Excited to announce: I actually met this donut in the Harris Teeter parking lot.
Oh, and we're playing a cool show after a long while! (Some call it a good while...which hurts my feelings).
But enough about Le Weekend; here’s a new thing by Le Weekend!
Self-bootlegged recordings (i.e. hear what a phone’s voice memo app heard) of 8 songs from our first five records. Plus five bonus tracks of all new material (phone recordings from a couple shows and the practice shed) available to those who pay nothing or more.
Like the night sky, the band Le Weekend has been around more than 15 years. While the night sky lazed around and contributed nothing to anyone, the band used the time to write songs, play shows, and put out recordings at what couldn’t be called a breakneck pace.
Responding to a fantasy where there was popular demand to hear our story, please enjoy–or failing that, read–a retrospective in some number of parts.
This is the second part. It covers 2009 and most of 2010, in which we continued on as a trio and released our first LP at full price for half the material. If you missed (or suddenly miss) the first part, it’s here.
The writing is mostly Matt. Bob’s unprecedented, all-platform social media ban has still not expired.
This isn’t supposed to be (slash hopefully isn’t) a nostalgia trip. Those are for things that are over. We’re just demonstrating some ongoing history behind this thing we do and keep doing for some reason.
I’ve tried to avoid the social media pose of pretending to be an Important Band. It’s hard to avoid entirely when writing anything (suggesting something is worth your time is already bold). But we’re merely a Good Local Band in the sense of all three words, and mean well.
Finally, if you’re looking for Salacious Details(!!), you’ve come to the wrong band. Here are the three most shocking excerpts from the whole thing:
The short-lived sales bump was chalked up to market confusion: there was a similarly named album by some howler monkeys that went on NPR.
The public story about what the initials stand for is well known, but during a quiet moment on the set he revealed it was "Looky Loo.”
Slowly returning to my senses, I dropped the baseball bat and stared blankly at the no longer moving body. Had anyone seen me and Santa Claus come in here?!
And they’re are all from Joan Cusack’s autobiography.
We found ourselves in the early months of what the kids used to call “a 2009.” As I told you last time, we had gone down from a quintet to trio upon the official release of our first recording in December 2008. It was sad to say goodbye to two of our founding members (Ben Ridings and Missy Thangs), but exciting to consider where we could go next with this relatively new project.
I couldn’t find a photo of us all together during this period, so here are two from the same parking lot.
(l-r: Robert Biggers, Bob Wall)
(l-r: Matt Kalb)
We had a definite ease of playing together--great communication--so it wasn’t as hard to rearrange some of our existing songs or to come up with a number of new ones as I’d feared. Revisiting our existing material got me thinking about the arbitrariness of seemingly “final” choices. (Plus I’ve always loved Slacker, so Should Have Stayed At Bus Station laying out the idea of multiple realities spawned by choices made and not made was probably in there, though not consciously). I saw potential to go different directions that were more or less equally great and equally fitting. Thus, less than two months into our existence as a trio, I fired off a too long, kind of bizarre email, which was a style at the time. It even had the subject line “DOUBLE SECRET.”
From The Mixed Up Sent Items of Matt Kalb, Jan 31, 2009.
When we work on songs…I've always been struck that things can work well in a lot of different ways. Since our songs are hard to learn, we don't end up getting to play with this much. What I'd like to do is record an album this year where we double the songs – record two different versions of each. What I DON'T want to do with this idea is make it about 'opposites' per se (where we have rules to follow, like if every song was done full band plus augmentations and then done again 'stripped down' in some way). I don't want it to be a formula where when you hear one of the versions you can predict what the other version will be. I just want to use different approaches such as…
[blah blah about the different approaches]
...The end result would be one CD with two distinct I'm-going-to-call-them phases where a version of all the songs appears in an order that works well, and then the songs are presented again being different versions and importantly not in the same sequence, etc. The phases themselves also reflect the idea—e.g. it won't be straight in one phase and weird in the next, or stripped down then lush, that sort of thing—those differences should happen internally in each.
[snipping out a thing I don’t want to spoil about “Better Practice” and “The Story of Le Weekend Suite.” We’ll get to it]
That's what I've been kicking around for LW09.
When we reached out to Lincoln Hancock about doing artwork and graphic design for the CD, it turned out he was already exploring something similar in his visual art. Synchronicity! It was a quite different process, but there was a resonance between what we were each getting into. And needless to say, we got a great cover out of it.
(Art and layout by Lincoln Hancock)
In the meantime, we wrote a number of songs, then essentially wrote them again with different decisions. Then we approached Nick Petersen and began recording, this time at his house.
The most straightforward version of the doubles is the pairing of "Strwpr" and "Strpwr". There are no changes at all to chords or structure (except “Strwpr” has a brief outro), a few blink-and-you’ll-miss-’em changes to the lyrics, and a substantial change in arrangement and feel. The first is an essentially live, high energy rocker mostly home recorded by the trio--although sadly that backwards guitar solo required an overdub. The second is our version of lush, adult studio jams, with the trio stepping back in the arrangement to make space for a bunch of talented guest musicians.
Our Very Special Guests(™) on “Strpwr”
Chris Eubank (cello)
David Garfield (saxophone)
Jeff Herrick (trumpet)
Shannon Morrow (percussion)
Hank Pellerin (trombone)
Crowmeat Bob Pence (bass clarinet)
Alan Petermann (violin)
Carrie Shull (English horn)
Wendy Spitzer (oboe)
Bob also played the Rhodes. Essential.
The rest of the easily recognizable doubles explored the concept in less overt ways. Some were expansions/reductions of each other, some reused melodies over new chord progressions, some took energy levels to opposite poles. There were also many cases of home recording vs. studio. Still, it was always clear they sprang from the same material. The differences were the choices in how that material was presented and re-presented.
In contrast, the double relationship between “Better Practice” and “The Story of Le Weekend Suite“ (that thing I didn’t want to spoil from my email above, remember?) was much less overt. Each song was written before we came up with the “doubles” concept, but were a big part of what inspired it in the first place. “Like how PG-13 is because of Gremlins and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,” you’re probably thinking, “even though the movies themselves are just PG!” Sounds like you nailed it.
To me, the songs represented the two main approaches I take to songwriting. We’ll call one the “Better Practice” way: a journey through many parts that may not seem connected at first, and if not done right, ever. The second, or as they say “The Story of Le Weekend Suite” method, results in a song overly succinct by pop standards, around 60-90 seconds, but if done right it feels complete. “Better Practice” also recapitulates an aspect of the doubles concept by having various parts recorded in different ways and then sequenced together, while “The Story of Le Weekend Suite” was both, as the title may suggest, a story (or images from a story) about recording Suite and a double of the song “Le Weekend Suite” from that album. Notably, the song “Le Weekend Suite”, unlike the “story” of it, is very much in the “Better Practice” vein. Finally, for someone who started playing in the last century and still thinks in terms of “albums,” you can honor the best songs by making them the opener or the closer.
Of course we didn’t want it to be necessary for a listener to nerd out on these layers to enjoy the songs or the album. Some are extremely inside baseball, and even for the band about as much gets figured out in analysis after the fact (i.e. frames of reference that can be applied afterward, or not) than gets planned up front. We aimed for a good record, thinking these elements could help make that happen. We also didn’t intend for it to be reducible to a hook or gimmick, but at the same time understood it might draw people in. In any case, everything was meant to be very openly “hidden”–I mean, we called the damn thing DBLSCRT.
We got some very much appreciated local press attention for this one. This included a feature by Chris Parker in the Indy (which we owed to the music editor Grayson Currin’s interest), and a review by Brian Howe in Shuffle.
The Indy article came out just in time to promote our bad ass release show at the Nightlight. Ezekiel Graves (w/ guest Crowmeat Bob) and Eric Roehrig opened, even debuting an occasion-specific number that I’m sure Erie Choir breaks out now and again late in their set lists. Most of the guest musicians from the album were able to join us, with a pinch hitter on violin.
Chris Eubank (cello)
Ecki Heins (violin)
Crowmeat Bob Pence (bass clarinet)
Carrie Shull (English horn, oboe)
Jeff Herrick (trumpet)
David Garfield (saxophone)
Hank Pellerin (trombone)
For that night only, the core band was a four-piece, with the incomparable Wes Phillips (sadly, no longer among us) on various instruments to recreate some of the band’s overdubs. And Nick ran sound so we could make all these things happen. It took a considerable amount of planning and squeezing inputs (not to mention squeezing people together) to pull off 11 musicians with a mix of electric and acoustic instruments through the Nightlight PA of the time!
As if that wasn’t enough, throughout the evening Dave Bjorkback and David Nahm provided astonishingly well researched color commentary / heckling, like if Statler and Waldorf were given mics. They even had to trigger Robert’s Discman (™) at two critical points in the show, for no extra pay.
And Ben Spiker documented it all! Well, parts anyway, but those are parts...of it all! A good bit was linked above. Dive into the rest for more photos and videos.
(Screen grab from video by Ben Spiker. l-r front row: Hank Pellerin, Jeff Herrick, David Garfield; back: Ecki Heins [profile], Robert Biggers [at drum kit], Matt Kalb, Wes Phillips [upstage, seated], Bob Wall; not pictured: Chris Eubank [upstage of Ecki], Crowmeat Bob and Carrie Shull [both front row, left of frame])
One bit of trivia before we go: Dave Bjorkback arrived at the show with his copy of the Indy that he’d picked up from work. When he saw someone else’s, he realized some of the unusual artistic choices were added post-print.
(Indy Article With Contributions By Unknown Graffitist (2010), photographed by Ben Spiker)
During the time frame of this installment, we played these shows.
03/12/09 - Nightlight - DEBUT OF LW AS A TRIO w/The Antlers and Actual Persons Living or Dead
05/09/09 - The Pinhook - w/Grappling Hook and Minor Stars
05/14/09 - Tir na nOg - w/Sorry About Dresden and The Dirty Little Heaters
09/04/09 - The Pinhook - w/Savage Knights and Bicameral Mind
09/19/09 - Nightlight - w/Inspector 22 and The Summertime Whisky Band
10/25/09 - Live on WXDU
02/20/10 - Nightlight - w/Monsonia and Actual Persons Living or Dead
06/09/10 - Nightlight - w/Green Grocer and Secret Boyfriend
09/17/10 - Nightlight - w/Decoration Ghost and On The Take
09/30/10 - The Pinhook - w/Jeremy Blair From Effingham and Wembley
10/29/10 - Nightlight - CD RELEASE for _DBLSCRT_, w/Ezekiel Graves and Eric Roehrig, plus live commentary by Dave Bjorkback and DC Nahm
Like the night sky, the band Le Weekend has been around more than 15 years. While the night sky lazed around and contributed nothing to anyone, the band used the time to write songs, play shows, and put out recordings at what couldn't be called a breakneck pace.
Responding to a fantasy where there was popular demand to hear our story, please enjoy–or failing that, read–a retrospective in some number of parts.
So this is the first part. It covers 2006 to 2008, in which we formed the band, released our first EP, and sadly parted ways with two founding members.
The writing is mostly Matt. Don’t blame the whole band for what follows.
This isn’t supposed to be (slash hopefully isn’t) a nostalgia trip. Those are for things that are over. We’re just demonstrating some ongoing history behind this thing we do and keep doing for some reason.
I’ve tried to avoid the social media pose of pretending to be an Important Band. It’s hard to avoid entirely when writing anything, as suggesting something is worth your time is already bold. But we’re merely a Good Local Band in the sense of all three words, and mean well.
Finally, if you’re looking for Salacious Details(!!), you’ve come to the wrong band. Here are the three most shocking excerpts from the whole thing:
The booking agent hoped I wasn’t miffed. Miffed?! I was downright perturbed!
“Looks like you’re going to the Grammys!” our manager exclaimed, turning the laptop screen our way. “This Photoshop stuff is really something.”
And THAT, my dude, PROVES Kurt Cobain and Anthony Kiedis were talking about the same bridge!
And those are all from my correspondence course How To Write Shocking Excerpts.
The year was 2006. I was out of my 20’s, and my last band (Hotel Motel, now ending) had gotten together through alt.music.chapel-hill. It was time to put the next band together through Gmail, which was the style at the time. The phrase “jam sandwich” appeared in an acceptance email that also warned me “That was your out.”
We got Robert Biggers on drums, because I played with him in Audubon Park, knew him to be gifted on various instruments, and we were friends going all the way back to the 20th Century.
Through my good friend David Nahm, we got connected with Ben Ridings on lead guitar, and Ben introduced us to Missy Thangs on keyboards and vocals. Both hailed from the excellent early aughts Asheville band Piedmont Charisma.
At this point we needed bass which meant Bob Wall. I’d only recently learned he played bass (knowing him for guitar and drums) when during downtime at a Hotel Motel practice he whipped out Steely Dan’s “The Boston Rag." They say you learn everything you need to know about a bassist when they play ‘The Boston Rag’ on the couch, and they're right!
So now we were formed. And such well dressed people.
(Photo by Ben Spiker. l-r, front row: Missy Thangs, Robert Biggers, Ben Ridings; back row: Bob Wall, Matt Kalb)
We started with a few songs I’d already written in the sense that I write songs, which means a clear idea of structure, chord progression, and my guitar part–at the level of a good working draft–combined with vague-to-no ideas for the rest of the band’s parts. As in, I’m open to hearing what they'll bring, and zeroing in on it without a predefined landing place. That’s both HOW I WANT TO DO IT, but also something I worry about being NOT THE REAL WAY TO DO IT.
Because, yep, when creating music, one of the things I love doing most, imposter syndrome is in full effect much of / most of the time! I also didn’t know Missy or Ben very well, and in my usual (overly literal) way of interpreting their feedback about looking for more direction, I swung over to giving way too much direction, arbitrarily filling in the blanks I’d have rather left for the band, because I thought that was what was being asked. We figured it all out, of course.
In bands with this individual freedom and responsibility, sometimes everyone effectively (if unconsciously) wants everyone else to be all done with their experimentation, presenting an unwavering idea while their own experimentation continues. Sartre talks about this and didn’t even have a band, I’m pretty sure. Plus the songs were, as rock/pop goes, fairly complicated, lending themselves to situations where one person could be learning how it goes while another is past that and working in tweaks and changes, which throw off the first person, rinse/repeat. But we figured out how to get through that too, of course. To me, every new song feels like the one that will never get learned, and every one’s gotten learned so far.
Within a few months we had several songs together and played our first show, a WXDU thing at the Duke Coffeehouse, thanks to the unseen or possibly seen (I couldn’t find my emails for this) hand of Ross Grady. That made things feel more real, as it usually does for bands starting out. We did a cover of “Hold The Line,” which we learned that day and never returned to. It was more of a fun-for-the-first-show kind of thing.
About a year after that we started working on our debut recording, Suite, with our friend Nick Petersen at Go! Studios. This was the first of many great recording experiences the band would have with Nick over the years.
My favorite memory from these sessions is from "Blinded Me With Silence", which is also my favorite song from the EP. I wanted two layers of disorganized improvisation from several guest musicians, mostly playing marching band type instruments. I explained what we were doing, threw my arms wide shouting “Go!”, pulled them back in shouting “Stop!”, and we repeated once more. At which point Robert helpfully weighed in over the PA, “Your music is dumb!”
Credits for 13 SECONDS OF NOISE x2
Crowmeat Bob Pence (trombone)
Dave Cantwell (parade bass drum)
Kerry Cantwell (parade snare drum)
Chuck Johnson (Ben's guitar)
Jeff Herrick (trumpet)
Rob Koegler (toy percussion)
The centerpiece of the album, kind of the theme song of the band at this point, was "Le Weekend Suite". It came from a self-assigned writing exercise, after Robert mentioned his college songs tended to move from part to new part to new part, etc., going off in many interesting directions and often back to part 1 for an end (“snake style”), but he’d wanted to write something that folds back in on itself.
I considerately stole the idea and made it work in the most natural way possible: forcing in advance that it just had to work because that’s how the song goes. The song, progressing through parts 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 (‘the great divide”), then rewinding through new versions of 4, 3, 2, and 1, was slowly and (for my patient band mates) excruciatingly born. As in, this one took quite a while to write, arrange, and learn. But I definitely think it’s a highlight of the EP.
By the way, alternate iterations of a part would itself become a recurring theme, explored at full song level on our 2nd album, aka the one that got ALL THE ATTENTION, and at the part (shared across multiple songs) level on our 6th album, aka the one that got ALL THE PANDEMIC. It had a small role in our 4th and 5th ones as well. What can I say? I’ve had one idea and it wasn't fully mine to begin with.
I can’t remember which song led to Bob internally debating which single held note he used to play and/or should play, but I think it might have been “Le Weekend Suite” as well. Recapped in the famous line “Bob’s changed his mind about his notes” in our next album.
The CD design came from our friend Lincoln Hancock using photos from Ben Spiker, the start of another very fruitful tradition for the band. I mean, look at this thing.
(Layout by Lincoln Hancock, photo by Ben Spiker)
And we got a very nice review from Grayson Currin at the Indy.
Unfortunately, at this time Ben and Missy decided it would be best to step away from the band after our release show at the Nightlight. This was on very friendly terms, and they encouraged the three of us to continue. We opened with the trio playing “Lower yr action” (soon to be part of our first LP) as a nod to what was coming next, then played our last show as a quintet. To thunderous applause, at least in my own head.
We’re very grateful to Missy and Ben for their contributions to the early life of the band, and for encouraging us to keep going. While they’ve each got great performances all over Suite, one of my favorites is the middle section of "Rock staple, scissors". Just listen for the ON FIRE keyboard lick and you’re there!
During the time frame of this installment, we played these shows.
11/11/06 - Duke Coffeehouse - DEBUT OF LW - WXDU FALL BENEFIT w/ Grappling Hook, Noncanon, Natasha, Scene of the Crime Rovers
03/01/07 - The Reservoir - w/Darker Brighter and Goner
05/24/07 - The Cave - w/Audubon Park
07/30/07 - Bull City HQ - w/Mahasamatman and Minchia
08/23/07 - Nightlight - w/Grappling Hook
09/25/07 - Duke Coffeehouse - w/Dirty Projectors and Ecstatic Sunshine
10/16/08 - Bull City HQ - w/Cantwell Gomez & Jordan and Impossible Arms
11/06/08 - Duke Coffeehouse - TROIKA 2008 w/Red Collar, Sorry About Dresden, Pink Flag, and Sequoya
12/04/08 - Nightlight - CD RELEASE FOR SUITE w/Actual Persons Living or Dead, Crash, and dj NASTY BOOTS
Swinging high on the kiss of the high breeze / Our voices lower near the swing of the dead trees / Lingered warmth like a recent oven / The mark of the coven / The hooves cracked and cloven / Mark of the Coven / Frequent final girl / Helps me finagle her to recount films past / The horror that the killer / Always a member / From the cast
(As recorded by Finn Cohen using the phone of Finn Cohen)
A stupidly busy week has me late in saying this:
THANK YOU! to everyone who came out to see Le Weekend and The Softeners at The Night Rider last Saturday! Plus The Softeners for setting up the thing and playing a killer set even while a person down! Plus the Night Rider folks for making it all happen!
The band felt great about our performance, and there's an unusual level of documentation to allow you to fact check us. Check out this song and send corrections our way!
Was going to promote the show, then saw this and thought why not get meta, then did.
But also we do have a show tomorrow in Raleigh--here’s a link to a website with some info!
titsay
theartofmadeline
stormborns
jacobvanloon
blakekathryn