It’s fitting that the following track, “Trails”, is the first instrumental Droge has ever included on a record. A delicate two-minute mood sketch, it’s something that could easily be used to enhance a film scene, though it works equally well as a momentary pause between songs. “Going Whichever Way The Wind Blows”, which comes a couple tracks later, actually originated as a mini-song in Droge’s score for Tattoo.
The open, airy feel of these tracks helps define the overarching tone of Under The Waves, which stands in stark contrast to the raucous-and-trippy rock of 1998’s Spacey & Shakin’, Droge’s last widely-heard solo album (his 2003 release Skywatching was largely overlooked). That said, the disc does have its less-subtle moments as well, notably the echoey rocker “Calendar Tim” and the psychedelic-pop vibe-ride “Electric Green”.
The latter song was co-written with Kim Richey and appeared on Richey’s 2002 release Rise, toward the end of a five-year period that his fans might have thought was rather fallow for Droge. In fact, quite the opposite was true. Though he had no new records on the shelves between 1998 and 2003, he somehow found himself busier than he’d ever been, even if there were no solo albums to show for it.
“I kind of accidentally found a whole other musical life in producing at that point,” he explains. Droge’s major-label deal dried up after Spacey & Shakin’, but the terms of his contract included what might be termed the music-biz equivalent of a severance package.
“At that point, the crossroads I was at was: Well, do I go back out into this landscape of what was happening in the music business at that time and try to find another deal? Or do I just sort of retreat for a while and keep my head down and sort of let the dust settle? And that’s what I chose to do.”
Droge used his exit money to buy gear for a loft studio he’d decided to build in his house on Vashon Island just outside Seattle. He spent the next year or so getting everything up and running.
Jerry Joseph, a old friend from Portland, Oregon, who fronted jam-band the Jackmormons, was the first to come calling. Droge produced Joseph’s 2000 solo album Everything Was Beautiful, then began working on his longtime partner Elaine Summers’ disc Sparkler, which came out in 2002.
In between, Droge produced the 2001 album Bayleaf for another old friend, Pearl Jam guitarist Stone Gossard, at Gossard’s studio in Seattle. A few other Northwest regional acts also enlisted his services, and then there were the film scores. In retrospect, it’s easy to see why his solo career took a back seat for awhile.
“From around the time I started Stone’s record,” he says, “there was a stretch for a really long time where I was completely slammed. Just like, every single day, I was working, for a long time.”
Most of these projects were relatively modest undertakings, but soon another opportunity that came his way was a much bigger deal. Aware Records owner Greg Latterman, who helped launch the careers of Matchbox Twenty, Train, and John Mayer, enlisted Droge to be part of a folk-rock “supergroup” of sorts for a big-budget album on Columbia.
The self titled debut of the Thorns — featuring Droge, Shawn Mullins and Matthew Sweet (early collaborators Glen Phillips and Marshall Altman fell out of the picture, though they share one songwriting credit on the disc) — came out in May 2003. Columbia spent serious money trying to break the band at radio, with only mild success; the album peaked at #62 on the Billboard charts. Extensive Thorns tours included a European stint opening for the Dixie Chicks.
