Bridget Kearney and Rachael Price of Lake Street Dive.  Photo: Jessie Rogers

The first time I saw Lake Street Dive perform was in the murky days of early spring this year and, due to the sardine can-like conditions of the crowded room at the Lizard Lounge that night, I was forced to spend the show peeking my head out from behind one of the concrete reinforcement pillars in the basement bar.  Normally, I would’ve been pissed: I’m small enough in stature that most people can push me around in order to get a better look at those performing on Lizard’s well-worn oriental-carpeted stage, but  I was too busy gawking at bassist Bridget Kearney and drummer Michael Calabrese as they owned downbeats and tripped over complex rhythms to care, as  I could see them fine if I leaned to the left just so from behind my pillar post.  Even though Rachael Price, velvet-voiced vocal powerhouse and Lake Street Dive’s lead singer, and Mike Olson, Lake Street Dive’s Boy Friday with his trumpet and guitar playing skills, were completely out of my sightline, I left the Lizard Lounge completely uplifted and enthralled with the contagious energy the blues/jazz/”free country” foursome produced through song.  I didn’t need to see all four of them in action to know they were legit: I knew then that their sound is cohesive and indicative of the skill and time that’s gone into making Lake Street Dive a Boston band to watch.

Fast forward to an equally dreary Sunday in June: Boston wouldn’t let up with the storm clouds for the first part of this summer, and Alipio and I found ourselves knocking on the front door of a house in Jamaica Plain where Lake Street Dive was practicing before their show at Toad scheduled for that evening.  What ensued was a hilarious hour chock full’ o dirt on the creative process that drives the foursome who met while honing their vocal/percussive/otherwise musical skills at the New England Conservatory of Music, as well as some silly fart games and a breakfast food they refer to as “bactopus.”  Lake Street Dive will be performing this Thursday night, August 6^th, at Club Passim, so be sure read on up and check them out as you don’t want to miss them before they hit the road in the fall.

-Hilary Hughes

Rachael Price.  Photo: Jessie Rogers

OPENING ACT: THE TEAPARTY 10

What’s your favorite breakfast cereal?

Mike Olson: Cocoa pebbles.

Mike Calabrese: Corn pops.

Rachael Price: Peanut Butter Puffins.

Bridget Kearney: Lucky Charms.  I’ll add that my favorite food is the breakfast sandwich, though.

MO: When the four of us wake up together…. (Uncomfortable silence) (Everyone laughs) Our go-to breakfast is “Bactopus”, which is Octopus Bacon, which is this super special bacon that we can get at Doctor Super Market, down the street.  The strips of bacon look like chromosomes but it’s like, an X of bacon.

MC: It looks like squid almost!

Who would you rather punch in the face: Long Duk Dong from “Sixteen Candles” or Mouth from “The Goonies?”

R, B: AWWWW!

MC: I could totally punch Mouth in the face.

R: I’ll go with Mouth, too.

MO: I would punch them both….

If you were a kitchen appliance, what would you be?

R: A WISK!

MC: That’s a utensil.

It still works out.

MO: Juicer!

MC: You don’t even have a juicer.

B: I’ll say coffee maker because it’s pretty much the only one I use.

MC: I’m gonna say coffee grinder.  I love that thing.

You go to bed, you wake up, you go to brush your teeth… and you realize that you’ve morphed into one of Jim Henson’s Muppets overnight.  Which Muppet are you?

R: Swedish Chef.

MO: Sweetums.

MC: What about characters from Labyrinth?  Ludo from Labyrinth.

B: I was thinking of you know, the Muppets in the MANAMINA? I’d be the dude with the little blowjob mouth.

MC, MO: ?!?!?!?!??!!

After a raucous night out, you wake up at some point the next day and you realize that in your fit of crazy you got inked.  What tattoo did you wake up with?

B: Lake Street Dive faces.  On my chest.

R: I’d get KITTENS.  KITTENS EVERYWHERE!

Like, Hampton Beach t-shirt style kittens?

R: Yeah! Like the kind you see on decorative cat plates.

MC: I have no idea.  It would be like… the word “bagel” or something.  It might be a bagel around my bellybutton, actually.

MO: I’d get all of your birthdays.

R, B, MC: Awwww!

Would you rather be a rodeo clown or a sumo wrestler?

MO: Sumo wrestler, because I’d get to be soooo fat.

R: I guess I’d be the rodeo clown.

B: Rodeo clown.

MC: Yeah, me too.

If you were a particular kind of cheese, what kind of cheese would you be?

MC: I identify with Muenster.

MO: Blue cheese.  It’s crumbly.

R: I would be cheddar.

B: you know those hotdogs with a little squirt of cheese that runs all the way through them?  I would be that, because it’s sometimes overlooked or made fun of and it’s not super classy but it really makes the hotdog.

If you were a particular style of facial hair, what style facial hair would you be?

B: I would be eyelashes.

R: That’s amazing.  That’s so nice.  I’d probably be eyebrows; eyebrows are nice, too.  I’m very expressive.

MC: I’d be a neckbeard.  A “turtleneck”, I guess.

MO: You know those people with Werewolf Disorder, where their whole face is covered in soft hair?  Siiiiick.  They’re always on [Jerry] Springer.

What’s your quintessential “I’M GONNA DANCE AROUND MY APARTMENT IN MY UNDERWEAR AND LOVE LIFE!” song?

R: That’s like, my whole childhood.

MO: The one with the fingersnaps… “Nothing Really Matters”, Lauryn Hill.

R: It’s either “Bad Mamma Jamma” or “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard” by Simon and Garfunkel.

B: “I Want You Back”, Jackson 5.

MC: I would say “Dance To the Music”, by Sly and the Family Stone.

B: Nice.

What’s your favorite word?

R: You asked the wrong band!

MO: I recently discovered the word “bloviate”.

B: That’s so hard!  There are so many words!

MC: Bank.

R: Pants.  It’s definitely my favorite word.

Photo: Alipio Hernández

THE MAIN EVENT: THE LAKE STREET DIVE TPB INTERVIEW

Hey guys!

Lake Street Dive: Hello!

Let’s get some proper introductions and some names for the record.

Rachael: My name is Rachael Price, and I’m from Tennessee.

Bridget: Bridget Kearney, and I’m from Iowa.

Michael: Michael Calabrese, and I’m from Philadelphia.

Mike: Mike Olson, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Wow, y’all are from all over the place.  How did you wind up in Boston?

MO: We met in the jazz department of the New England Conservatory of Music, and we just sort of- it’s a sort of iconic story, I guess.  We didn’t start as a pop band like we are now, or at least that wasn’t the original thrust.  The original idea for the band was that we would play country music, we were gonna be a country band, but a free country band, but not as in “FREE COUNTRY! AMERICA! GO!” with big muscles and cars.  We were thinking more along the lines of free jazz, structureless, and it’s really big at the New England Conservatory, so we thought, “Hey! Free country!”

R: It wasn’t “we”, it was you. (Laughs)

MC: It was his child.

R: It was your baby.

MO: Well, sort of.  The reason that we stayed together was that after we played for awhile as a free country band and we were like, “This sucks!”, the reason why we didn’t disband there and then was because we would hang out and listen to Paul Simon and be like “Hey, I like this song too.”  We united ultimately over our love of old pop music, and that sort of became, after country music crumbled we used 60s pop to sort of build our sound back up.  Sorry If I’m not incredibly lucid, I’m on like, two hours of sleep from last night.

It’s cool, I’m going on four!

MO: (Laughs) All right.

Do any particular bands from 60s pop stick out as inspirations to you?

R: The Beatles.

MC: The Beatles, yeah.

MO: Joni Mitchell.

R: Anything by Paul Simon.

MC: MoTown.

R: Current bands?

MC: Wilco.

R: Just that one record, though.

MC: Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Elliot Smith…?

MO: Sort of.

MC: In terms of songwriting, yeah.  I guess Fiona Apple, too.  I wrote one song based on her.  David Bowie.

Can you guys take me through your creative process and try to put the nature of it into words?  Is it collaborative or does someone head up the majority of the effort before the record comes out and in the studio?

B: It usually starts out with one songwriter and that person will write the chords, and the melody, and the lyrics.  Then, usually make some kind of demo, whether it’s just a tape recorder and a guitar and them singing, or a Garage Band demo, and that’s a good way to like, really, for one person to get their vision as far as they can get it, as true to the way that they originally heard the song, to have everyone understand that, you know?  Beyond that, it’s very collaborative.  Once we bring in the song, and we sit around playing it together, usually- we were now just learning a new tune of Mike’s, and he sent us a demo of himself playing guitar and singing on it, and then we sat around and Rachael was kind of singing through it and thinking of hits, like, some places in the guitar part where it’d be good for- Sometimes, if the song is just chords and melody, it’s lacking a certain, I don’t know, cohesiveness or shape.  It lacks a shape if its kind of flat and strummy, so that part of it we do a lot together, and we think of where we’re gonna add background vocals and where the parts are gonna be and where we’re gonna have the drums drop out for a chorus, like that part of it is where-

MO: I think that’s where our jazz background really helps too, because we’re very improvisation-minded, just keeping it mind that it sort of goes where it needs to go.  When I make a demo that has parts and arrangements and things, more often than not we wind up abandoning them for something that feels more organic in rehearsal because there’s sort of no way of knowing how it’s gonna end up, especially if we do a classic quartet without a guitar.  I play the trumpet and he plays drums.

R: “Classic quartet”, that’s our own phrase that we use in the band for when we play…  We have a guitar in the band now, but initially it was just trumpet, bass, voice and drums.  There was no…

MC: Our creative process also includes a lot of ice cream.  And Doritos.

Got any favorite flavors of ice cream?

MC: Mint chocolate chip is our favorite.

R: Actually, I think our first couple of years were mostly snacking.

B: More snacking than rehearsing.

MC: It was only until recently that I actually played a drum set during rehearsal.  Usually I’d just play on a table.

Is it the same way in the studio?  Do you guys record in Massachusetts?

R: Yeah.  The last two we’ve done have been recorded in Massachusetts and it’s been pretty similar.  Both times we’ve gone in sort of with an idea of what we wanted because our time in the actual studio was short.  Our last record was a lot of brainstorming in the studio.

MC: In the weeks ahead of it we would assign arranging duties to people and created arrangements and focused on…

B: We augmented the album with a lot of different horn parts and keyboard parts that we don’t do live, so we didn’t have a chance to play a bunch of shows with this large ensemble and just let it work itself out so we had to be much more prepared to have the piano player come in and be like, “This is your part! Play it!”

MO: We also don’t have the flexibility because we’re not signed or fabulously wealthy.  We sort of have to know the tunes front to back.  We don’t have the flexibility that a lot of bands do to be like, “Hey man, I have this new tune, let’s figure this out in the studio and build it up.”  We do a lot of tracking live, and we try to do as much in one take as possible.  Most improvising is done in one take.

MC: We never opened up solo or anything like that.

MO: We do if there’s like, if I’m playing guitar on a tune and I have to go back and record a trumpet solo or something.  We don’t paste together solos so that it’s perfect, you know?

B: Except for in one case…

MO: Except for in one case, with this one guitar solo.  It’s because I’m the worst guitar player ever.

MC: He’s gotten a lot better.

When you look back at your discography are there any songs that you feel particularly connected to? What are your favorite Lake Street Dive songs?

MO: Well, we like to play, and we have played consistently from early on, “Sometimes When I’m Drunk”, which is not from Promises, Promises.   It’s from the other one.  “Sometimes When I’m Drunk” is the reason we are a band, because it won a big major award and it provided the money for our first tour and our first album.  I remember the first night on the road with that first tour, I was like, “Why are we doing this? We suck!  This is the worst band I’ve ever played in!”

R: OW!

MO: No lies between us guys.  Only truth.  But by the end of that road trip and by the end of that recording process I was like, “I LOVE THIS BAND.  THIS IS THE BEST BAND I’VE EVER PLAYED WITH!”  If it hadn’t been for that song, Bridget’s song, winning the John Lennon Songwriting Award, we wouldn’t have had the bread to do all that and who knows where we’d be.

MC: We still play it because it’s a good song, and the music represents us.  We also play “Panhandling Song” a lot because it’s a crowd pleaser.

Yeah!  I love that one!  Bridget, your bass line in that is unbelievable.  I really enjoy that one.

R: Definitely the up-tempo songs stick out because they’re necessary for performances, and like, they’ll always be songs that’ll be harder to play on a regular basis live.  Like, Mike’s song, “Death on Pluto”, which is on promises, promises is one of my favorite songs.  We never get to play it live because it’s really somber.

B: One thing I was gonna say about “Panhandling Song” too is that that song in a sense defines an improvisational element in this band that we all really love.   That song, we always put it at the beginning of a set, though not necessarily first: It always gets the band going, because it gives us the chance to play something really funky but it also has parts that are, like, different every time.

MC: Yeah, super loose.

B: It can be a lot of different things.

MO: When we say “improvisational” we don’t just mean the featured solo.  Bridget makes up what she’s gonna do over a certain section and she may do something she’s never done that.

You can see that, when you guys are playing.  Is “Betty” another song that sticks out?  I saw you at Lizard Lounge this spring, and you were taking requests and somebody screamed “PLAY BETTY!” and you guys were like “YEEEAH!”

MC: Mike is never like that when it comes to that song!

MO: I HATE that song.

Really?!

MC: It’s the song that we’ve played for the longest consistently, and even though he hates it we force him to do it.

R: It’s generally our set closer or encore.  We never write it into a set.

MO: THAT’S the tune we had to cut and paste a solo on.

B: When we recorded our first album, Mikey had been playing guitar for something like a year and a half, maybe.

Do you feel like touring affects your creative process in the sense that you, like, seeing songs evolve and stuff, are there any examples like, you went around the country with it and you played it and it completely changed?  Are there specific songs that you can think of that sound very different before and after a tour?

MC: There are songs on the green album that I think we sort of wish we could go back and record that album.  There are songs on that album that we’ve played so many times, and I think each of us discovered more of what the song means at this point from just playing it a bunch, especially when you’re on tour and banging it out night after night, especially if it’s a crowd pleaser.  That happens a lot.  We learned a bunch of new songs that we were gonna put on the second album and then played them on tour and then got really used to playing them to work out the kinks and find the right tempos.

R: I think it happens bit by bit with every song.

MO: “Velvet Room” has become a lot funkier.  It used to be a slow jam back when we would rock out on it.

R: It used to be a slow folk song initially and now it’s like, a rockin’, r+b it.

MO: “Love to Food” has evolved a little bit because during one performance Rachael neglected to come in and Bridget made up a part that has stuck, and now we play it everytime.

R: Neglected is the right word.  It was very purposeful. (Laughs)

B: Another song that’s evolved is “I Make the Wrong Decisions”, which is off the green album.  (Laughs)

MO: It has evolved into nothingness.

B: Yeah, a Broadway-style duet was kind of made of it…

MO: And now we NEVER play it.

In terms of touring, can you guys take me through a couple of your more recent experiences?

MO: Well, we all gained a lot of weight because of the last road trip.  A lot of time in the car, tour bellies…

R: When was our last show out of town?  We tour over the summer.  We’re a super nerdy band.  I’ve found that we’re not rock star party people after talking to other bands.  I thought that we were because I don’t know anything.

B: I was like “OH MAN!  WE’RE STAYING UP SO LATE!”

MC: “WE ARE SO BADASS.”

MO: Like, waking up in strange apartments?  We don’t do that.

R: But we DO make farting noises, in the car.  That’s our tour life ritual.

So, you’ll be driving by someone passing on the road, and you’ll make a fart noise out the window…?

R: Yeah.  Exactly.

MC: If we have the window possibilities we’ll double-shot it.

MO: So we were touring one summer and there were tons of people out in the street after a show one night, and it was really beautiful, and Mike INSISTS on driving the entire time we’re on the road.  Our last road trip, we had seven cities we were trying to get back and forth from.  Like, Chicago to Bloomington and back to Chicago for the next night.  It’s really great, because Mike is FEARLESS when it comes to the farting song.

R: He’s a really good driver for the game, possibly the only one… And that’s about as wild as we get.

(Lake Street Dive cracks up.)

MC: So, that’s what we do.  We watch movies when we can.  We don’t do drugs.  We DO do badminton.  We bandercize.

So, what’s Lake Street Dive working on now?

R: We’re working on a couple of small tours, and that’s about it.

B: Basically, we have tours planned in August and September and October.  We pretty much every summer go out to the Midwest because Mike and I have connections there, Rachael has connections there-

MC: That’s why I drive, because I don’t. (Laughs)

B: In September, we’ll be going to the South for the first time.  We’ve never been down there as a band, which is where Rachael’s from.  We’re really excited about that.  In both cases we have one bigger festival or performance or outdoor concert that we base the tour around, and then we book shows from that.  We’re playing a festival in North Carolina, and then we’re going to Nashville and a bunch of other places.  October, we’re thinking East Coast Tour.

MO: We’re also nearing enough tunes for a third record, though we’re not quite there yet.

Is this material a departure from stuff you’ve previously done?

R: In some ways the material is a little poppier, but I think it’s more of a continuation than a departure.

MO: Mike and I were thinking that because we did such a production-heavy second record that we could do a more paired-down third record because there’s so much more with what we can do live there.  It’s mostly in terms of arrangements.  I think it’d be kind of cool too as we progress more into the pop world to address with very attentive tunes and paired-down jams.

MC: Mike and I have also done a good amount of home recording, he especially.  We’re sort of hoping to have a more cohesive song on the album as a whole because the first one is sort of all over the place and the second one was more connected, but maybe we’ll go for a concept sound.

MO: We also did an EP that we haven’t even discussed calling a Lake Street Dive record, even though it is this band.  There are no trumpet solos.

Let’s talk Boston:  What was it like coming here for music school?  How did the community help you grow as a musician?

R: Well, we found each other!  I would say that that’s the best possible experience in coming here in many ways, because the band and having such, such similar musical tastes, like, the same, so that’s been good.  The city has been great to us as a band, in terms of gigs and performances.  We’ve had a really good time booking shows here and in the last couple of years we can book them regularly, all the time, and we have nice crowds and have gained a good fan base.  It’s all positives.

MC: I think going to school in Boston was an awesome choice.  Boston is smaller, although it has a lot of young people, and it’s also very intelligent as a city and very open in terms of the type of music you can hear and go see that people make money doing, even as far as avant-garde jazz.  For that reason, I think it was easy for us to be here because chances are there was some group of individuals who was really going to like us, just because there’s a group of individuals who like all the stuff going on in Boston.  It’s not so huge and out of control that you can get washed to sea.

B: I think the scene we’ve been embraced by and become a part of is mostly the Cambridge singer/songwriter/folk scene, with places like Atwoods, Toad, Club Passim and Lizard Lounge.  Those were places that it took us awhile to catch on to, that they were even around.  First two or three years that I was living in Boston I was like, “Oh, there are no venues for jazz! There’s no where to play!”  And then all of a sudden through Miss Tess we discovered new places, and the crowds were great, and it was just so amazing that there were all these venues we didn’t know about that had these supportive audiences and cool bar owners, so that was something we caught onto and it was a good thing for us.

MO: One of our first gigs was in a bubble tea café.

R: Bridget just really liked bubble tea, and that’s how she got us a gig there.  (Laughs)  We were like, “Oh, really?  Bands play there?” and she was like “Welllll…. They have really good bubble tea!”  We’ve played the Middle East and things like that, but we feel more at home on the other side, I guess, just because it’s more like, we like playing in a place where we’re the band that night.  I know I do.  Playing a show where it’s like, “well, it’s just us for the next three hours!” as opposed to playing a show with five other bands.  It’s like a good way to work on your material and get your stuff together.

MC: With the indie scene in Boston I feel like you can’t play with the crowd as much, and we love doing that.  You don’t have to be this wall of sound.

You don’t have to buy earplugs to get the point, you mean.

MC: Yeah, exactly.

Do you have any particular favorite venues that you love?

R: I feel like Toad is our second home, we’ve played there regularly for the past two and a half, three years.  We did a residency and then played there pretty consistently.  Rarely have I seen a bad show at Toad.  There are always people who come out who’ve never been there or heard of us and they just decided to come out for the night.  I love Club Passim for the sound, it sounds really good.

B: I really love the Lizard Lounge.

R: Oh, I LOVE the Lizard Lounge!

B: It’s always really a good experience and the sound there is great.

MO: The reason why we don’t play certain venues isn’t necessarily because we’ve turned our nose up at it; there are some places that are true jazz clubs, and we’ve played them before, but the problem with genre specific venues is that we call ourselves, we know that we have jazz and folk influences and we know that we have all this stuff going on but it doesn’t always necessarily translate for purists.  We played a folk festival in Connecticut last summer, and some woman came up to us and was like, “You guys are NOT a folk band.  Why did you play this festival?” We were like “What’re you talking about? We love folk music.”  She was a little weird.  She also told Rachael never to wear pink.

What?!  I don’t understand why people feel the need to breed that kind of negativity.

MO: Right!  But I think that purists feel the need to hear bands that are very true to whatever it is they want.  Even though we know the jazz thing pretty damn well and it informs what we do, if we were to sit down and play for jazz purists, I think we would get a lukewarm response because we have so many rock and pop influences that that’s the reason why love Toad and Lizard Lounge because anything goes there and we don’t have to be a one genre band to be accepted at those venues.

Segueing into your fans in Boston: How is your relationship with them? The singer/songwriter scene you spoke about seems to be more familial than cliquey.

MC: We have characters here, and regulars for sure.  There’s like the bearded guy, John, who comes to every show at Toad, he’s always real jovial and always shows up.

MO: And he’ll give us constructive criticism, too.  He gives each one of us notes.

MC: Well, we also have Sing-Along Girl.  It took us awhile to start talking to her, but there’s this girl and she’ll be there with her boyfriend, and he’ll be nursing a beer and not really paying attention to us, but she’d be looking at us the entire night and just mouthing every single word that came out of Rachael’s mouth.  She’d come in before we started playing and split before we stopped.  She like, all of a sudden she was nervous.  We’re cool with Sing-Along Girl.

MO: There’s also a cast of men that just love the female element to this band.

R: I feel like there’s always a slew of four or five guys who are just watching Bridget being like, “DOOD. THAT CHICK’S PLAYIN’ BASS.  DOOD.  DO YOU SEE THAT CHICK PLAYIN’ BASS.”

I do gotta say, I haven’t seen a female upright-bass player in a long time.  There’s a novelty about you, girl!

B: (Laughs)

R: There are a few upright-bass players that are girls, but none of them are as good as Bridget.

B: There’s a really nice thing about the community of musicians in the singer/songwriter scene, and there’s a lot of collaboration and support.  People go out to each other’s shows, and somehow it’s never been competitive at all.  People do shows together, and that’s one great thing about Lizard Lounge is that you frequently invite friends to play with you there.

R: Mike (Calabrese) and I play in a band with Miss Tess-

That’s the Sweet and Lo-Down, right?

R: Yeah.  There’s so much love!

Are you going to work with Jesse Dee in the future?

R: We haven’t planned anything official but we’ve played shows with Jesse a couple of times.  We’re doing a show with him soon, and hopefully we’ll do more.

MC: Here in Boston, we’ve been able to cultivate and avoid getting jaded or over-covered.

R: Boston has been a really great place to be a band, cultivate a sound, get a crowd and see how people react.

MC: We can be free here, and it’s cool.

B: I live in New York now, and I think that these clubs that we’re talking about, where you can just go and be the event and play for awhile, I think that’s something really special about Boston and it’s not as present in New York because the rock clubs there, you play for tips and there’s a band every hour over the course of seven hours.

MC: You need a product in other cities, like Nashville and New York and Los Angeles, and maybe we have a product, maybe we don’t, but it gives us a chance to get ready.  Boston has given us a chance to get ready, to experiment and to be accepted.

What bands do you really love coming out of Boston?

R: I love Jesse Dee.

MO: As do I.

MC: Yeah, we all love Jesse Dee.  And the Rex Complex!

R: Miss Tess, obviously.

MC: Joy Kills Sorrow.

B: That was what I was gonna say: There’s a great bluegrass folk scene around here, Perfect Still, Annie and the Beekeepers…. There’s a hugely amazing scene of young bluegrass going on.

Photo: Alipio Hernández