is somewhat a hybrid of Prince and Quiet Riot. A mix between musical pop-sensibility and a little bit of soul with a trashy underlining.”

Like many a rock ‘n roll story, the grassroots of Paranoid started with just a couple kids rocking out in their parent’s basement. Gutter and Paranoid bassist Jon Roods began playing together twenty years ago when they were only eleven. In their early teens, they brought in drummer Matt Esty and formed the band “Aces Wild.” As more musicians joined the band, Aces Wild changed its name to The Rustic Overtones.

Rustic Overtones began playing at bars around Portland and producing cassettes of their songs. Brian James, program director for WCYY in Portland, got a hold of one of these cassettes, “Smile” and started playing the song “Twenty Years” over the radio.

“It was great.” Gutter said. “First, it was kinda like hearing your voice on the answering machine and then after that it was cool because you see the direct response from being on the radio.”

Part of that direct response was the attention of indie label Ripchord Records. And as fate would have it, Rustic signed their first record deal on the day Gutter turned 18.

The Rustic Overtones went on to achieve national success, producing several albums and touring the country many times. During their time in the spotlight, they were also mentored by rock legend David Bowie. In 2001, Bowie worked with them extensively in the studio, writing and recording tracks with the band for their album ‘Viva Nueva.’ They attended celebrity parties with movie stars and famous musicians.

“That was kind of like our hey day as Rustic,” Gutter said. “And the weird thing was that we were going to A-list parties with celebrities and musicians, but were still broke. We were still wearing Goodwill clothes at these fancy parties and coming back to Maine and working regular jobs.”

Over the years, Rustic changed its lineup many times with the final roll call as Gutter on guitar/vocals, Roods on the bass, Spencer Albee on the keys, Jason Ward and Ryan Zoidos on saxaphone, Dave Noyes on trombone, tony Mcnaboe on the drums with Paranoid drummer Marc Boisvert playing their last few national tours. But when Gutter and Roods tried to bring the group together to record another album, they found that few band members could commit the time and energy to the endeavor.

“Some of the other people in Rustic had passions elsewhere in jazz and pop music or getting more serious with their girlfriends,” Gutter said. “But Marc, Jon, and I still went to the studio everyday. That was our job at the time. Everyday we’d go to the studio and try to write a new song. And we got kinda stuck in that mode and just kept going.”

See that Rustic was “winding to an end”, Gutter, Roods and Boisvert decided to change their name to Paranoid Social Club after the title of a song they had been working on. The trio then took the songs from the Rustic album in process, produced

them independently and release them as the first Paranoid album instead. The title of the album came from a psychology textbook, “Axis II” being the category under which the condition of paranoia was listed.

Not long after the release of the album, Brian James began playing the song “Wasted” over the WCYY airwaves.

“We had a single ‘Wasted’ that did very well,” Gutter said. “Kind of a drinking anthem. It peaked higher in New York than it did here, though it did well here too. We got some college radios spins and a buzz on that.”

The release of their next album, a dual-disc entitled “Axis III and I”(hypertension and dpression in the textbook), brought them another hit “Two Girls.” The dual-disc album rose in popularity to become the first independently produced album in the Northeast to break billboard charts.

And now, three and a half years since Rustic disbanded, Paranoid

has just signed its first record deal with On-Entertainment and EMI. Their new album, self-titled “Paranoid Social Club”, will be released on August 23 and will included tracks from past albums Axis I, II and III as well as a few new songs.

“It’s kind of a retrospective,” Gutter said of the new album. “But for the rest of the nation, it will an introduction.”

The Paranoid Social Club will be playing their last show before the tour at the Asylum in Portland on June 3. And although Paranoid has many plans lined up for after their national tour, Gutter says he will always come back to Windham and help out in the meat market when his father needs him.

Copy the Story Link