Let’s be honest: this isn’t a gigantic music scene. It’s kind of a big deal when one band releases an album, and releases from two bands are sometimes enough to tide us over for a calendar year, or, at worst, a season.
So, this weekend is truly an embarrassment of riches for Champaign-Urbana, as Elsinore unveils their new EP, The Chemicals, and World’s First Flying Machine debuts their, uh, debut album, The House You’re Living In, both on Saturday night.
Pre-sales for the Elsinore show have been so strong that it’s been moved from Cowboy Monkey to The Highdive. As James Treichler noted in a comment on the SPlog post yesterday, it’s a pretty big deal for a local band to headline a weekend show at the Highdive, so kudos to Elsinore.
Tickets are still on sale on Cowboy Monkey’s TicketFusion site, they’re still $7 in advance, and you still get a digital download of the EP with the price of admission. Zach May and the Maps, Brighton MA, and We Landed on the Moon! are still opening. Elsinore frontman Ryan Groff noted in an email, “The only change will be that instead of Doors @ 8/ Zach May & The Maps @ 9, it’s now Doors @ 8/ Zach May & The Maps @ 8:45. This gives us a little more time to work with for the night and lets us end a little earlier.”
As for the WFFM extravaganza, it takes place at the Canopy Club, it’ll begin at 10 p.m. with Flotation Walls, and if you haven’t already bought an advance ticket, cover is $7.
INTERVIEW WITH ELSINORE’S RYAN GROFF
I spoke with Groff on the phone the other afternoon, and he was bubbling with his normal infectious enthusiasm. Elsinore is putting the finishing touches on their debut full-length, Yes Yes Yes, which will be released this summer, but they decided to put out The Chemicals in the meantime.
“With the EP, we wanted to have something sooner so that we’re not waiting to put something out since it’s already been so long [since The General EP was released],” he explained. “New music gets out there, we have a newer CD to sell than what we already have; it’s a better situation for us all around.”
While The Chemicals is self-released by the band, they’re in negotiations with Parasol to put out Yes Yes Yes. “It’s not official that we’re going to Parasol quite yet, but it’s close,” Groff noted. The hard-working band expects to finalize the details when they get back from their forthcoming tour.
Of the six songs on the EP (a demo, “Hearts on Sleeves,” is a hidden track), only two will appear on the full-length in the same format, “Chemicals” and “Body of Water.” The closing track, “Yes Yes Yes,” is a remix by Gentleman Auction House’s Eric Enger. Enger warned the band, “You’re either really going to love it, or you’re never going to want to speak to me again,” according to Groff. But Enger had nothing to worry about. “We couldn’t be happier with it,” Groff said. “He took it in a direction that we would have never thought to. It was a cool way to close the EP.”
Upon first listen, The Chemicals sounds tremendously lush, with string arrangements on several of the tracks. Groff explained, “With the EP and studio record, there are a lot of things we did that are studio-centered. Not in the way of Nickelback or Creed, you know, crappy rock-and-roll, but sort of like the Beatles did, where we’re not so concerned about replicating the studio sound live.”
With the EP release and the full-length coming soon, Elsinore is finally seeing their years of hard work coming to fruition. “We’re going through a renaissance as a band, where we’re finally getting the things out that we’ve been working on for so long,” Groff related.
If you haven’t already seen it, check out the video below for “Chemicals,” an opus that was many months in the making.
INTERVIEW WITH WORLD’S FIRST FLYING MACHINE’S BRIAN MCGOVERN
Smile Politely: Where/when was the album recorded? What was the process like?
Brian McGovern: We recorded at Great Western Record Recorders in Tolono, Ill., with Matt Talbott. No one in the group spent much or any time in a studio before so I would say the process was one of discovery. If you filmed us and sped the footage up it could have made a great Monkees music video. There were a lot of “look we’re all wearing headphones and being goofy!” kind of moments. We settled in pretty quickly though.
We did everything live. We’d do a take and Matt would say “was that good?” and all six of us would discuss through the mics – since the six of us were in three separate rooms – and move from there. I’d say most of the tracks are the third or fourth take.
The majority of recording was done in late fall 2008. Scheduling for us and Matt was difficult and really drew the process out. We had a few overdubs (see: the shouting on “Love is an Art”) and Ben ended up going back in and redoing all the vocals too. We didn’t have a finished, mixed product until May-ish.
According to our initial estimates, our release show was going to be this weekend, but a full year earlier, so that’s kind of fun.
Smile Politely: How do you feel about the final “product”? Are you putting it out on vinyl as well?
Brian McGovern: I’m so happy that we took our time putting this together. I’m incredibly proud and a little surprised it’s finally all finished. I actually haven’t seen the physical “product” yet but the art is fantastic. Ben happened upon this girl, Rosie Leick, studying art in New England or something. He really liked her work so he asked her to paint some stuff for us. We were all pretty blown away.
Anyways, I heard the packaging looks great which is a relief since I spent many hours pretending I knew how to use Adobe Illustrator putting it all together.
We would love to put out a vinyl. We recorded it all to tape, and I think we still have it, but we ended up mixing it computer-style so it wouldn’t be authentico. There’s talk of doing an all analog 7 inch somewhere down the line though.
Smile Politely: WFFM is clearly influenced by the works of Howard Zinn and J.D. Salinger. What sort of elaborate tributes do you have planned for the show?
Brian McGovern: For Mr. Salinger we’re going to rename our band “The Glass Family” and recreate an episode of that radio show all the Glass kids appeared on called “It’s a Wise Child” on stage this Saturday!
I’m familiar with Howard Zinn by name only, but I Wikipediaed him just now. Apparently Pearl Jam was friends with him, so we’ll perform that song they wrote about him too.
Smile Politely: Is this the culmination of the long-brewing WFFM/Elsinore rivalry — record release shows on the same night? How will this ultimately be settled?
Brian McGovern: When I first got the call that Elsinore was having a release show on January 30 I said “Not on my watch.” We set up a variety of Wile E. Coyote traps and pranks to prevent them from finishing their EP in time, but when that didn’t work we decided to release ours on the same night. Our conflict will only be settled once we mine the unobtainium from underneath the giant, fluorescent tree that the members of Elsinore live in. Either that or by a Clap-o-meter.
But seriously, we had no idea there was a scheduling conflict until recently. I think I saw a bulletin on Elsinore’s MySpace about their show and I was thinking “January 30…sweet I’ll be in Champaign that weekend! And then 5 minutes later I realized I was going to be in Champaign because we were having a CD release show.
I think the turn-out at both of these shows will exemplify how big and vibrant this scene is. Hopefully both groups will set the tone for 2010 being a great year for Champaign-Urbana music.
Smile Politely: What new instruments do you have planned for 2010?
Brian McGovern: Kurt build some crazy Eastern European-styled mandolin out of a cigar box so that might pop up. Other than that, I’ve been thinking about picking up a Sousaphone.
Top image (the one with Mr. T and Chuck Norris) was found here: http://www.shirt-fight.com/shirts/tag/tv/.