BOSTON GLOBE
For Musicians in Twinemen, it's a Whole New Ballgame
by Joan Anderman, Globe Staff, 7/7/2002

Consider the ball of twine.

It begins as a spray of loose threads, takes shape when the strands are twisted around one another, and thickens into a solid, interwoven mass. If it unravels, you wind it back up. With every revolution, the ball of twine grows bigger and stronger.

If that description sounds a bit erudite for a bunch of string, all the better. It's hard to imagine a more appropriate way to introduce Twinemen, an ambitious and virtuosic new trio formed by drummer Billy Conway, saxophonist Dana Colley, and singer Laurie Sargent.

Twinemen's music is a tangle of horns and voice, rhythm and motion that eschews the usual linear progressions. Songs burble and tumble in intimate grooves and circuitous patterns.

''The only parameter we gave ourselves,'' says Conway, ''was to make music that was difficult to categorize.''

Richly textured, cool and relaxed, Twinemen's music is not at all unlike the remarkable chemistry between these three musicians, whose personal and artistic lives are inextricably bound together.

Conway and Colley were two thirds of Morphine, the beloved Boston rock ensemble that came to a sudden, tragic end three years ago last Wednesday when bassist/vocalist Mark Sandman died of a heart attack on a concert stage in Italy. Sargent, a fixture on the Boston music scene, was a singer in Orchestra Morphine, the touring musical tribute to Sandman. She's also Conway's longtime companion. All three are part of a close-knit circle of musicians who, through the years, have played in countless band configurations, contributed to the others' albums, and been one another's best friends.

''It's an incredible, incredible web,'' says Sargent.

''There's no line there,'' explains Conway. ''We're the same.''

''That's how we built this album,'' Colley adds. ''Whatever instrument needed to be played, we were all willing to pick it up and see who could get a sound out of it. It's very much a group montage.''

The three are gathered around a wooden table in one corner of Hi-N-Dry Studios, the Inman Square loft where Twinemen's self-titled CD - which comes out Tuesday on the newly formed Hi-N-Dry label - was recorded. Guitars hang from wood beams in the warm, brick-walled space, which is filled with old sofas, oriental rugs, and musical instruments. Vinyl albums line the kitchen wall, and one corner is a floor-to-ceiling shrine to Morphine.

Morphine made its music here, and Sandman's spirit is never far from anyone's mind - or their music, for that matter. He even gave the band the posthumous gift of its name, which comes from a whimsical, semi-autobiographical cartoon strip Sandman drew to pass the time on the road.

''Mark had insomnia, so he'd go up to his hotel room with his watercolors and come down for coffee the next day and lay out the strip of the previous day,'' recalls Colley. ''It was a comic view of the trajectory of being in a band.''

''A ball of twine with three heads - it's such a perfect metaphor for what it's like, with your lives all balled up together,'' says Conway. ''One day, just after we finished the album, Laurie noticed Dana and I doing something, as usual, in an identical manner, and she reminded us that we were the Twinemen. That's who we were, and it's who we are. So we'll take that forward.''

Somewhere along the way Sargent had become a Twineman, too, and their remarkable approach to making music gives new meaning to the metaphor. Whereas most rock bands write songs in living rooms and rehearsal spaces, flesh them out in local clubs, and then go into the studio with an armful of tunes to record, Twinemen did the reverse. The members wrote songs - or rather cobbled, shaped, and pieced them together - straight onto tape.

''Dana and I have a history of making music from more of an improvisation perspective,'' says Conway. ''You tape a jam or someone's shred of an idea. Later you listen back, and maybe you keep a piece of it and work on it again sometime. And then it might end up in Laurie's hands, and she would put some lyrics on it and bring it back to us. It's kind of like a piece of clay that gets handed around. Everybody pushes on it a little bit.''

Still moving backward in the usual trajectory of life as a band, the members of Twinemen have spent the last several months learning the songs on their album. They've played only a handful of live shows, and the songs are still, according to Conway, ''in the process of becoming.'' They'll probably still be works in progress on Friday, when the band plays a hometown CD release party downstairs at the Middle East.

But that's also the point: reclaiming the sheer joy of creating music.

''I never thought I'd be looking at my saxophone again, that day when I put it to rest in Italy, for a long time,'' says Colley. ''There was something sealed in that case that, when I closed it, I didn't want to open it up again.''

''But you have a choice,'' Conway says. ''You can put it all aside, close the case and never go there again, or you can embrace it and head on.''

''Music is a conduit,'' says Sargent.

''One night,'' Colley continues, ''we came down to a Club d'Elf night at the Lizard Lounge and played. And it was such a relief. It made perfect sense. I knew at that point that, of course, this is what you're supposed to do.'' Three heads nod in unison. ''This is what we're meant to do.''