Though JP-based Christians & Lions appear to be a pack of the every-indie-kid, these guys turn out a brand of acoustic guitar-driven pop with smart, earnest lyrics and a sound that, at times, can straddle the line between country and folk (Kate’s been known to man the banjo on occasion) without ever falling into either. We caught them at an exciting time– with a new EP out on their own label, Floating Garbage Continent,  and a release show to follow, they were staring down the barrel of a few weeks on the road.

Hil and I met Christians & Lions camped out among numerous tables at a local coffee joint. They gave us the low down on how they came to be, the trials of cementing a line-up and what it meant to be a Band From Boston. With a homebase in JP and a penchant for playing basements, barns and bookstores, it’s no surprise they don’t count themselves among the ranks of the Allston danceparty movement, the Cambridge indie rock set or the Somerville jazz/soul/folk collectives– and their perspective on the Boston music scene is unlike what we’ve heard before.

–Jessie Rogers

OPENING ACT: THE TEAPARTY 10

What’s your favorite breakfast cereal?

Greg: Rice Krispies.

Ben: Do you guys remember Oops! All Berries?  It was all crunchberries.  That would probably be tied with Hidden Treasures, which was around for one year in 1988 or 1989.  Hidden Treasures were really weird – there was this paste, sort of, in these little cereal squares.  It was like, cereal ravioli.

Chris: I need something crunchy.  I’m gonna say Tasty-Os, because that’s like, the brand at Whole Foods with added… stuff.  Added tastiness.  Or maybe Frosted Mini Wheats from Trader Joe’s.

Kate: I don’t eat breakfast but if I had to choose it would be Honey Bunches of Oats.

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

B:  I’ve seen “The Goonies” but I haven’t seen “Sixteen Candles.”

G:  I’d punch Long Duk Dong.

K:  Yeah, me too.  Actually, I’ll pass.

C:  Mouth.

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

C: An old GE refrigerator.

The kind kids used to get stuck in?

C: Yeah.

B: Anything cast-iron.

K: I’ll say microwave.  Microwaves can do a lot of things and I always do whatever people want me to do, so I’m kind of like a microwave.

G: An oven.  Or a bottle opener.

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?

G: GONZO!  No, I’d be Animal.

B: Fozzie the Bear.  No, I’d be Rizzo the Rat.

C: I’d be Statler of Statler and Waldorf.

B: (to Kate) You’d be Janis, from the Electric Mayhem.

K: Okay!  I’ll be her.

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?

G: I would cover my body in paisley, in all different colors and shapes.  I would look like a couch.

B: You would sit on a couch and just be a floating head.  Kate would get a picture of my face on her arm, and I would get a picture of her face on my arm.

C: I would get a Boston Bruins logo.  Yeah.

B: With Yosemite Sam behind it!  Wait, I changed my answer.  I would get a tattoo of Kate’s face on my face so then people would be like, “Are you guys brother and sister?!”

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

K: Sumo wrestler!

B: A sumo wrestler, definitely.

C: A rodeo clown, even though I’d occasionally get gored.  Actually, no.  Sumo.

B: One thing I would definitely NOT want to be is a sumo wrestling rodeo clown.

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

B: Robiola.  Yeah, because I smell bad but I taste great.

C: Fontina.

K: Gouda.

G: Havarti.

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

G: BEARD DREADS.  That would be kind of cool.  Like, three gnarly, big dreads.

B: I’d be a unibrow.

C: I’ll be a soul tap. Not a soul patch, a soul tap.  It’s kind of like a slit.  It’s a lot more groomed than a soul patch. Just a little tap.

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

K: I can’t!  I live with my family!  But my friends and I do listen to “Love Shack” by the B52s really loud in my car.

B: I never dance, I just fall over… Remember that song by Stabbing Westward?  “I can’t saaaave youuuu I can’t even SAAAVE MYYYYSELLLLFFFF…” Okay seriously, “Baby Let’s Play House.”

G: Something by Limp Bizkit, I don’t know.  Probably “Nookie.”

C: Steely Dan, “Don’t Take Me Alive.”  I can’t listen to Steely Dan around anyone else because they don’t like him.

What’s your favorite word?

B: Yes.

G: Mongojerry.

C: I’m gonna say…. Greg’s favorite cheese.  Havarti.

K: Facetious!

THE MAIN EVENT: THE CHRISTIANS & LIONS TEAPARTY BOSTON INTERVIEW

Can we get everybody’s name and where you’re from and age for the record?

Kate: I’m Kate and I’m from Falls Church, Virginia.  I’m 18.  I play whatever’s left over, so at the Middle East show I’m playing the organ and singing, but for the rest of the trip I’m playing bass, banjo, flute…

Greg: I’m Greg, I’m 20 and I’m from Westminster, Massachusetts.  I just play electric guitar in Christians and Lions.

Ben: I’m Ben, I’m from Jamaica Plain and I’m 24.  I play acoustic guitar and saw on the record, sometimes.

Chris: I’m Chris, I’m from Jamaica Plain, sorta, and I’m 23.  Wait, am I still 23?  I thought I was your age.  I play the drums.

B: I think I’m older than you.

C: Oh, no, wait. I’m 24.

So how’d y’all meet and come to make music together?

B: I met Chris-

C: Well, you met your sister before me.

B: I met my sister in 1991, and we were right off the bat pretty much knowing that we were gonna be in a band together.  Later, we met Chris about six or seven years ago, and Chris and I both played in bands in our respective suburban hometown.  He played in bands in his suburban hometown and we played in bands too, and my brother and I started playing music together so we asked Chris to join us.  There’s a lot of people in the band and not in the band, there’s some people that…

Well, let’s talk about these other people, then.  Can we get names and what they play?

B: John is from Jamaica Plain by way of California and Alaska, and he plays trumpet and organ and sings.  He just joined us a few months ago.  Colin is from Brighton and is playing with us right now and playing bass, and he’s filling in for my brother who just left to do The Needy Visions, and Colin also plays in another band.

Can you take us through the creative process for Christians & Lions?  Does someone take on the majority of the lyrical and compositional writing, or is it a collaborative effort?

C: It’s mostly Ben.  When it comes to practice a song might take on a different form.

B: I pick four to six chords that I think sound nice together and I play them in an order that I think sounds nice, and I usually have lyrics that I write separately, and then I bring it to them and they make it much more.

Are there any Christians & Lions songs that you feel particularly connected to that you enjoy playing for people?  Do any songs stand out in your catalogue as favorites?

B: There are two that are new that I like better, they may come out soon on a single.  One of them is a Waltz in D, so right now we’ve been calling it “Waltz in D”, and the other one is called “Palle”, it’s the name of a small town in Russia I lived in ten or twelve years ago.  I ate a turnip there and I wrote a song about it ten years later.

What were you doing in Russia, besides eating turnips?

B: My mom and I were visiting because my other sister, not Kate, but my sister Elena, is adopted from Russia.  My dad got to go retrieve her; I don’t know what you call it-

C: Steal?

B: (Laughs) No.  He went to go get her and my mom had surgery around the same time and so she wasn’t able to go, but she had another opportunity to visit Russia with this painting group she was a part of, and so she took me because I was the oldest of my siblings at the time.  I still am the oldest of my siblings, which is weird.

What brought you guys to Boston?

B: We all lived in suburbs of Boston and my family moved, so Sam, Kate and I wanted to continue to play together, so we would just come back for like, when she got out of school and would come play with us for a week and then we’d go on tour.

Is there anything that’s keeping you in Boston, specifically, besides your music?

B: Well, I have a job here that’s pretty good.  Greg, you lived in Boston for a little while-

G: Yeah, I didn’t like it.  I’m from the woods.

B: Yeah, we still haven’t domesticated him. (Laughs)

When it comes to performing live, do you have any preshow rituals?  What changes for Christians & Lions between the studio and the stage?

B: I think we’re totally unprofessional in any environment you put us in (laughs).

C: I think we’re pretty consistent, actually.

How so?

B: We use all the same equipment and we don’t use nicer stuff when we record.

C: We mostly record live.

B: We rarely track things.  We just want it to sound good and we want it to sound like us.

C: In terms of rituals, we used to argue a lot but we don’t really have any.  Now we don’t argue, though.

So Christians and Lions is more about preaching love these days?

B: I don’t know.  I think I’m going to yell at all you guys pretty soon.

You feel it building up?

B: Yeah.  (Laughs)

Let’s talk influences for a little bit.  Are there any artists or bands that can be credited for helping shape the sound of Christians & Lions?

B: The Kinks!

C: Yeah.

G: The Velvet Underground.

B: Everyone’s influenced by The Kinks and The Velvet Underground, but… We end up sounding like bands we don’t really listen to or maybe don’t even like.  Sometimes it’s depressing.  Somebody referred to us once as “Boston’s answer to The Shins.” Hmm.

C: Steely Dan shapes me.

B: You’ve been listening to a lot of Peter Gabriel, which I don’t like, but I accept.  I tolerate it.

C: Peter Gabriel does not shape me.  Steely Dan SHAPES ME.

B: Hal Blaine shapes you, too.

C: Hal Blaine!

B: Do you guys know Hal Blaine?

No.

C: Hal Blaine was a session musician who played drums on every important rock n’ roll recording in the fifties and sixties.  He was like, Phil Spector’s drummer, and he was in The Bruisers or something, The Wrecking Crew, maybe, I can’t remember the name.  I’m pretty sure those are two band names for hardcore bands.

B: Whenever I try to explain Chris’ obsession with Hal Blaine I always say, “Do you remember the snare hit in ‘The Boxer’ by Simon and Garfunkel?”  That was Hal Blaine.

In terms of what you’re listening to right now, like if we were to check out the “Recently Added” playlist on your iPod, what would we find?

C: Elvis Costello.

B: Black Pus.  I also have been listening a lot to this pirate radio station, 96.5 fm called SoCaribe, and I think it broadcasts from Mattapan.  It’s SoCa, reggae, Caribbean, and it’s cool.  That’s the description that I found when I went looking for pirate radio stations online.

K: The last thing I was listening to was Christians and Lions because I was trying to learn a couple parts in my head.

G: As I was walking over here I was listening to “Tupelo Honey.”

B: I just got that on vinyl.  They had it on cassette, too, at the In Your Ear in Allston.  I almost bought it again.

C: That’s actually the tape that’s stuck in my car!  I thought it was Fleetwood Mac but it’s Van Morrison, and the tape doesn’t play.

B: I’d say Van Morrison is a pretty big influence on us, more his folky side than his jazzy side.

G: I feel like I subconsciously mimic some of his guitar leads, trying to get that sound.  Now, consciously, now it’s out (laughs).

What are your favorite venues in Boston?  You guys have been playing here for a while so I’m assuming you’ve got your venues covered, but are there any venues you haven’t played?

C: We haven’t played the Paradise.

G: I like Great Scott, I always have fun there.

C: I really do like the Middle East Upstairs.  I like what sounds good.  I think sound- usually sound is horrible.

B: I actually like PA’s Lounge, you just can’t get anyone to come to your show.  I’ve seen many good bands there, and the bands that I’ve seen there have gone on the next time they’ve gone on tour after that, they’d go on tour with the Flaming Lips and Steve Malkmus and people just don’t come out to PA’s, I don’t know why.

I think it’s just because it’s not really T-accessible.

B: Yeah, it’s like bus only.  We haven’t played Outside the Lines Studio in Somerville but I like it a lot.  Tufts has these, I’m pretty sure, I might be talking out of my ass, but I think its around the Tufts sports fields, the Outside the Lines gallery. I saw this show with Goat of Arms and a bunch of other bands.  Boston needs a really solid all-ages venue that’s easy to get to, and honestly, I think people are trying to do stuff about that so I think we’ll see it.

The overall sentiment seems to be that we need an all-ages space, because the Worcester Palladium is far away.

B: Yeah, and it’s also huge.

What do you guys really love about playing in Boston?

B: Other cities are better, honestly.  I have more fun elsewhere because people are interested to see you and it’s not all people who already know you.  I mean, no disrespect to anyone who comes to see us in Boston!  I love Boston a lot.  We live here and it’s easy to be like, “Oh, I’m a Boston band, I’m over it.”  Almost every other place we’ve stopped on while on a trip has been more receptive.

G: I agree.

B: I don’t think it’s an attitude problem with Boston: I think like, other places have cliques, and all this stuff that I’d complain about, it’s like when you’re in a minivan or a station wagon with an upright bass in the back, people were just so psyched to check this band out.  It’s fun to go somewhere and have people be amped about seeing you because they probably won’t in like a year or something based on how big your fan base is.  I’m not saying that Boston doesn’t appreciate us, but I don’t go see the same band at the same venue every week, you know what I mean?  I think we just try to play less in Boston to try and keep our enthusiasm up and to keep people who may want to see us up as well.

C: I think a lot of past bands have played and it seems that we feel maybe like they alienated us.

Why alienated?

C: I mean like, when we think back to other bands we’ve been in, I just have no interest in the cliques.  It gets really cliquey, especially around stuff that’s based in Allston.  I feel like I’m not really interested in a lot of those bands.

B: I like all the venues that we mentioned and I think that it’s fun to be in a city that’s transitioning in the sense of I think because people are coming to the spaces and want to see that happen.  People go on tour and they bring back what they see elsewhere with the attitude that they can improve the Boston music scene by doing a really good job.  That probably happens everywhere, but because I’m in Boston I see bands come back to Boston after being on tour and I see them get psyched to try different things.  I think that’s cool.  I think Boston’s good for that.  People may shit on the transient student population, but it means that every year we have groups of new kids who might get into local music, or start a band, or start a scene, and it’s fresh blood.  With all the negatives that do come with having a bunch of people coming in an trashing the city because they don’t care seeing as they’re gonna leave in four years, there’s also a lot of people who want to do a lot of really cool shit while they’re here before they move onto New York.  Still, I think that’s good.

C: I feel like I’ve been more interested, I mean, I don’t even know what bands to name specifically, but I feel like four or five years ago there wasn’t anything local that I was into, and now it just seems like it keeps getting better.

B: It’s just more diverse.  There’s always gonna be trends and fads and cliques and whatever, but I mean, Boston music right now, if you were like setting up a folk show or a pop rock show or a noise show, even if you’re not hardcore about the band, you know what bands do what and you’re respectful of it and you try to see what you can.

Are there any bands or local acts that you hear that they’re playing and you make sure you go see?

B: We don’t really get out much.

C: The Amin Z Band.  I like Amin.

B: I really like, well, our friend Greg Mullen, he’s coming out with an album soonish, he just finished it, and he’s a really good narrative singer.  For all of 2008 I was really, really into what Truman Peyote and Many Mansions were doing.  Those dudes are really nice guys who really enjoy live music.  I feel like you have to be good and I’ll obviously be into your stuff, but I feel like if you really love being in a band and you’re really excited about new stuff and you’re doing it for the right reasons, I feel like that’s going to put you over into being a good local act.  I really like Kid Lemonist, too.  They’re gaining a reputation that’s both positive and negative.

Who would you love to bill with, that’s local?

B: Well, we put together the bill for our CD release.  We like all those bands, and we also like Hallelujah the Hills, Faces on Film, Mister Sister, St. Claire, they’re AWESOME.

G: Moss is really cool.

C: I think Moss is one of the best Boston bands.

What’s next for Christians & Lions?  I know you just released a CD, but what do the next few months look like for you?  Do you have anything written for the next album, and do you plan on hopping back into the studio anytime soon?

B: We’re going on a two-week tour and then when we get back, probably not a whole lot because we’re all broke from putting out this CD.

C: I think it’s been a struggle to find somebody to play bass.

B:  Yeah.  We haven’t actually been working very hard because we’ve been planning to do this tour over a few weeks, because we were like, “We’re going to find a replacement bassist”, and we have a couple of people we’ve talked to about coming to play with us, but we wanted to focus on practice.

C: We’d rather have not such a rotating cast.

B: If you call yourself a collective, it’s cool; If you call yourself a band and show up to play with different people every time, people will get mad.

Do you see you guys settling down with a permanent lineup anytime soon?

B: We’re gonna try our damndest!

C: I really feel positively about the people that are in the band right now.

B: We have a problem with being positive.  I think everyone in the band is really into psychedelic music and and I think that most people’s definition of psych is super positive, but I don’t think we’re really – like, they’re doing this thing called the “Yes!” Wave in Jamaica Plain right now, and the response to it is this “No!” Wave in New York.  I always say that we’re like, “Probably” Wave.  I wouldn’t even say “Maybe” Wave or “Perhaps” Wave, we’re like, “Probably” Wave.

Catch Christians & Lions at The (New) Milky Way Lounge on 9/13 (8PM, 21+)