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THE WALLACE BROS RELEASE GREATEST HITS ALBUM, ARE LOST IN FIERY OAK ISLAND PLANE CRASH AND GREAT LAKES SHIPWRECK

For Immediate Release—On Valentine’s Day 2023, almost exactly twenty years to the date of the March 2003 recording of their legendary first album, Popular Songs That Will Live Forever, Volume 1: Lullabies, the Wallace Bros. released their Greatest Hits. Alongside Guns N’ Roses’ Chinese Democracy, the record had been one of the decade’s most hotly anticipated and elusive, since the band first started teasing a collection of hits in press for their 2010 Valentine’s Day release. But it was immediately overshadowed by reports of the loss of the Wallace Bros. in both a mysterious plane crash over Nova Scotia’s storied Oak Island, and the foundering of the Wallace Bros.’ inaugural fan cruise on Lake Huron.

Within less than twenty minutes of the record drop, when even the most devoted fans had only been able to listen through to the sixth track, “Never Thought,” news broke that The Wallace Bros. Grumman F4F Wildcat had crashed into Oak Island’s mysterious Lot 21, where the World War II vintage aircraft was immediately consumed by a fireball that denuded acres of the surrounding Canadian forest and towered so high that it singed the wings of a flock of passing crows.

As press and first responders were still racing to the remote island, distress signals began to emanate from The Detroit Queen, a former Mississippi riverboat that owners had piloted up the Detroit River and illegally docked at the foot of the Renaissance Center, where, after a tense negotiation with the local Coast Guard, it finally received proper permissions and became a fixture in Detroit nightlife, as well as the site of a number of alarming drunken fights, before the Wallace Bros. bought it this winter, with plans to extend their empire through a series of lucrative fan cruises. Before rescue teams could reach the craft, which had announced in a garbled radio call that it had split in half, directly down the center of the vessel, it had slipped entirely under the waves, sinking with a record-breaking speed that observers could only speculate might have been accelerated by the millions of copies of vinyl albums secured in the hold. By the time fans finished the final song on the album, “Blessing,” there was no sign on the grey waters above that The Detroit Queen now lay far below, in its watery grave.

With unseemly glee, treasure hunters were quick to note that the sinking of the Queen had created perhaps the most desirable new treasure target anywhere in the Great Lakes region, since it left the famously disaster-prone tabloid darlings’ rabid fan base without a single physical copy of the record.

But with the fearsome irony that only life can deliver, another treasure was found even while one was lost: as the Oak Island jet-fuel firebomb burned out, observers recognized that the crash of the Wallace Bros.’ Wildcat had revealed a tantalizing new clue in that centuries-old mystery: glimmering below the ribs of the charred aircraft was a vast jumble of rubies, sapphires, emeralds, and a collection of gold artifacts that were quickly identified by archeologist Laird Niven as impossible to place anywhere other than the court of Cleopatra. It was the first public discovery of a major cache of treasure anywhere on the island, and it was made possible only by plane crash: before the Wallace Bros.’ tragic accident, the reclusive owner of the lot had refused Michigan brothers Rick and Marty Lagina access to the site, which had been a constant source of fascination and frustration for “The Fellowship of the Dig.”

At neither site was any trace of either Wallace discovered, which led some observers to suggest that perhaps neither of them had actually died. In fact, despite the unquestionable drama of both disasters, not a single casualty has yet been confirmed. The captain and first mate of The Detroit Queen were found clinging to a buoy in the Detroit River shortly after the Queen’s sinking, and under scrutiny from insurance adjusters, Wallace Bros.’ management, which had previously insisted that The Great Wallace Bros. Great Lakes Greatest Hits Cruise was fully subscribed, admitted that in fact there had been not a single fan on board, “because just like at all other great moments in history, nobody was there.”

In the aftermath of both disasters, Wallace Bros. fans, generally seen as the smartest, best-looking, and most loyal in the music industry, have gathered around makeshift memorials across the globe, alongside grieving paparazzi. They’re left on a razor’s edge, not sure whether to laugh or cry. By now, it’s a feeling that’s familiar to them. “That’s how it’s always been with this band,” said one fan, in the brief interlude between songs that he’d been listening to nonstop since the Greatest Hits record drop. “I mean, to be honest, when I don’t know whether to laugh or cry now, it just feels like home.”

Other quotes from fans were similarly brief, since all Wallace Bros. fans know better than to talk through the music. “They left us with nothing – nothing!” said one fan, her face glazed with tears as she stood at the end of a jetty in Lake Michigan, gazing out at the sunset as it cast its gold all over the blue waters to the west.

But then a beatific grin broke across her face: “Except a great album.”

The Wallace Bros.:

The Metro Times Interview

MT: Hey, look, I’m sorry if I should know this, but before we begin, can you just tell me: what’s a pay phone?

MW: I mean, yeah, we did wait so long to put this album out that pay phones had time to vanish from the planet.

CW: Pay phones were these magical outposts from another time, where, even in places where you’d never been and knew no one, you could pick up a receiver and suddenly be speaking with a friend, with your love, with home. But only for a few precious moments. And you never knew where or when you’d find the next one.

MW: But you always knew you would.

CW: Probably someplace where you never dreamed anyone would put it.

MT: So I’m a little confused. This is a Valentine’s Day release, like the Valentine’s Singles you’ve been putting out for over a decade. But with fourteen songs, it seems more like a whole album.

CW: Yeah, we were thinking of putting this one out on April Fools, but we couldn’t get it mastered in time, so then we thought maybe on the Fourth of July. I mean, Mark really loves the Fourth of July.

MW: That’s right! Happy birthday, Jesus!

CW: But then we decided to add a couple songs, so it wound up being a Valentine’s release.

MW: I mean, I like to think of it as a single with a thirteen-song B-side.

MT: Well, the buzz around the album is fantastic. I’ve heard more than one writer call it the best record of 1999.

MW: Yeah, who knew? You spend twenty years finishing your songs, you wind up just in time for the retro craze for when you wrote them in the first place.

CW: We tuned up the mixes to these things on the CD player in my mom’s minivan. It couldn’t be more 1999.

MW: You can only work on that kind of timeline if you’re actually related.

CW: I mean, we started out in the 1980s only being allowed to listen to Mom and Dad’s records from the 1960s. So if you think about it, we’re right on time.

MT: What’s it like to put these songs out, twenty years after you first wrote them? How’s that feel?

CW: Well, it gives you some perspective. Because the places you really hoped were gonna review you don’t even exist anymore.

MT: So how old were you guys when you made this record?

MW: I mean, are you nineteen, like you were when you first wrote them? Or are you nineteen for the twenty-ninth time, like you are now?

CW: Honestly, it was a little spooky, these old voices singing back the way we felt back then. But maybe all that time burned it down to what’s still in all our hearts, no matter how young or old we are.

MT: In any case, with the perspective of time, it becomes clear that in many ways The Wallace Bros. were always very much ahead of theirs.

CW: I mean, it’s lonely to be ahead of your time, but you know what really bothers me is the theft.

MW: Yes! Like when U2 gave their album to everybody for free, whether they wanted it or not? They stole that from us.

CW: We were miles ahead of the curve on gender.

MW: And misinformation! I mean, I think we’re still ahead of that curve, to be honest. We’re not even real.

CW: Remote work. We were way ahead of that.

MW: That’s right! We never did anything but make stuff at home and mail it someplace.

CW: I mean, but the biggest thing is Taylor.

MW: I thought we should call every song on this record “Taylor’s Version.”

MT: Yeah, that’s the whole project of this record, as I understand it. It’s not just a collection of earlier releases. These are all-new recordings of your favorite tracks.

CW: We started our re-recording project years before Taylor started hers. I mean, but for different reasons.

MW: Yeah, in our case, it was because no one listened to them in the first place.

MT: I did hear the rumors there’s been a bit of a cooling between Taylor’s camp and yours.

CW: From our side, I mean, there’s no bad blood. If there’s been any distance, I don’t think it’s about the re-recording.

MW: It’s because our songs are so much better than hers.

CW: That’s what was so great about taking all this time: you really find out what lasts. Twenty years later, we’re still not tired of these songs.

MW: And we’re easily bored.

CW: They actually work like Motown for me: you never don’t wanna hear it.

MW: Even if they only work like Motown for us.

MT: I could hear the homage to Stevie Wonder’s Fingertips #2 at the end of “Payphones.” But you’ve also clearly got at least two drummers on “New Boyfriend,” which couldn’t help but remind me of Pavement.

MW: Well, let’s be clear. We didn’t take inspiration from Motown, because who could? Who could ever be that good again? Honestly, if you’ve got ten bucks to burn, don’t buy this record. Get The Temptations’ Greatest Hits. 

CW: We didn’t mean to have two drummers on “New Boyfriend.” We just couldn’t get the drum machine out of the original track when we brought the live drummer in.

MT: You are a band that’s never been afraid to nod to your influences.

CW: I mean, Mark listened to the Dead Milkmen and Fugazi. I learned how to do punk rock from Buddy Holly.

MW: This record is basically Biggie Smalls meets Courtney Love.

CW: I thought it was more like The J Geils Band meets the original cast recording of Oklahoma!

MW: Yeah, like if you cross those.

CW: It’s basically where Motown meets Kenny Chesney, with some Velvet Underground thrown in.

MT: So what do you see as the difference between your earlier recordings and these new ones?

MW: Well, Scott and Brad and Billy beat the hell out of a drum machine.

CW: And we pitched the songs in our actual singing range. Except for Payphones. That’s in neither of our ranges, for old times’ sake.

MW: But the guitars sound great. And I didn’t want to lose the energy of the song, if you know what I mean.

CW: I mean, I think it gives the song a ton of energy. The fact that we’re both desperate to stop singing. 

MT: Yes, so much has been made of the dizzying, some might even say relentless, happiness of so many Wallace Bros. love songs. It’s a profound rarity in the genre.

CW: That’s because of our secret ingredient.

MW: What’s our secret ingredient?

CW: Hope.

MW: Yeah, they’re not really songs we wrote about anyone.

CW: Except the breakup songs. Those can be quite.. specific.

MW: They’re songs about love.

CW: The good kind, that you can barely believe would ever really come true. Except for “You’re So Pretty (That I Don’t Know What To Do).” That’s about Bandit.

MT: Bandit?

CW: My Appenzeller.

MW: But Bandit’s three years old. And we wrote that song fifteen years ago.

CW: That’s what I was saying: hope.

MT: Yes, so that was kind of my question, is where you get the inspiration for the kind of love you sing about?

MW: Jack Begley.

CW: That’s true, we both love Jack Begley.

MT: Jack Begley. From the Oak Island History Channel series?

MW: You know what’s always bothered me on that show? Like, when they put Gary Drayton on, they’re always like, “Gary Drayton, Treasure Hunter.” But whenever Jack Begley comes on, they’re just like “Jack Begley.”

CW: But that guy holds the whole show together. He’s the only one who ever does actual work, and he’s the nicest guy in the world.

MW: That guy doesn’t have an ounce of cynicism anywhere in his system. His tagline should be, “Jack Begley, National Hero.”

CW: But for obvious reasons, we love that story. Who would have thought that two crackpot brothers from Michigan would be rewriting history, when FDR and the Masons couldn’t do it?

MW: Sssshh!! Masons are scary!

CW: I mean, that’s kind of what this album is all about, when it comes down to it.

MW: Yeah, I mean, in Nashville, there’s money in music, so you can make a nice living as a session player, right? But in Detroit, there’s just nothing else to do.

CW: So no one’s playing for a paycheck. You just get all these people, literally playing their hearts out. We are amateurs, and we love amateurs, and we love the way that amateurs sound.

MW: Yeah, if we’d waited til we could sing in tune, we’d never have made any songs. And making songs taught us to sing in tune.

CW: I mean, except for Mark.

MW: This is a record by all the local musicians who aren’t out there on the road, in Nashville, on the coasts. It’s for the community college DJs and the people who host house shows. The singer who nobody ever gets to hear outside her own house. All the recording engineers laying down tracks for local bands and all the dive bar sound guys trying to get some kind of balance through busted speakers. And everyone who’s ever listened to a record by their friends.

CW: It’s an anthem for amateurs, for everything that everyone has inside of them that they don’t know how to let out. It’s about finding a way to make something with what we were given, even if no one else ever listens.

MW: Remember when Tommy Stinson came to play at the Magic Stick and after the show he was selling his own t-shirts in the back and we were so nervous we couldn’t buy them from him? That was the best night ever.

CW: Yeah, it was.

MT: So what would you say this album is about, for you two?

MW: It’s about all the people and all the music we’ve ever loved.

CW: It’s a record of everything that’s ever happened to us. Everything we ever hoped for and everything we lost or left behind. Everything that’s happened, and everything that still might.

MW: And even though it seems like love songs, it’s about our friends. The way they’ve loved us, and the way we love them.

MT: I mean, that sounds like a lot. For forty-five minutes.

CW: Yeah, it seems long, doesn’t it? We were trying to keep it to more like thirty-three, but with fourteen songs, that’s not easy. “I Don’t Like Girls” was probably a little bloated at two minutes and six seconds.

MW: Bloated?

CW: But I think we could die happy now, with this record out.

MW: Yeah, but let’s not.