There may be eight million stories in the naked city, as the saying goes. But the same may be said for the music business — and the members of the long-defunct progressive rock band Voices is certainly one of them.

But instead of fading into the shadows of musical memory, the band’s surviving members are re-energized and reuniting for an upcoming gig at Edmond Town Hall on Thursday, September 14.

The band, featuring opening support by The New Desperation, features Newtown native Corky Ballard on bass and vocals; Chris Martirano on keyboards and vocals, Lex Martirano, on drums and vocals, Rod Barbour on lead vocals, and Ramon Colon, on guitars, stepping in for the late Frank Lake, who first joined the foursome when they were known as Emily Band and drawing packed crowds to local clubs and bars throughout the 1970s and early ‘80s.

“What’s interesting is, when we were The Emily Band, we started out with Ramon on guitar, and he was replaced by Frank,” Chris Martirano said as he joined Ballard at their very unique recording and rehearsal studio in Newtown.

That building, resembling a small roundhouse, was actually a former Hawley School classroom that was located on the Church Hill Road property and was eventually disassembled and sold to Ballard, who rebuilt and customized it into the Voices Studio that still operates very efficiently today.

With Chris Martirano making the relatively short hop down from New Milford to join Ballard for a chat with The Newtown Bee, the pair is very much looking forward to starting rehearsals this week ahead of the concert with their bandmates.

Lex Martirano, who is coming from California, Barbour, coming from North Carolina, and Colon, making the ride from South Carolina, will be performing two full sets of a number of their own original catalog, which numbers over 100 tunes, as well as a unique blend of classic rock from The Beatles, to more progressive acts like Yes, Toto, Genesis, Pink Floyd, and ELP.

“This is gonna be stuff that we love,” Martirano said. “I don’t want to say it’s self-indulgent, but we are going to audio and video the performance. It’s something that we really badly want to do together. It’s been such a long time. So, for the past few months, everybody has been woodshedding, and honing, and making everything perfect. I think people are going to be pretty blown away when they hear what can be done after 45 years of not playing together.”

Keeping In Touch

As Ballard explained, despite losing their lead guitarist after Lake passed away, he and Colon remained in touch.

“Through the years Ramon had continued to play in bands in South Carolina. He told us he’d be honored to fill in for Frank, and we’re very excited to have him. Over the years, the band members have moved but we’ve always remained close. Lex and Rod visited me several years ago after I hadn’t seen them in person in many, many years.”

Although his wife had never met the other far-flung musicians, Ballard fondly recalled “what impressed her most was that it appeared that we had been together every day.”

The story of Voices is one fraught with conflict and disappointment, although its members have resiliently played on and have done other professional work in and around the music business.

At one point, after perfecting their sound in the early 1980s, Voices finally got their big break in ‘85 getting a multi-record contract with Atlantic Records and heading into the studio pumped with talent and high hopes in 1986.

The journey that would lead to the first record for Voices began in Foghat’s Boogie Hotel Studio in Port Jefferson, New York, before shifting to the more prestigious Greene St. Recording in SoHo, Manhattan. At that point, a critical decision made outside the band’s purview would mark the beginning of the end of Voices as a promising recording act, which at the time was defined for its progressive sound that soon came to be branded “corporate rock.”

“Our album was released in 1986 and was a disaster,” Ballard related. “Our producer turned out to be a coke addict, it took over a year to complete, and went $80,000 over budget. Management convinced us to just finish the project and move on to our contracted second album, so we did and they dropped us. Life is so weird.”

Lots Of Musical Inventory

Today, Ballard insists he has never been able to listen to that first and only Voices album, and while the band’s reunion show will pluck favorites from their massive inventory of songs, he vowed they would never play a cut from that self-titled project.

“We were in a situation where Atlantic had two producers available for our album,” Martirano said. “One had a couple of successes with up and coming rap artists, and the other was really into progressive stuff like we were already doing. I don’t know how it happened, but we ended up with the rap producer and things immediately started going bad.”

From the initial meetings between the band and that producer, whose name will not be repeated here out of respect for the surviving band members, they knew things were going bad.

“He sat us down and told us we needed to write 18 songs that were hits, despite the fact that we already had more than 100 written and ready to record,” Martirano said.

As production commenced, things got stranger. According to Ballard, the producer was fond of overproduction and using quirky, unconventional techniques that he said ruined and muddied the Voices sound.

At one point, the producer had the band record the sound as a full sized piano was dropped from a crane. At another, he forced one of the band members to purchase and hurl a honeydew melon at the studio wall.

“Not a cantaloupe, mind you, a honeydew,” Martirano recalled, shaking his head.

“And once he got that sample, it sounded like someone cracking a walnut,” Ballard added. “Stupid...”

Despite the short-lived tenure of Voices as a recording act, the songs and sounds of the band remained infused into the creative DNA of its players, and they are thrilled to be reuniting for their Edmond Town Hall main stage show.

Tickets are just $15 in advance and $20 at the door. Concession sales will help benefit the Edmond Town Hall and the board's mission to expand cultural and musical offerings to the Newtown community and the region.

“Our goal is to support the arts, to cover our expenses, and share the joy,” Ballard said.

“Folks who come out will see and hear live music played like nobody else, including originals we were never able to record,” Martirano said.

The September 14 Voices Reunion show will run from 7 to 10 pm.

For advance tickets, visit edmondtownhall.ticketleap.com/voices/

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Editor John Voket can be reached at john@thebee.com.