The Presidents get back in the groove.

Byline: Carolyn Lamberson The Register-Guard

`Lump" fell from the sky, fully formed. Then she sat alone in a boggy marsh, totally motionless except for her heart.

And sold a couple of million records in 1995.

For `Lump's' creator, Presidents of the United States of America singer-songwriter Chris Ballew, the best songs fall from the sky. All he has to do is catch them.

In recent years, Ballew said he tried to hone his songwriting skills - with limited success. When the band went to record its latest album, only a couple of songs worked out.

"I ended up writing 100 songs and only two were good, and the two that were good fell out of the sky,' he said. "So I decided to stop writing the 98 crappy ones.'

The band scrapped 10 `crappy' songs from the recording session and waited for inspiration from above. Eventually, the songs came tumbling down.

"It took five years for enough good songs to fall out of the sky to make one record,' he said. `If I force the songs, we end up with a bunch of stuff that doesn't work.'

The result is "Love Everybody," released on the band's label - PUSA Music - in August. The band is touring behind the disc, and will visit the WOW Hall on Thursday.

In the mid-1990s, Ballew caught quite a few hit songs. `Lump." "Kitty." "Peaches." "Mach 5." The band's self-titled debut album hit No. 6 on the Billboard charts, earned a pair of Grammy nominations and proved quite popular on MTV.

The band quickly recorded a followup album, "II." "Pure Frosting," a collection of B-sides and outtakes, was released in 1998.

By then, however, the band was done. Ballew jumped off the merry-go-round to spend more time with his family.

In 2000, the Presidents reuni- ted to record "Freaked Out and Small," but it would be another two years before they performed live.

The sound remains the same

Time hasn't distanced the band from its distinctive sound. "Love Everybody" sounds like a Presidents album.

The highlight is "Some Postman," a hit on Seattle radio that sports one of the catchiest choruses this side of Weezer: `Some postman is grooving to all our love letters/ Some postman is gonna cry.'

Then there's "Poke and Destroy," about little boys' innate desire to break things.

It's an album Ballew said he is `super pleased' with.

"Live, the songs just explode, and they integrate really well with the older stuff. They don't sound like a stretch from the first record to the last one.

`We suffered from being too complicated and too fancy with some of the songs that we followed up our first record with. We kinda went back to wanting to bang our head and sound punk rock and enjoy that feeling.

`That was a good revelation, too.'

Ballew and his bandmates - Dave Dederer and Jason Finn - remember the lessons they learned from the heady success of their first record.

Lesson No. 1: No major label deal. They're happy working for themselves.

Lesson No. 2: Don't let bad feelings fester.

Lesson No. 3: Record when you have the songs.

Lesson No. 4: Slow down and appreciate every success.

`The biggest overall change is that we appreciate what we have achieved in a way that we didn't before,' Ballew said. `We didn't value it. We didn't get it.

`I think we kinda thought, or at least I kinda thought, that it was cruel joke, like at any minute someone was going to come and say, `OK, that's enough of that. You don't actually belong at this party. You need to go back to Seattle and get a job.' '

As part of the new mentality, Ballew said, the Presidents even found a way to work with the fact that Dederer isn't into touring anymore.

Oh, he's still in the band; he played guitar on "Love Everybody." But he stays in Seattle and manages the label while Andrew McKeag plays guitar on the road.

`He's an old friend of ours, excellent guy, amazing player, great singer, great showman,' Ballew said of McKeag. `And as a result, I'd say we're at the top of our game live right now.

`It's really really fun to play with this band right now.'

The Presidents just got back from Europe, but on this particular leg of the tour, the band is hitting Eugene, Portland, and Napavine and Bellingham, Wash.

`When we got back together, one of our first thoughts was, `Let's just enjoy this region and go exploring Oregon and California and Idaho,' ' Ballew said. `We kind of never did it, so I'm excited to do a little bit of that.

`We're just getting in the van, driving around, playing rock music. It's a revolutionary idea.'

CONCERT PREVIEW

Presidents of the United States of America

With: Village Green, alterEGO

When: 8 p.m. Thursday

Where: WOW Hall, 291 W. Eighth Ave.

Tickets: $15 advance, $18 day of show, available through Ticketmaster outlets

CAPTION(S):

Chris Ballew (center) and bandmates Dave Dederer (left) and Jason Finn are trying to enjoy their success as musicians, something they didn't do in the band's heady days in the 1990s.