Category: News

The highlight of our 2000 tour with David Kilgour, Mac McCaughan and Lambchop was the four shows in three days at San Francisco’s Great American Music Hall, a run that started 14 years ago today.   By now, Lambchop have pretty much an open invitation to join in on the second encore, which on this night means covers by the MC5 and Devo, and a concluding ba-da-da-da chorus of “Ripple.”  Eight years earlier we weren’t having quite so much fun.  I understand how working at a rock club can make one fear for their hearing, so I hate to be judgmental.  Nevertheless I don’t think it set a good tone for our date at Northampton’s Iron Horse when the stage crew put in ear plugs . . . for our load-in.   Suffice to say, there was no second encore.

 

On this the final day of the 2014 WFMU marathon, we both encourage one and all to help bring this year’s fundraiser to a successful conclusion and  recall 1996’s edition.   Georgia, James and I got it into our heads that it would be a good idea to go on Gaylord Fields’s show and, in return for pledges to FMU, attempt to play any song that was asked of us, and somehow convinced Bruce Bennett to join in.   From the moment we desecrated “In the Year 2525,” it was clear we were in over our heads, or were we?  We never entertained the notion that we were capable of fulfilling the requests, we just counted on our failure making for good radio, and inspiring the hoped-for rubberneckers to dig a little deeper.   I wouldn’t say we had fun–win or lose, does a prizefighter have “fun”?–but we were ready to try again the following year.    And every year after that to the present day.  In 2007, Bruce got stranded at South by Southwest, in 2008 Georgia was out of action with the flu, and last year we were in Europe for the whole marathon, none of which kept us from our appointed rounds.  If you’ve ever tuned in, you know there’s no reason to thank us!

 

Spent a week in Texas in 2008, starting on this day, mostly at the South by Southwest hullabaloo.   The festival’s never been our idea of fun, but as jobs go, we’re all for one that makes it possible to be a fly on the wall at a Guitar Wolf soundcheck or catch Swamp Dogg and Dwight Twilley on the same night, to say nothing of being just upwind of Lockhart.  This time, we arrived early for the film festival, since Emily Hubley’s The Toe Tactic (which we scored) was being screened–and played acoustically at a TTT function, with James singing Roky Erickson’s “Right Track Now” for a little local color.  Afterwards, me and my nephew brave the revelry on 6th Street to attend a midnight screening of Shuttle (“one of the lamest and silliest thrillers in many a moon”–Jason Whyte, efilmcritic.com).

 

Dave Schramm relinquished the lead guitar chair at the end of August 1986.   We knew it was coming, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t sting.  We did one Dave-Who? five-song set as a trio at NYC’s Pyramid Club (performing “The Story of Jazz” for the first time) and then went back to being a quartet; sometimes Dave Rick played lead, sometimes Chris Stamey.  Right before a show, we’d have a practice with Dave or Chris, but more often than not,  we rehearsed as a three-piece, in our basement on Garden Street in Hoboken, where the ceiling was too low for Stephan to stand.  It got to the point where we’d accept a date, and then see who was free to play it.  Finally, on this day in 1987, booked into Albany’s QE2, the answer was no one, and we did the show as a trio.  How much of that was by design?  I can’t recall, but I know the three of us were definitely feeling more confident in the basement, where I’d do my imitations of Dave, Chris and Dave.   We did one more show with Chris and one more with Dave Schramm, and then became a trio full-time.

 

March 6 has found us in six different countries over the years: among them Germany (an acoustic show by Georgia and me in advance of May I Sing With Me that was perhaps the single smokiest place we ever played), New Zealand (1998’s minor fiasco in Hamilton that we dealt with by performing a set of exclusively covers), and the UK (where members of Gorky’s join in on our set-ending “Nuclear War” for the first time, as they will continue to do for the duration of the tour).   Steve from London is fuzzy on a few facts, but in fairness to him, he had a busy day:

My birthday is on 3rd March.  On this day in 2004 I was taken on a third date by a young woman to see YLT/Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds, UK (we also took in a matinee performance of George Orwell’s Animal Farm by a young art house theatre troupe that was on in the same building!).  It was the first gig we had ever attended together, so of course the first time we saw YLT together.  We are now happily married with a family and have seen YLT on every tour since!  I like to think that dancing together to an extraordinary encore rendition of “Nuclear War” (by both bands) cemented the bond that has led to this love and lifetime of happiness!  It also means that YLT are a significant part of the soundtrack to our life story – so thanks guys!

 

Nine days after the inspiration for “Attack on Love,” the seed of another song on Electr-o-pura is sown.   At a Salvation Army prior to soundchecking at the Stone Lounge in Tampa on this date in 1994, I found My Little Corner of the World by Richie Van.  It had a lot to recommend the risk of a dollar: it was autographed, it was on Art Records, and there was a cover of “Joy to the World.”   Turned out to be a fake live album–electric guitar, vocal and drum machine recorded in a studio, each song greeted by mismatched applause–allegedly from a  (nonexistent?) Florida nightspot, the Deep Jigger Lounge.   No songwriting credits and our less-than-encyclopedic knowledge of the career of Anita Bryant allowed us to mistake the title track for a Richie Van original.   Georgia sang it for the first time at the Fez, backed by me and Bruce Bennett.    My mom was in the audience that night and told us she was singing along.  Once we ascertained that she was not familiar with Richie Van’s oeuvre, we realized that the song was in fact a standard.  We got a nice return on my investment: Richie Van appears in “The Hour Grows Late,” our version of “My Little Corner of the World” closed I Can Hear the Heart Beating As One, and my mom has sung it with us pretty much annually since 2007.