Bio
Bill Noonan is best known in indie music circles as leader and chief songwriter of the Rank Outsiders, Charlotte NC-based roots-rock pioneers who were a popular fixture on the Southeastern music scene for more than a decade from 1990 until 2002. Now with the release of his second post-Ranks CD, The Man That I Can't Be, Noonan fully asserts himself as a front man, realizing the full range of his vision as a songwriter, vocalist, and musician.
While Noonan has been influential in helping a number of other regional artists tell their stories—including Carolina rock poet David Childers, bluegrass balladeer Michael Reno Harrell, and ex-wife and Rank vocalist Gigi Dover—only recently has he begun to steer his own course as a solo artist and performer.
Noonan led the Rank Outsiders to Nashville in 1994, where they began recording under the guidance of producer Chris Keaton, mingling with Music City's more adventurous writers and performers at gigs like Billy Block's Western Beat Barn Dance. The buzz words "Americana" and "alt-Country" were just beginning to be used to describe the rootsy sound that fell somewhere between the borders of country and rock and roll, a style that Noonan—inspired by artists such as the Rolling Stones, Gram Parsons, Emmylou Harris, and Rodney Crowell—had pursued with diligence since his earliest days as a performer.
The Ranks' second CD, Checkpoint, was recorded at Garry Tallent's Moondog Studio in 1997 and combined these influences on a selection of listener-friendly originals, receiving strong national airplay on the emerging Americana radio format, and leading to high-profile appearances on shows such as "World Café" and legendary New York DJ Vin Scelsa's "Idiot's Delight."
Following the success of Checkpoint, and inspired by the camaraderie he had seen and experienced on the Nashville music underground, Noonan focused his energies on bringing together like-minded artists in the Charlotte music community to increase the visibility of homegrown original music.
The result of Noonan's grassroots initiative was the Americana Music Showcase, a weekly series which ran for five years at Charlotte's venerable Double Door Inn. The showcase paired local talent with touring Americana acts, including Rank Outsiders' Nashville friends such as Duane Jarvis, Greg Trooper, and Tim Carroll.
At the same time, Noonan created Rank Records, a co-op label that leveraged the Rank Outsiders' promotional resources to advance projects by local collaborators, including now well-known regional artists Childers and Harrell.
During this period Noonan also played a key role in developing the solo career of Gigi Dover, organizing, co-writing, and performing on her first two solo projects: an EP recorded in 2000 with Grammy-winning producer John Jennings (Mary Chapin Carpenter), and 2002's Unpicked Flowers, recorded in Nashville at Moondog, produced by Tim Coats and featuring Garry Tallent on bass on cuts including Noonan's composition "Wasn't Meant To Be," a tune he revamped for inclusion on The Man That I Can't Be.
Noonan's music career and personal life both took an unforeseen turn when his marriage and musical partnership with Dover ended in 2003. Knowing that it would take some time for the dust to settle, Noonan left Charlotte and moved to the deep country of Cherokee County, South Carolina. For the next two years he continued writing, performed occasionally around the region, and spent much of his time pursuing outdoor interests in Upstate South Carolina.
In 2005, he returned to the studio, and his 2006 release, Catawba City, defined an original Carolina roots-rock sound that richly reflected the colors of his home region, while revealing greater personal depth on themes of life, love, and loss, set against the backdrop of a rapidly changing rural South.
Catawba City received notable airplay on Americana stations and specialty shows in the US and climbed into the teens on the Euro Americana chart. Songs like "Get Off My Land" and the title cut, "Catawba City", reaffirmed Noonan's value as a Southeastern songwriter, and over the next two years he returned to the stage, playing frequent live dates around the Carolinas.
In 2008, Noonan began a long-planned collaboration with producer Mark Lynch (David Childers, Lou Ford), recording on the outskirts of Charlotte with engineer Chris Garges at Old House Studio. The result of these sessions, The Man That I Can't Be, is now slated for release on July 21, 2009.
Lynch's treatment on this collection of genre-hopping originals and eclectic covers remains true to Noonan's roots music reverence while gaining a firm foothold on the edgy musical terrain of the 21st century. Though not a complete departure from his country-influenced sound of previous years—the cover of Gene Clark's "Tried So Hard" is a highlight of the collection—The Man That I Can't Be demonstrates Noonan's genuine affinity with a full range of essential American musical styles: from rockabilly to retro-pop to honky-tonk and old-school R&B.
Lynch takes each song on its own terms, establishing a more solid musical underpinning than on any of Noonan's previous efforts, and lending alternative credibility to the artist's more traditional approach. The vocal treatment is striking, proving Noonan to be a singer of remarkable character and agility. And on guitar his toneful, economic lead style shines throughout.
This time around, Noonan fully embraces the hometown music scene: along with former Rank sidemen Ray Mitchell and Tom Kuhn and compatriot David Childers, he teams up with the ace horn section of Jon Thornton and Johnny Alexander and celebrated jazz chanteuse Beth Chorneau. Old House enjoys a strong reputation on the regional alternative scene, and Lynch has included top talent from that side of the musical tracks: drummer David Kim and keyboardist Jason Atkins.
The diverse mix of players adapts inventively to the stylistic range of the material, bringing strong authenticity to the album's R&B cuts: a haunting country soul number with echoes of Dan Penn and Muscle Shoals ("Dirty Ragged Blanket") and the Tony Joe White homage, "Down at the Biddy Hut".
Elsewhere, "Money Girl" and "Wasn't Meant to Be" evoke a time when Del Shannon competed with the Beatles for space on the US pop charts, and the crunchy rhythm guitars on "Down Again" confirm Noonan's Stones influence. On the confessional title cut (written by Mark Lynch), and on the eerie "Lonesome Blues," Noonan's shape-shifting vocals descend into baritone range with overtones of Johnny Cash and Leonard Cohen.
With the release of The Man That I Can't Be, Bill Noonan — veteran Carolina roots-rocker—once again prepares to hit the road, with his new band the Fallen Gentlemen, for an ongoing tour in support of this promising new release.