There are four singers, four songwriters, and four strong personalities. All four are charismatic and attractive, all are unusually gifted, and all have their own diehard fans. In short, the group known as Voices On the Verge are the closest thing that the community of young female singer-songwriters has come to producing its own Beatles.

Which leads to the obvious question: if this group was the Fab Four, who would be who?

Erin McKeown: "I always imagined I'd be John, more for his work as a solo artist. He did a great job of marrying politics, musicality, and activism in a way that most artists stumble or fall at."

Jess Klein: "It might depend on the night, but I'd usually have to be Paul McCartney. I love his melodies, because they have a beautiful simplicity. And he seems to have a similar energy to me somehow."

Beth Amsel: "I'd be George, because I'm going to get pegged as the quiet one."

Rose Polenzani: "I'd have to be John Lennon, because I'm the biggest asshole in the group."

So there are two Johns and no Ringo, but this is a folk group, after all. And like many folk groups, it's one that formed by accident. Booked to play separate sets at the Iron Horse in Northampton, Massachusetts, three years ago, the four members decided to join forces instead, making varying contributions to one another's songs. The collaboration got picked up again at various times while the four built solo careers, and this Tuesday sees the release of the first Voices On the Verge album, Live in Philadelphia (on Rykodisc), as well as the start of a tour that kicks off that night at the Paradise in Boston. (The four will also perform on October 4 at the Living Room.)

What makes the project intriguing isn't what the four songwriters have in common but how different their styles really are. Klein's songs are as warm-hearted as Polenzani's are dark and mysterious. Amsel draws from traditional folk sources; McKeown shows the influences of jazz and beat poetry. "I wouldn't be so interested in this project if I were sitting down with four other people with the same record collections," says McKeown. "But I think there's a common ground in terms of dedication and seriousness. I've said it's like trying on each other's clothes [the quote appeared on the promo copies of the CD], but I hate that quote and I wish I hadn't said it -- I never try on clothes and I hate shopping. What it's really like is eating off each other's plates."

"We may all travel differently and have different lifestyles, but I was amazed at how we all liked each other right off the bat," Amsel adds. "And lucky our humor is fairly similar, so it gives us a chance to break out of the folk Jello mold." (I talked to the four women by phone from separate locations: Polenzani from her home in Boston, Amsel from hers in western Massachusetts, McKeown from a tour break in Seattle, and Klein backstage before a concert in Pennsylvania.)

At its best, the Live in Philadelphia CD shows what happens when their four styles blend into one. As produced by Rykodisc president George Howard, it sounds almost like a studio album: there are breaks between songs, with no applause (except a few seconds at disc's end) and no stage patter. At times one can sense that the members may be hesitant about treading on one another's songs: Klein's three contributions (two of which also appear on her Ryko album Draw Them Near) get only light imput from the other singers. And McKeown's "Blackbirds" doesn't feature the others until the last chorus, but the song takes on a playful, Manhattan Transfer-type feel when they enter.

During such moments, one can hear a full-fledged group being born. Polenzani's "Heaven Release Us," which like many of her better songs blurs the line between religious and romantic love, derives some extra chills from the vocal interplay and from McKeown's tremolo guitar. And "Hunger," which is both the one outside song (written by Maggie Simpson) and the one a cappella performance, with Amsel leading, shows a potential for four-part harmonies that they've only begun to explore.

But here's the catch: the Voices album was made 18 months ago, and the four members have been in the same room only once (to shoot the cover photos) since then. All four have made solo albums in the interim; all (especially Polenzani and Klein) have taken on some rock influence; all have moved on to some degree of national success. So they're likely to be a very different group when they reconvene.

"I feel like a completely different human from when we did the Voices record," McKeown notes. "I was barely 21 when we started, and my whole confidence level was a shifting thing. I was more confident with my instruments, that's why you hear me picking up an accordion or a drum to express myself." Klein says, "I learned a lot about myself from touring with these ladies; I learned what I was insecure about. For instance, I used to have this ridiculous monitor idiosyncrasy where I would need my voice to be up really loud. One day Erin said, `I don't know why you need your voice so loud, but I'm going to try not to judge you.' That was a good learning situation."

"There's definitely some ego stuff to get beyond, in terms of holding onto our own songs still tightly," says Amsel. "That's why some of the songs sound like they did as originally written while others are more openly bandied about." Klein adds that each member brings in different approaches. "When we do a song of Rose's, she'll often have a clear idea of what she wants and that's impressive to me -- she'll say, `Can you sing these notes here?' With me, I'll just have a general feeling about what I want."

Polenzani admits she's probably worked her bandmates the hardest. "Whoever wrote the song was always king, or I should say queen, of the arrangement. So I had to be willing to be honest about what I thought of other people's ideas, and that's hard. With four people in a band, you fall into a lot of democratic suggestions, and believe me, it can be hard to say when something isn't working. But on the other hand, when it comes down to making a record, that's something that strikes terror in my heart, because this is going to be committed to tape. So I got over my hesitance real fast."

At the moment, each Voice is well established as a respected, cult-level artist. But there's always the possibility that one of them will get nationally famous before the others do. All four members agree it's bound to happen. And they're all pretty sure it will happen to one of the other three. "When someone gets famous, we'll take her down like a satellite," laughs Amsel. "We all think that Erin is going to get hugely famous," Polenzani opines. "But I have a lot of faith that she's the type of person who's devoted to creativity in general and wouldn't let fame stop her from having a good creative time."

McKeown sounds a bit embarrassed when this is conveyed to her. "Who absolutely knows? I think of the four of us, I'm the one most likely to drop all of this and do something different with my life; I always thought it would be nice to be an actor. In a group of four artists, there's always a tendency to divide things. There's the tall one, the short one, the famous one, and the not-so famous one. We've struggled with that among ourselves; it's a problem as well as a benefit."

There's likely to be more collaboration when they hit the road; they're especially eager to try singing lead on one another's songs. They may also revive a humorous feature of their early shows: a request section for favorite '80s hits that has led to covers of "Tainted Love" and "The Safety Dance." But there are still boundaries they don't want to cross, notably writing songs together. "For me writing is too much of a quiet, intimate experience," says Amsel. "I don't think we'd trade each other's sexual partners, and I don't think we'd try writing together." So Voices On the Verge remain perched between a songwriter's roundtable and a traditional band. Polenzani explains, "I still feel it's more of a songwriting thing, because we don't have enough instruments at our disposal. If we put out more than one record, then I'll say it's a band."

But Amsel, a committed watcher of VH1's Behind the Music, realizes that declaring themselves a full-fledged band would entail certain responsibilities. "We'd have to take two years off from touring while one of us goes through rehab, one of us puts a baby up for adoption, and another gets whisked off to Monte Carlo. The real problem is that we like each other too much; I'm still waiting for the big catfight to happen. I want to do hair pulling, high-heeled spike kicking, the whole nine yards."

Voices On the Verge appear on Thursday, October 4 at the Living Room. Call (401) 521-5200.

Issue Date: September 28 - October 4, 2001