Somerville, far from being just a less expensive outpost to Cambridge and Boston, is more than holding its own these days. On June 12, from 3 -7 p.m. SomerFun: A Romp for Local Independents, Union Square and ‘ville residents welcome you to the ‘hood with open arms.

Way back when, Somerville was more likely to be known as the birthplace of Fluff, but thanks to a burgeoning art scene, tons of restaurants within walking distance and Joe Grafton of Somerville Local First, it has become a destination spot.

Somerville resident Autumn Ahn and Chorus Collective are putting together an interactive art installation. Sleuths can amble their way through the neighborhoods on a scavenger hunt, while activities like farming demonstrations and canning lessons are also on the list.

All of the entertainment, demonstrations, dancing and events are free and open to the public and local restaurants Precinct, The Independent, Ronnarong and Cantina la Mexicana are all letting their taps flow while the Somerville High School Marching band and multi-cultural dance events happen all around.

Come see why Somerville ain’t Slummerville anymore, or if you already know why its pretty much awesome, come hang out with some new faces. Somerville Local First is fundraising during this event and volunteers are still needed.

–Kristen Schaer

This is our weekend to do list. Print it out. Check it off. Enjoy.

–TeaParty

[ ] Feast on a smorgasbord of Boston indie rock (with a side of NYC powerpop)

When Aloud, Flying Machines, The Lights Out, The Everyday Visuals play TT’s

[ ] Dance to the beat of your own… headset

At the Silent Disco at the Milky Way

[ ] Hang with the people who “get it”

At the Creatures Of Habit Record Release Party featuring Runaway at The Good Life

WHERE'S WALDO?

[ ] Tackle some random guy who happens to be wearing stripes and a beanie

and blame it on the Boston-wide Where’s Waldo hunt

[ ] Brave the horror that is Faneuil Hall on a weekend

For MAYDAY at the Hard Rock with The Luxury, Hot Protestants, The Main Drag and The Silent Century

[ ] Come up with clever joke about white rabbits / magic in time for Paradise show

with White Rabbits and Here We Go Magic

SOMERVILLE OPEN STUDIOS

[ ] Go for the art…

at The Fringe Movement during Somerville Open Studios

[ ]…stay for the music

when Sea Monsters hold down their residency at Precinct

This is our weekend to-do list. Print it out. Check it off. Enjoy.

–TeaParty

P.S. Feel free to add your own events in the comments!

[ ] See Precinct pack in more indie rock/pop per square foot than anywhere else in the city

at the Hot Molasses, Tin Thistles, Oranjuly, and The Slow Century show.

[ ] Witness more funk fusion than you can shake a horn section at with Gentlemen Hall and Spiritual Rez

at the Middle East Downstairs

[ ] Get drunk on good design

at Grand’s February Sip & Shop (featuring Karlsson’s Vodka)

[ ] Break out the old sneakers for some Bassment Raving

at the Allston House

[ ] Get your ( jungalism/jumpstyle/fidget house) freak on at HARUM SCARUM

at ZuZu

This is our weekend to-do list. Print it out. Check it off. Enjoy.

–TeaParty

P.S. Feel free to add your own events in the comments!

DWIGHT & NICOLE

[ ] Restore your faith in love with Dwight & Nicole

with Will Dailey and Tim Gearan at the Somerville Theater

[ ] Lose all faith in love with AA Bondy

with Willy Mason, Ryan Crosby and Elio DeLuca at TT the Bear’s Place

[ ] Find a really clever and romantic gift for your valentine (or yourself)

at the Cabin Fever Indie Gift Show

[ ] Dance like there’s,  uh, no tomorrow at the No Tomorrow launch

at Machine

[ ] Dance like every little thing’s gonna be alright

at the Bob Marley birthday celebration at the Middle East Upstairs with featuring Ila Mawana, Buffalo Soul & Bearquarium

SEA MONSTERS

[ ] Witness the mythical creatures that are the uber-talented Somerville-area musicians

at the Sea Monsters residency at Precinct Bar

[ ] FONDUE.

at Fondue Sunday the Beacon Hill Hotel Bistro (only $26/pot!)

The first time we saw Ad Frank in action was onstage at Boston Band Crush’s One Night Band this past summer: Frank, along with various varsity members of Boston indie rock, played one of our favorite sets of the night as a member of Awesome Chariot.  The band, visibly amused and enjoying themselves as the kick-off act for the evening’s festivities, seemed to be a surprisingly positive experience for Frank as this Boston-based performer is a self-described one-man show.  This Ad Frank, the one who’s goofing around and screaming “WE ARE AWESOME CHARIOT”, is a far cry from the Ad Frank that Boston’s come to know as a heartbroken guy with good voice and a sad guitar.  When comparing old material of his to his forthcoming release, Your Secrets Are Mine Now, Ad Frank is borderline-giddy when talking about how this album is a departure from previous work: “I sort of had this local persona going, being the guy with the perpetually broken heart that’s always getting stopped on.  It was kind of like a joke.  We even had Ad Frank with a big broken heart on them.  This record is all about what a son of a bitch I am.”

This Saturday, October 24, Ad Frank and the Fast Easy Women will be celebrating their new album with a CD release bash at Great Scott.  Ad will be sharing new material from Your Secrets Are Mine Now, so Ad Frank fans will get the chance to listen to the new stuff before the album is readily available on November 3.  Read on to get the good’s on what goes into Ad’s songwriting, what brought him to the conclusion that a saxophone wasn’t a very punk rock instrument and what’s next for Ad Frank and the Fast Easy Women.

-Hilary Hughes

OPENING ACT: AD FRANK AND THE TEAPARTY TEN

What’s your favorite breakfast cereal?

Cracklin’ Oat Bran, but I almost never eat breakfast.  I usually just grab handfuls of it like it was pretzels or something.  I like Grape Nut ice cream, does that count?

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

Okay, definitely not Long Duk Dong and I’ve never seen The Goonies. Who would punch Long Duk Dong?!

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

I’d like to be one of those mixers, but I’d like to be a big, pastel one.

You go to bed, wake up, walk into the bathroom to brush your teeth, and you look in the mirror and you realize that you’ve turned into one of Jim Henson’s Muppets overnight.  Which Muppet are you?

I took the Facebook Muppet quiz and it told me I was Gonzo, so… I don’t know.   I’ve always liked Floyd, the bass player, but I’m more of a Gonzo.

Say you have a crazy night, you black out, and you wake up feeling like crap the next morning and you realize… you got a tattoo.  What’d you get inked?

That’s easy.  I would get black racing stripes tattooed all the way up both sides of my body.

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

I wouldn’t mind behind manhandled by a large Asian man, so I’ll go with sumo wrestler.

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

You’re making me feel bad because I can’t grow any.  I’m going to go with stubble.  It matches my capability.

If you were a type of cheese, which cheese would you be?

The Stinking Bishop.  I don’t really know what kind of cheese it is exactly, but it’s really pungent.  The sell it at the Wine & Cheese Cask.

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

“Cuts You Up” by Peter Murphy.

What’s your favorite word?

I don’t know if I’d say it’s a word, but I like how “Speen Street” sounds.  It’s a street in Natick.

THE MAIN EVENT: THE AD FRANK TPB INTERVIEW

Hi, Ad!  Tell us a little bit about yourself.

I grew up in Melrose, and I’ve been in Somerville for the last ten years.  I was in a band called Perma Cross for most of my adult life until I quit.  I quit with the intent of retiring, but didn’t and couldn’t.

Now you’re doing your own thing, right?

I have my own band, Ad Frank and the Fast Easy Women.  I play guitar in a band called Life Style, and that’s pretty much it right now.

How did you start playing music?  Are you one of those people who were born with a guitar in hand?

I’ve always made up songs, and I’ve always made up words to interesting tunes since I was like, four.  I can’t really blame it on punk rock because I think I wanted to … the lure of the Sex Pistols sort of proved that anybody can do it and I think it’s true.  That was probably around seventh grade when I started thinking about it.  I was playing saxophone but for the most part it wasn’t a very punk rock instrument, so I picked up a guitar then.

Who would you credit as creative influences for you?

Let’s see… I feel strange strange saying these two in the same breath, but it’s true: The Ramones and David Bowie.  I remember that the song “Switch” by Suzie and the Banshees came on the radio and I had an epiphany while listening to it, like, “YES! I must be in a band!” I don’t know what I liked about the song, but I think I was just overripe for an epiphany at the time.  I should listen to that song again; I haven’t heard it in about ten years.

Who are you listening to right now?  If we were to steal your iPod and check out your “Recently Added” playlist, what tracks would we find?

I’m so out of it.  I’ve been listening to Scott Matthews’ record a lot, but I think it’s a couple of years ago.  I like the Great Lake Swimmers, too.

In terms of your creative process, can you take me through it?

Usually, what happens is somebody doesn’t return my phone call and then I get really mad and then I start thinking about all the things I would say to this person if they were to call me back and then that’s the song.

That’s amazing.  What about the compositional portion of your songwriting?  Do you collaborate with anyone?

I’m not very good at writing with other people.  I almost said no to One Night Band because I don’t really know how to write… usually, I bring the song to the band and the chords, words and melody are done, but for the most part everybody writes their own part.  I might have like, a guitar noodle or a keyboard part that I’ll sort of make it known that it’s not optional, but for the most part everybody writes their own part, which is probably good.  It’s good that I’ll often bring a song in without telling the band about how I hear the song going in my head so they can pick what they will out of it.  The arrangements and the production of the songs performed by Ad Frank and the Fast Easy Women are collaborative; the songwriting is not collaborative.  There are certainly bands where certain bands contribute less than the people in my band do and they get writing credit.

Are there any songs in your catalog that you feel particularly connected to, or any songs by Ad Frank and the Fast Easy Women that stand out as favorites?

It’s called “U-Hauls and Ryders”, and it was written right around the time when I decided I was not going to retire.  I was pretty much going crazy: I had lost my apartment, and my job, and my band, and my engagement fell through, all within six weeks of each other, so I was squatting in this apartment in Brighton and that was, the song was sort of my process of being like, “What the hell just happened to me?”  The good thing about a song is that you get to sing it over and over and over again until you finally figure out what it’s about.  Hopefully it’s not just good for me.  If someone’s in a similar situation, maybe I get to articulate something for them.

It sounds like a cathartic process for you, what went into writing that song.

The stuff I write and the songs I like are usually all written because they have to be, not because somebody set aside three hours on a Sunday and said, “Oh, what am I going to write about now?”  The songs I really like are ones that sound like they had to pull their car over and grab a pen and paper and write it down so that they wouldn’t forget it.

When it comes to songs you love to play live, what are some songs that you make sure to include in your set list for every performance of Ad Frank and the Fast Easy Women?

Solo, I like to play “U-Hauls and Ryders”.  There’s one called “Open Up The Patio Pretty Girls Are Back In Style” that I won’t let the band play during the wintertime, I only play it in spring and summer because it’s a spring and summer song.  We usually like to close with a big, bombastic, arena rock-style song called “Timing is Everything”.

In terms of touring and your experiences outside of Boston, what cities have been really responsive to your music?  As the frontman of a Boston band and a Boston-based musician, do you tend to stick close to home or do you play elsewhere, too?

Ad Frank and the Fast Easy Women is mostly a Boston-based operation.  It gets less glamorous when you’re spending ten hours a day and sleeping on couches [while touring] as you get older, but I do a little bit of it.  I have a gig in Chicago coming up and one in D.C.  It’s really, really random.  We had one of our best shows ever in Detroit, and I have no idea why…

What are you working on right now with Ad Frank and the Fast Easy Women?

We’re kind of like the Spinal Tap of keyboard players; I think I’ve gone through fifteen of them!  I guess I’m difficult.  Our last one left a little under two years ago and that was right around the time we started getting to work on this record. For the most part, though, we’ve been playing shows and working on the record that’s about to be released.  The CD release show will be our first show with a full band in almost two years.

How is this upcoming album a departure from previous material you’ve released before?

Lyrically it’s a departure: I sort of had this local persona going, being the guy with the perpetually broken heart that’s always getting stopped on.  It was kind of like a joke.  We even had Ad Frank with a big broken heart on them.  This record is all about what a son of a bitch I am.  This is actually the first record where the band and I have played out all the songs live before they come out on the record, so they won’t be new to people who have been coming to see us.  We really took our time with this record and it took us four years to do.

Let’s talk about Boston venues for a second.  Are there any Boston venues that you love to play or any that stand out as great places to go to shows at?

I love to see shows at the Lizard Lounge.  I don’t play there often just because we’d have to turn it way, way down, but every time I go there I always have a great time.  TT the Bear’s Place feels like home and I love playing there.  I love the Cantab Lounge and the vibe it’s got.  You know that Frank Sinatra album, No One Cares, and he’s sitting at a bar or a café alone at a table with a drink, and behind him are all these happy couples and he’s just sitting there?  The Cantab always reminds me of that.

What about the Abbey Lounge?  I feel like that old venue has come up in conversation a lot recently, especially because a hot new restaurant [Trina’s Starlite Lounge] was recently put in it’s place.

I don’t have any stories from playing there myself, but…  (Laughs) There was this whole graffiti thread on the bathroom wall making fun of this poor guy, and I was reading it, and I was thinking, “Oh, this dude must be a real prick!” And then I got to the bottom of the thread and it was me! (Laughs)  It’s nice to know that someone was thinking of me I guess.

What Boston bands are you following right now, or that you’d love to bill with?

Trying to book this CD release party I realized how out of it I am.  In my band, I have Sarah RabDAU of Sarah RabDAU and the Self-Employed Assassins, and Chris Mascara from the band Mascara, and Sean Connelly from the band Francine, and those are three bands that I also like.  I like this new band, Mystery Roar, a lot.  Everyone in that band is so good!

How do you feel about your Boston fan base?  Let’s talk about your relationship with your fans here and the crowd you see at your shows.

I’m trying to figure out who’s still there because we haven’t played!  I think some of our fans might have been in college or might have had babies and moved to the suburbs, so we’re nervous about the CD release to see if anybody shows up at all.  We have great radio in Boston.  College radio is fantastic, and I feel like there’s more of an opportunity to get heard here than there is in other cities.  As much as people and bands complain about FNX and the former WBCN, the idea of a commercial radio station having a local music show doesn’t happen in most cities, and we have that here and there’s definitely more right going on then wrong in that regard.  I haven’t felt this in while because it’s been awhile since I’ve been on the verge of anything, but there is a tendency to – there’s a lot of backlash when a band starts to do well.  I don’t even know if it’s still active anymore, but the Noise Board would be a forum where people would tear me apart every couple of months.

Have you thought about moving on to other cities?

I have a lot of friends in LA who keep telling me to go there and it’s tempting.  I need something a little more than just picking up and starting all over again.  If I got a publishing deal and would be doing some co-writing with some people I would go, but there’s definitely a lot more opportunity and a lot more … you can go to a party and odds are somebody there is going to be the music director for a TV studio or something, or the guy who picks out the songs for a movie.  On the other hand, all of the people at the party are also musicians and actors so there’s more … I feel like if I need to be connected to the industry I can be by just hopping on the Fung Wah and heading down to New York, but LA seems – well this is sort of deteriorating too, but the idea that you have to be in your early or mid-20s and you have to be a different kind of rock band, in LA they get that you don’t have to be those things to be a songwriter.  They have a better understanding of the fact that people who write the songs aren’t necessarily fronting rock bands and there isn’t that much of an age ceiling.  I think that the age ceiling is crumbling along with the rest of the record industry.  Nobody’s getting signed to a major label and having a hit record, so the thirty-year-olds, twenty-year-olds, forty-year-olds… we’re all going no where together.

What’s next for Ad Frank and the Fast Easy Women?  What do we have to look forward to from you and the band in the next couple of months?

I definitely want to get out to some other cities, hopefully with the band, but they’ve got their own things going on.  One of them has a four-year-old at home, so… that’s the advantage of being “[Your Name] and the [Something-Somethings]” because your name still has some kind of weight.  The album is going everywhere and it’ll be streaming.  I just want to see who likes it.  If I turn out to have a huge pocket of fans in Akron, Ohio, I’ll head out there and go say hi to ‘em.  I was having a huge span of writer’s block after we finished the record.  It was like a year before I finished recording it and before I wrote anything.  I always figured that I would just retire and move on to something else, like writing fiction or painting, but I just finished another thing this week that I’m really excited about so I guess I’m committed to another record in the future.

For those who have been dropping by Toad on Monday nights to see the Tim Gearan Band do their blueey, country-flavored set, a change is in store: A couple of weeks ago, Tim let it be known that his residency at this bohemian hangout and respected music spot would be phased out over the month of September in order to start a new residency up in Inman Square’s Atwood’s Tavern.  At fifteen years and counting, Gearan is ready to move on from his weekly gig at the popular Cambridge venue.  His admiration and respect for the folks over at Toad and his loyal fan base is unwavering, and with their support he’s opting for a new spot for his band to call home at another local venue that’s become a haunt and hangout for local musicians.  Though Toad and Gearan have had a long and happy run together, Tim’s transition to Atwood’s seems a logical one to make: The bar is already playing some of Tim’s records on heavy rotation during their popular Pub Quiz nights, and with a regular lineup boasting intimate sets from members of Boston’s best folk and blues acts, his rowdy repertoire infused with a bit of Deep South soul will fit right in on the Atwood’s roster.

While we were trying to arrange for time to sit down and have a formal interview over a pint, Tim literally had to count the free hours between gigs that were scheduled for six consecutive days.  Between playing the last few nights of the Toad residency, joining his band for an early evening show at The Burren and playing on the regular alongside Christian McNeill, Jesse Dee and the rest of The Sea Monsters any given Sunday at Precinct, Tim is constantly singing, constantly strummin’ his guitar and constantly making music with his friends and fellow Cambridge/Somerville singer/songwriters.  Read on to learn about where Gearan picked up his guitar, the limitless songwriting inspiration he derives from his family and what we can look forward to in the coming months from one of Boston’s best performers.

-Hilary Hughes

THE MAIN EVENT: THE TIM GEARAN TPB INTERVIEW

What’s your back-story, Tim Gearan?

I’m a North Eastern kid. I was born and raised in New England, or in New York, specifically.  I’ve always been interested in music.  Our family stayed in New York but we’ve always been running around a lot, and my brother and sister and I were just always involved in the arts somehow.  We’re all doomed artists from the beginning, just because we needed something to sink our teeth into when the upheaval of our family occurred, with all the changes that go along with a 70s family and all that goes around with it.  In terms of a musical background, I’ve always been playing and writing.  Once I left home, I did the classic sort of 20s bop around the country/vagabonding thing, playing the couch circuit as it were, you know.  I moved out to California for a while and kind of soaked up the commercialism out there, and it started out in a negative sort of fashion, as I don’t really adhere to the LA scene so much.  I met somebody out there from Lafayette, Louisiana, and I moved to Louisiana for a year and a half or so.  That was more my speed, kind of soaking up the blues and zydeco and gospel and country music that happens down there.  I was lucky enough to be close enough to New Orleans so that I could take trips down there all the time and play music.  That’s where the idea of residencies kind of occurred to me, too: A lot of the people that live down there are sort of set in their ways and the Southern attitude is very much a casual one, and you have a lot of older folks who have lived with their music for a long time.  They don’t necessarily tour, and that’s sort of something ideal for me, the idea of a blues man in a chair in a corner.  That’s my idea of success, as opposed to that of my friends who I left reaching for the stars in LA.  I just wanted to play all the time.  So, I did that, and just played all the time, and of course was destitute and ran out of money at some point, and I ended up back here and my brother was painting houses up here and he got me back on my feet a little bit.  That was in 1988, and I’ve been here since, just picking up gigs and playing and just doing my thing.

And you’ve always been in Cambridge and Somerville?

Pretty much, man.  I’ve been in the Davis Square area for 18 years.  It’s just the convenience of it all.

Can you put your creative process into words for us?  How’s songwriting go for Tim Gearan?

There’s no real process.  I’m not one of those writers who sits down and gets a day job and goes to work everyday, but with that being said there’s always a guitar laying around, so if I don’t have anything else in my hands a guitar will be there, usually.  I can just soak up whatever I hear at any point in the day, whether I’m reading the paper or eavesdropping on a conversation or whether it’s my five-year-old daughter and whatever’s coming out of her mouth and running through her mind.

She must be a great source of inspiration for you.

She’s a GREAT source of inspiration!  My wife, too; She’s a social worker and she comes home with all these amazing stories of other people’s lives.  I spent a lot of time on the road in the 80s and 90s, but I’ve kind of settled down since I have a family, so I take it where I can get it, you know?  I got piles of composition notebooks laying around the house, and I just write down whether it’s a whole song coming out at once or little ideas, I fill notebooks with ideas and when I get the time to myself after everyone’s gone to bed I sit down and see what I can collect.  That might happen every day for a week and it might not happen for weeks at a time, it’s totally random.  Listening’s a big part of it: Listening to all my favorite players, listening to my friends’ songs as well as my favorite artists.

Who are some of those favorite artists?  Who would you say influences you?

That’s a really long list (laughs).  I really love, recently, it’s gospel music, that’s been a huge inspiration.  The Staples Singers, Blind Willie Johnson, Lightening Hopkins, a lot of the blues and gospel singers.  I kind of like what people like Robbie Roberston and the Band did with those inspirations, they brought sort of a literary bent to it.  It’s not necessarily a church thing or a religious thing; it’s more of a feel thing where you bring in your own stories.  The poetry that was superimposed on top of old gospel music, you know.  After Bob Dylan came along and sort of added this surreal bent to things, all of the rules were broken and you could take a blues tune and say whatever you wanted with it besides “My baby left me!”  I definitely have a traditional history of country music and gospel music, blues and everything that happened with that stuff after the Beatles came along and broke the rules with those traditions.  I couldn’t begin to list it all! I was just listening to Jeff Foucault before I left the house; I met him through Peter Mulvey.  We both sort of belong to the folk circuit that comes out of this area that’s sort of nationwide.  People whose music hasn’t really been generated so much, you know?  Peter Case is another guy.  All the big iconic figures and all the smaller guys running around making songs, I dig into all of it.

Are there any songs in your catalog that you feel particularly connected to?  I know that it’s kind of like asking to choose between children.  Do you have any songs that you look forward to including in your set every performance?

The new ones! The newest things that I’ve written are always the most fun to play live.  It’s not necessarily that I’m the most attached to them, but they’re the most poignant- it’s the thing that I’m relating to now, so that’s the most important thing to me and you know, that’s what I’m clinging to right now, the most recent feelings I have.  You can’t look at the songs you write without feeling sort of nostalgic, and that’s fine, but only a few of those still really make the cut when I play in front of people anymore.  It’s hard to keep them alive.  I think the really strong ones out of the 150 songs or so I’ve recorded, there’s only a small fraction of them that I still feel sort of make the cut.  Having said that, I have a friend who came down to the show the other night, Jen Kimball, and she’s moving to Ireland for a year, so there are some tunes that I’m like, “Well, I’ve got a friend who’s moving away for awhile.  I know I’ve got a song for you!” it was a song called “Moving Day”, so right now I’m thinking of that one.

You’ve mentioned people that you derive inspiration from.  In terms of local acts, you mentioned that local artists inspire you as well.  Who are some Boston bands or Boston artists that you really enjoy?

Yeah!  I like Dennis Brennan a lot.  He’s just one of those guys that, you know, he’s just a constant source of inspiration.  He never drops the ball, you know?  He sings and plays with everything he has no matter what, no matter where he’s playing or who he’s playing for.  He’s also got that thing I was talking about where he’s got a lot of background and knowledge of the roots of American music, and he superimposes poetry, his own writing, on top of that in a way that I find to be really unique and not too writerly or precious or over the top.  You never really forget the tune of the story when you leave.  I think that a lot of writers spend too much time going off on some literary, whimsical thing where it’s all about them and how many words they can get in.  It’s more an exercise in wit, or something.  With him, he keeps it really simple and yet the wit’s still there and the storyline is still there and the melody, he sings it and it’s like, amen.  That’s what I’m always looking for, you know?  I like the guys who are sort of reinventing the soul thing around town right now.  Eli Reed is doing that; Jesse Dee is doing that.  I think Christian McNeill does that like nobody else does it.  He’s taken that sort of hypnotic soul route that’s just really addictive. I get to play with these guys, you know?  I love writing, but I’m sort of a sideman and I love playing guitar, so I’m lucky to have guys in town that I can just be in the background and just add a little something.

Do you have any favorite venues in Boston?  I’ve seen you at Precinct multiple times and obviously you’ve been doing the residency thing at Toad for awhile…

Toad has definitely been there for me.  I’ve been there every Monday night for fifteen years, almost.  I will disclose now that only last week did I let it be known that I’m gonna stop doing that.  I’m gonna phase out my residency at Toad starting in September, and I’m gonna take that band, the whole Monday night crew, and start a residency or continue the residency I’ve had at Atwood’s every Friday.  I’m gonna try to make that the spot.

Why the change of locale?

It’s mostly due to my own need for upheaval and for change.  It takes me awhile to shake it up, I don’t know (laughs).  That’s a big change for me.  It’s emotional and tough for me to even talk about it because it’s such a new idea, but for various reasons, I think it’s good to leave on a high note and it’s been tough trying to fit everyone who wants to come down on a Monday night in the door at Toad because it’s so small, so finding a place that’s got a bit more room to move and to dance- Atwood’s is a place that’s new, and I feel like I’ve got a future I could build on there and the feeling that I’ve got something new started.  The guys down there, they’re there every week and they’re hands on and at my shows all the time.  They want to make it into a listening room and bring a sound guy in.  They made me an offer I couldn’t refuse as well.   Starting in October, I’ll have the Monday night residency guys down at Atwood’s.  I really can’t say enough good things about my residency at Toad, though.  I felt free to do whatever I wanted because there’s no cover so I didn’t feel any pressure.  It’s always been a place for friends, and I get to play with my best friends down there all the time.  What’s happened in the cultivation of that joint is just irreplaceable, you know?  Down the street is the Lizard Lounge and down the street from there is Club Passim.  Once in awhile the Paradise Rock Club will throw me a gig, I’ll get an opening set there every once in awhile.  I’ve been the “under-the-radar residency guy” for the longest time (laughs).  I don’t know what’s compelled me to do residencies.  I’ve moved around so much as a kid, so maybe I’ve just felt compelled to find a spot and hunker down, you know?

How have these residencies affected you, creatively?  How has your residency at Toad been beneficial to you?

We’re basically a band that never rehearses because we all just get together and play.  We’ve never rehearsed a song in the twenty or so years I’ve been playing with these guys.  We just go to the gig and play the same song every week for a few weeks, and by the end of that few week period of time that song’s basically fleshed it’s way out.  It’s kind of the same way with The Sea Monsters, too; I’ve never rehearsed with those guys and we trust each other on and offstage, too.  I mean, a song’s not rocket science.  It’s based on really simple forms.  We sort of rely on the inspiration of the time and we’re not a slave to sort of definite ideas, which is definitely attractive to me, seeing what happens with that every week.  It’s a little different every time.  There’s this bedrock and a foundation and you’ll see that songs are never the same way twice.

Let’s talk about The Sea Monsters for a little bit.  I noticed that you hear distinct differences between your songs, Jesse Dee’s songs and Christian McNeill’s songs.  During Sea Monsters gigs, do you guys kind of trade off leading when you guys are playing together?

That’s how it works!  It’s just basically a round table and we just go down the line.  Christian is a magnanimous individual, you know?  He’ll always spread the wealth and share his spotlight.  He’s got enough material to make The Sea Monsters all about him down there, but he’s really into the communal vibe that happens there and which I really appreciate.  Since Jesse’s kind of got his own thing and is gonna take off, I’ve got my own thing and I do my own thing, Christian has the opportunity to do his own thing on that night and I don’t want to discourage him from inviting his friends to come down to play.  I would like to play on more of his songs.  I like singin’ with that guy and singin’ on his songs, you know?  I’m happy to throw in my two cents and do my part, but I’m always whispering to him, “It’s your show, man!  Do your thing!”  I feel like he’s the centerpiece and he does something down there that gets everybody going.  Having said that, I want to play with Christian as much as possible.

In terms of the collaborative nature of The Sea Monsters, do you feel that being involved with the project has helped with your writing?  Do you bounce ideas off of Christian and Jesse and the other guys?

I think we bounce ideas off each other whether we like it or not because we play together a lot.  There’s only been a few times, less than I can count on one hand, with Christian [to write], usually late, late, late night, we’ll go back to somebody’s apartment and drink and play and come up with some ideas.  I think the inspiration comes – I noticed that a couple of guys in the band were saying, I’ve got these sort of anthemic ballads I’ve been writing lately, and they’re like “Where’s that coming from?! Your stuff is usually a little more opaque!”  And I’m like, “It’s coming from Christian!”  Christian is all about “Don’t bore us, get to the chorus!”  He’s got a million songs where everybody just sings out and everybody knows what to do, and there’s a quality in that that I definitely think I’ve taken from that experience.  You gotta play your dancing numbers when you play with Christian a lot of the time.  I’ll try doing a country number down there and get the hairy eyeball (laughs).

You had mentioned that your residency at Toad is going to be fading into a transition to Atwood’s.  Where else do you see yourself a couple of months down the road from now?

As far as The Sea Monsters are concerned, that all depends on Christian.  That’s entirely up to him.  He’s the captain of that boat.  As long as they’re doing it and they’ll have me, I’ll show up to play!  With that said, we’ve had a member move down to Brooklyn recently and some other guys from The Sea Monsters may move onto other cities too, who knows.  I mean, Boston has zero industry: It’s a great place to cut your teeth.  It’s a great place if you want to play in great clubs for wonderful people all the time, but it’s not like A&R guys are going to come through the door of the bar you’re playing in any minute and go, “You’re just what we’ve been looking for!”  At this point and this stage in the game that doesn’t really happen anymore anyway, because the playing ground is completely level, but I would understand it if people wanted to shake things up a bit by moving to another commercial level.

Well, you’ve lived in plenty of places and you’ve toured extensively.  How does Boston compare with other cities you’ve lived in or played, and how does the crowd differ here from other cities?

I think it takes a little while to warm up to Boston, but once you do it’s irresistible.  I always felt like the city needs to loosen up a little bit and I always felt like it was part of my job to help it loosen up a little bit, and people can count on us to see music you can bop around to, and Boston afforded me the opportunity to do that.  Coming from the South and having grown up in the North East and having experienced the South and the Midwest, you know, Chicago, and New Orleans, it’s wonderful that you can create something up here that people think of as an anomaly.  What I experienced musically in different cities, that was something that was always there and in the dirt, and it takes a little longer to cultivate that in Boston I think.  I think people will attest to that.  People I know who have come from out of town and decided to stay here, people who came up after the flood in New Orleans and decided to stay here, they’ve said, “Yeah, it takes a little while.”  There’s rigidity to Boston that you don’t find in New Orleans or Chicago, where there it’s automatic.  I’m not ragging on Boston, I obviously have an affinity for it and I love it here, and there’s a place, you just kind of have to seek it out here.  You have to find the best-kept secrets.  I’m not quite sure why it’s taken so long for certain acts to be covered in Boston.

I’m personally shocked that The Sea Monsters have been written up yet, frankly.

There’s a game to be played in this town and we don’t play it, you know?  The game is to get your stuff in the right hands.  People like Christian and me are sort of bullheaded about that and also not, um, savvy (laughs).  To be perfectly honest, we’re not success-driven; we’re just really here to play for the moment and I just look forward to the next time we do that.  Having said that, it can be frustrating when you know that you have something there and the people who are in charge of the media aren’t paying attention as they should be.  You sound like your tooting your own horn when you start to talk like this, but after twenty years you don’t –

[Tim’s five-year-old, Maggie, comes bounding in.  BOUNDING.]

Sorry ‘bout that.  This is another residency I’ve been doing for about four years now, here at The Burren.  It’s fun because it’s early and my daughter gets to come down and sing with the band and stuff.

Your daughter will come up and sing with you!?

Absolutely!

That’s great.  How has fatherhood directly affected you as a musician?  You mentioned that your family has had a significant impact on how you write.

You definitely get more of a sense of the bigger picture.  You get out of that little selfish bubble.  You really don’t have to compromise at all, ever.  I’ve always been able to somehow squeak out a living playing music and I’ve only had to deal with my own needs, really, and so this was the best kind of shock I could ever ask for to make you look outside that and see more of the future.  You start taking better care of yourself because you want to be there, you know?

If you live anywhere in the Union Square/Inman Square/Porter/Davis/Harvard/Central area, chances are you’ve seen a flyer or two plastered in store windows and on various telephone poles promoting the residency of The Rex Complex at Precinct.  These posters, which have featured such bizarre images as drummer Jeremy Gustin and lead vocalist/xylophone/jug playing maven Rex Hussman lounging in snowbanks in their underpants, flailing around in overalls, and most recently featuring a Rorschach-type print in the shape of both their profiles, are incredibly accurate visual representations of this eccentric, eclectic pairing.

After meeting at Berklee, the two classically trained musicians ventured off to Ghana together and then found themselves back in Somerville playing a residency at the Precint Bar in Union Square a few years later.  Rex brought his Ghanian xylophone-type instrument called a gyil with him, and the sounds of this unique contribution to the band, paired with the vivacious showmanship and musical skill of the band’s other members, makes The Rex Complex an out-of-the-ordinary act to watch.  Sadly, we’re losing the boys to Brooklyn soon enough, but they’re celebrating the release of their second record Saturday, August 29th at The Lizard Lounge.  If you make it out, who knows?  You may even get to see a shirtless Rex push over a member of the audience,  or something.

-Hilary Hughes

So, fellas, give us a quick bio.  How did the Rex Complex come to be?

Jeremy: We met through school.  Rex is from Georgia and came up to Boston for school; I’m from around here.

Rex: Jeremy is very “to-the-point.”

Which Boston school did you guys attend?

J: Berklee.  Rex was the only person at Berklee who I actually liked playing music with, so he kind of stood out.

R: We had an arranging class together with a loveable sleezeball.

J: I was mostly playing in a lot of different bands as a drummer and Rex started writing songs, so I started playing with his project.  This is after we went to Ghana together for a while to study African music, so-

You really just glossed over that.

R: He’s a glossy guy.

J: Well, if I’m gonna do a quick bio-! We went to Ghana, we came back, Rex started writing his own songs which would eventually lead to the Rex Complex, and then I got in on the songwriting as well, and that’s when it became more than just a collaborative project.  It’s been developing and changing a lot over the last year or two.

R: For me, it was like, basically experimenting with oh, I’d say Americana music using this baliphone I got in Ghana, that’s the big xylophone thing, and banjo and upright bass, and I was writing songs, just kind of trying to use it as a springboard for experimenting with I don’t know, five or six songs written and Jeremy started collaborating and throwing songs in there and now it’s something completely different.

J: Yeah, the Americana/Bluegrass thing? You can’t really hear it anymore, but that’s where [the Rex Complex] started.

R: Not really.

Well, if you don’t hear Americana/Bluegrass, what do you hear?

R: We were just talking about this the other day.

J: Joyful noise.

R: Joyful noise! Yeah!  Wait, isn’t that in a spiritual?  It’s much more loud and raw and –

J: Primal? (Laughs)

R: Yeah, than it was.

J: There’s a lot of improvisation in the music and in the full spectrum, like some of the stuff we do is fully improvised and some of it’s incredibly arranged, and then there’s a whole lot of stuff in between.

R: And improvised can mean anything from like, making up lyrics and words or a story in the middle of a song or Jeremy and I sort of doing yelling back and forth at each other until we find something that works rhythmically.

J: We play with some great improvisers, too, like Lyle Brewer.

R: It’s a combination of definitely like, improvising and, yeah, I don’t know man, fuck. (Laughs)

J: Sometimes we sound like we’re going to fall apart, like controlled chaos a little bit. I think it does get really loud and aggressive and crazy and experimental, but I think we do that in a way that expresses joy and like, love, as opposed to a lot of music that has that aggressive loud thing that expresses more like, angst and maybe testosterone or anger or something like that.  We don’t have any of that stuff.

R: No testosterone.

Yeah, you do play drums with a maraca sometimes, which is confusing to me…

J: Why?

…. I don’t know.

R: And he taped his snare drum to his bass drum!

J: And I stack my cymbals, and I play with pots and pans, too.  Playing drums is so fun because when you hit anything it makes a sound.

R: We like finding new songs with old instruments, too, like instruments that have been already used.  We like to try to find ways to make things sound new.

J: One of the things that excite me the most about music is sound.  Although melody and harmony are so incredibly important and integral to music, there’s no new melody or new harmony or new notes or anything like that, but there are still so many new sounds that haven’t been used or combined together, so a lot of the stuff that excites me the most is when I hear combinations that I haven’t heard before, sonically.  Rex and I are always exploring new ways to make things sound different still using bass, drums, guitar, the normal sounds that you’d hear in a rock band.  We do use the xylophone and a glockenspiel and Rex plays an accordion…

R: I guess for me also the Rex Complex has become a lot of movement. I like dancing a lot and getting crazy.

J: Are you gonna take off your shirt today?

R: … No.

J: (Laughs) Yeah, that’s a new part of the show to look out for.

(Jessie giggles.)

R: He, like, suppressed my balls about that.

Did this happen once, or…?

R: I tried it once on ScatTV.

J: It was great!

R: Jeremy loved it.  I have one person who loved it.  I had a fun time.  I loved it too.

J: You looked great.

R: Thanks, Jeremy.  (Reaches out to Jeremy, fondly.)

Let’s talk about songs you’ve done with The Rex Complex.  Do you have favorites?

(Jeremy makes a lot of popping/farting noises with his mouth.)

…Um…

J: That’s the name of our new song.  (Makes the damn noises again.)

R: That’s the one! (Rex makes the crazy poppy farty noises, too.)  Well, definitely the last song, which has been labeled “Dirty Eyeballs of Lust.”

J: That’s a complete free improv.  I think that song inspires a lot of stuff.  It’s always new, and it affects how we play in general with our writing.  There’s a certain kind of freedom, this primal, cave man thing-

R: It’s kind of a fuck-all thing, you know?

J: -It kind of creeps into other stuff we do.

R: It’s the freedom to be an asshole or do whatever you wanna do and it’s no rules.  I can be an asshole if I wanna be an asshole.

J: You did push that person over once.

R: Well, that’s ‘cause she was grindin’ on me.

….Whaaaat?

R: She was slobbering on my face!  The only way to get her off of me was to lay my body into it, and she kinda hit the wall…. (Jeremy cracks up; Rex follows suit.)

J: If you stick around you may see her come in, she always shows up and gets wasted.

R: When I say being an asshole, I mean there’s no rules, there’s no format or structure; I like being able to do whatever I wanna do and try anything, which maybe rolling on the floor or like, I don’t know! Just whatever I feel!  It’s like, having fun, just to see what happens.

And you’re saying you can do that, especially, when you’re performing “Dirty Eyeballs of Lust”?

J: That’s the extreme version.  We do that in all our songs to some degree, but in “Dirty Eyeballs of Lust” especially.

If your style is so improvisational, what keeps that song that song?

J: There are some motifs that sometimes happen and sometimes don’t happen, but there IS a chorus which we usually do maybe once, at least once.

R: An example of a motif would be, “I got dirty eyeballs o’ lust! I got dirty eyeballs o’ crust! [Jeremy comes in] You can take it from me if you really wanna stay it’s a whole lot o’ sleepin’ with dust!”  That’s a motif.

J: There’s also one about eating sandwiches, but that one doesn’t always happen.  “Can’t wait to get home to eat that… Can’t wait to get home to eat that… Can’t wait to get home to eat that can’t wait to get home to eat that EAT THAT SANDWICH!”  That’s a motif, too.

J: There are usually some new ones every week.

R: We also have a song called “Picking Up Shit” which is a song about a dog walking job I had.  It’s also about anybody… everybody… (Cracks up.  Jeremy, again, follows suit.)

What?! Did we miss something, here?

J: It’s metaphorical.  We all pick up dog shit. (Laughs)

In terms of going into the studio, how does that process change from when you guys are writing to when you’re playing live? Is it just the two of you in the studio?

J: The next record we make is going to be a different experience.  We have a new record coming out on August 29, and how we did this one was very live and arranged so we were really prepared and knew what we were gonna do.  We didn’t do “Dirty Eyeballs of Lust.”  The songs that we had were very arranged in parts.

R: We were trying to capture the live sound as much as we possibly could.  We recorded most of the songs and all the parts live, so the actual performances were done altogether, mostly.  Then, we did go back and throw some extra things in there.

J: As far as the improvising it was more arranged, but we still wanted to do it live.

R: We recorded it in a schoolhouse in the woods of the Berkshires with a fireplace and it was all wood, and it was just a great experience and it was one of the best days of my life.  It was so fun.

J: And we recorded for 18 hours straight.

R: We recorded for 18 hours straight the first day, and then we slept for six hours. I slept in the same bed as Jeremy.  It wasn’t… I mean, it was fun.  It was a lot of fun. (Rex cackles.)

J: We made love. (Jeremy guffaws.)

R: I mean, now you know where all the inspiration comes from.

So, who was the big spoon?

R: Is the big spoon the one that wraps around the outside?

J: I would be the big spoon.

R: Oh, shit.  Does that mean taking and giving, basically?

Rex, we’re trying to keep this as PG-13 as possible.

R: I mean taking and giving can just mean sharing, really!

J: The whole nature of the collaboration is like a give and take, really. (Jessie giggles.)

R: I think we both give and take.  We both give and take a lot, at a time.  Especially in recording sessions, because somebody wants theirs at some point.

(Jeremy Cracks. The. Hell. Up.)

So, when it comes to recording with The Rex Complex, is it just you two in the studio?

J: No, we have a bass player and a guitar player, too. There’s a couple of different bass players we work with and a couple of different guitar players.  Two of them are moving with us to New York in September.

R: Literally, we’re all getting a place in Bushwick in Brooklyn.

Hey, now you can go to Junior’s all the time!

R: Oh, the cheesecake! Yes! Don’t they also have really good barbeque chicken?  I think I offended someone at Junior’s once with the way I was eating my chicken.

J: You do eat a little funny.

Wait, what?  How does Rex eat, Jeremy?

R: I’ll tell you what happened at Junior’s.  Basically, when I eat chicken, I have to pick up the whole thing and it’s really like, you have to just go for it.  I guess the person was a vegetarian who was eating with me, and they said the chicken was hanging from my mouth.  I was just enjoying the chicken, you know?

J: Rex gets really into it when he’s hungry, but he keeps talking to everyone, so there’s food hanging out of his mouth.  He can’t breathe out of his mouth because his mouth is so full, and his nose is really little, he has little nostrils-

R: I can’t breathe out of my nose very well.

J: – And he’s like, blowing in and out of his nose really hard.

R: A doctor told me that I have tiny, crooked nasal passageways.

J: You really hear the breathing in the nose, in and out, and when the mouth is full…

R: The chicken has to come in and out as well.

(Jeremy dies laughing.  Aaaaagain.)

Spooning in the Berkshires, Rex inhaling chicken, Brooklyn, you’re moving in September… Wow.  In terms of people you also play with, are there any guests artists in addition to the rest of the band that come in and perform with you?

J: Dana Colley’s performed with us, and Jimmy Ryan, Alex Spiegelman… well, he plays with everybody.  Mostly, we’re a core group that just switches up the bass and guitar players with a couple of different people.  Every once in awhile we’ll have someone sit in with a horn.

So, why are you moving to New York?

J: I feel like New York has more of a niche that we can play in.  I mean, Boston is awesome: It’s a small scene and we’ve had a hard time fitting into it in a good way.  Part of it is that it’s a small scene and part of it’s our sound.  The smaller venues, also, it’s hard to play a gig when a Red Sox game is on.  Sports are competition for musicians here.  If there’s a Sox game or a Pats game, you get fucked because people won’t come out, or they’ll be watching the TV in the bar and not you.  Like we’ll be playing and people will cheer and we’ll look up and be like “Oh, Papi hit a home run, that’s not for us.”  There’s less of that in New York because there’s so much more of a music scene.

R: I’m excited to move to a new city, too, because I’ve been living in Boston for about nine or ten years now.  I gotta switch it up.  I’ve always wanted to try living in New York and I feel like I gotta try it now.

Well, before you leave, I guess let’s talk about what you love about Boston as opposed to why you’re leaving for New York.  What do you love about the Boston music scene?

J: I love the Boston music scene dearly and I play with a shitload of bands here.  Actually, instead of saying the Boston music scene, I’d say the Cambridge and Somerville music scene because it’s very different.

R: That’s a good point.

J: It’s like this roots rock kind of base thing that goes out of that, and it’s so tight-knit, it’s like a family.  A lot of the bands are intermingled and very incestuous, in a great way.

R: You get the best breeds when you- well, actually, that’s not true.  I guess incest is not mixing the breeds.  I think it keeps it in the family.

Yeah, incest is a game the whole family can play.

J: (Laughs) Yeah, I’m worried that I won’t feel that in New York too much.  I’m going to miss the small scene of Boston, and I’m going to miss the sense of community in Union Square in Somerville especially.

R: Boston is so compact and tight.  There’s so much going on within a tight space.  It’s like… um… I’m sure that’s going to be overwhelming as hell to try to establish a community in a city the size of New York.  Here, it didn’t take us very long to feel like we were a part of the community in Somerville.

J: After living in Boston for a few years you can figure out what bands to follow and what clubs to go to if you want to make music.  In New York, it’s not, it’s like a life force and it’s constantly changing.

R: The Rex Complex got its start because Robert Elliot who owned Tirninogue happened to love music and he was like, “Yeah, come in and play!” I asked him if I could play because I had been hanging out there, and Jeremy had been playing there, and that was like our family stage.  He just let us come in there and try it out.  I don’t know how easy that would be in New York.

J: As far as the scene in Cambridge and Somerville, when I got back from West Africa I moved to Somerville not knowing anyone and randomly got into Tirninogue and that was like the epicenter of the Somerville music community.  Because of that gig on a Thursday night I started playing that bar four or five nights a week and that’s how I got involved with other musicians.

R: Do you guys know Tirnanog?

No.

R: It means “everlasting youth”… and now it’s over!  Ain’t that… that’s irony, right there.  That kind of makes me sad.

J: People would hang out there ‘til four, six in the morning playing music during the week.

R: Robert books now at Precinct, which is where our residency is.  Tirninogue was a family of people who loved to play there and love to go there.  It’s where Bull McCabe’s is, now.  Robert’s the one who gave us our start, and we’ve been playing at Precinct every week for a year and a half now.

J: It’s a different spirit at Precinct and it’s great, but Tirnanog, it did die.  It was great, now it’s gone.

R: … That’s pretty fucking depressing.

Can we talk about your experience in West Africa?  I feel like that’s a really important part of your story.

R: Let me give you a little footnote about our experience in West Africa: In terms of the Rex Complex, I feel sometimes that we tend to, I don’t know, I feel like the shows and the music we’re producing has very little to do with African music even though we’re using an African instrument and we went to Ghana for three months.  It definitely grew from that, and it still, there’s a lot of African influence in what we listen to, but I wouldn’t label the Rex Complex as a world music band.  People tend to focus on the xylophone.

J: The reason why the xylophone works is because it’s so awesome!  The sound of this instrument is so beautiful and unique; it has this raspy distortion.  It’s called a gyil.  Anyways, with Ghana, I was finishing up school and I decided to go away and I thought I would go to Australia and live with Aborigines.  I went on Google and listened to some Aboriginal drumming and realized it wasn’t really for me, even though I’m fascinated with Australia’s Aboriginal art and culture.  So I was like, “Where else in the world can I go to study drumming?”  The next logical choice was West Africa.  I never studied West African drumming, but I had a connection to it at Berklee through a professor there, and I knew he had gone to Ghana, so I looked it up and it was just one of those things that clicked.  Rex was one of my closest friends at the time and I told him I was going, and he had actually studied with this professor, so he had been thinking about going to Ghana anyways.

R: I had been thinking of going to Ghana for quite awhile.  Even before Berklee I had gone to school in West Virginia for a little while and I was talking to an old piano teacher who knew someone who taught in this village in Ghana and she recommended I studied there.  So, even before I went to Berklee I knew I wanted to go to Ghana, it had always been on my mind.  I went there, at Berklee, I met Joe Galiota, this guy who teaches Ghanean music, and it kind of fell into place.  We just happened to be free at the same time and we were really good friends and we both wanted to take a trip so we went!  That’s how we got to Ghana.

J: That’s how we figured out how to go together.  We didn’t go with a program.  We went to a music school there, but we both traveled around somewhat like a “Choose Your Own Adventure” book.  We went to different villages, and then we were doing our own things in different parts of the country.  We went around and studied all this different music.

R: I went up to the north of Ghana and that’s where I started studying the gyil, and I traveled across Ghana with it on top of buses and vans.

Wow.  That’s a big piece of equipment to lug across the whole country.

R: Yeah, it was tough to carry it back.  I had to find a huge cardboard box in the middle of the capital city that would fit the xylophone, and looking for a box took like, four hours.  I had a guy take me to the cardboard box pile, and we picked it up, and I walked it to the post office and shipped it back here and it made it in one piece.  It was meant to be. [Jeremy laughs.]

J: There were times in Ghana where we’d hear the xylophone being played, and Rex and I would be like, “If this xylophone would be a back beat to a song, that’d be so cool!  Think of a riff that would sound good with that xylophone.”  So, there was something that was starting to simmer in the back of our heads about trying to fuse western stuff with it.

What was the hardest part about your trip to Ghana?  Were there any difficult aspects of your trip?

J: It was like, the best year of my life!  Well, having malaria kind of sucked.  Rex took pictures of me shitting and puking.

R: I just wanted to document the trip!

J: There were times sometimes when I would travel where there would be incredibly uncomfortable, long bus rides, but like, I wouldn’t say …. That trip to me was just beautiful and perfect in every way.

R: Oh boy. (Laughs)

What?

R: I was thinking about the shitting and the puking.

J: Yeah, that was wild. (Laughs)

R: For me, the most difficult thing was definitely getting deep into situations where you think you know what you’re doing and you really have no fuckin’ clue.  We were living on the coast, and one day, there were a bunch of kids who were body surfing.  They were playing with body boards-

J: Naked!

R: -They were surfing naked!  They were body surfing with these planks of wood that came from these fishing boats, and they had nails sticking out of them, and whatever, they were surfing with them anyway.

J: These waves were HUGE.

R: No, man, I don’t think they were that big.  They were a good size.  Anyway, I asked a kid if I could try his body board out, this piece of wood, and I started body boarding, and then before I knew it I caught this really big wave and it ended up plowing me straight down into the ocean floor and I wound up on top of the plank with the force of the wave propelling me down into it so the plank went straight up into my ribcage and I knew I was FUCKED.  I rose up, and I had a huge, perfect triangle of black and blood already black from the bruise, probably the size of a grapefruit but in a triangle shape, if that makes sense.  The kids saw it and freaked the fuck out and kept apologizing and they kept repeating “Sorry!  Sorry!  Sorry!” And, in fact, I broke the kid’s body board in HALF, so I’M like, “I’M sorry! I’M sorry!” And we were all saying I’m sorry.  I thought I broke a fuckin’ rib, and there was no where to go, I was like, “I have a broken rib and a bloody fuckin’ triangle on my chest.”  That was scary!

J: I had wounds in my foot and in a tropical climate it’s really hard for cuts to heal, so, my foot got really bad and I couldn’t get amoxicillin.  We were studying in this one village with a bunch of Liberian refugees, and there was this one woman there who called herself Mama Africa, and she was one of the most amazing women I’ve ever met in my life.

R: She was like the female George Clinton… from Liberia.

J: She was unbelievable.  Anyway, we’re hanging out with her and her daughters, and they were teaching us music.  But my foot was fucked, and there was no real hospital or even bandaids, so all she had to help was nail polish remover-

(Hil gasps in horror.  Jessie looks like she’s gonna puke.)

Did you SCREAM?!

R: She was like, “This’ll do the trick!”  He was trying not to scream so hard.

J: She was LOVIN’ it.

R: She was like, “Shut up, you little pansy!” I was laughing so fuckin’ hard.

J: It was incredibly painful but it did disinfect it.

R: But Jeremy got me back when I had the little triangle of blood, because I had to disinfect that, and I went in a bar, and supposedly this guy was like a medicine man, and I took off my shirt and had this big black triangle on me, and this guy was like, “Oh my God!  I have to cure you!  Come here!”  He pulled out this bottle of this pure alcohol with some kind of weed living in the bottle, and he was like, “This is … something … in the name of Christ, this is going to help you!”

J: There’s a lot of Jesus over there.

R: Yeah, there’s a lot of Jesus stuff.  And I was like, “Okay, so what are you gonna do?”  Before I knew it, he was pouring alcohol on my wound and rubbing it vigorously with a rag in the name of Jesus Christ.  (Jeremy cracks up) And Jeremy was laughing his ass off.

You both seem to take such pleasure in each other’s pain.

J: We do.

R: We do!

So… that was Ghana… lots and lots of blood, music and disinfection.

R: It was the most amazing three months of my life.

Back to Boston: What are your favorite venues?

R: Lizard Lounge!  The Lizard Lounge is great.

J: I have a great time at Toad, too, even though it’s small.  Those are bars that aren’t sports bars: They’re full of people who are there because they want to listen to music and be out.

R: Precinct is one of my favorite bars now because there is no television.  If I were to compare Precinct to other bars in Boston, it fucking kicks a lot of ass because the way Robert sets it up is there’s no television.  The front bar is the sports bar, the back bar is the music bar and that’s where it all happens.

J: I love it here, I play here all the time, but I prefer Lizard in general because the sound there is amazing.

R: If, you know, they put a sound system in at Precinct and a sound guy, this could be the Lizard Lounge of Somerville.  You can print that shit! (Laughs)

Who would you say are the musical influences of The Rex Complex?

R: Hmmmm!  Do you want to go first?

J: I don’t care.  Do you want me to go first?

R: I’m a slow thinker. Jeremy’s a quick thinker.  I can tell you a lot of influence comes from me right now is stuff like, oh boy, here we go, oh, Deerhoof, no, this is kind of like, now, I mean, it ranges from anything from Outkast to Iggy Pop to Deerhoof.  I guess, the thing is is like I’m influenced by everything, but what comes out in the Rex Complex specifically is kind of like, more the band’s that are for me lately are expressing themselves through movement, like, I don’t know how to explain it to be honest, but I feel like there’s a lot involved in action and dancing and movement and shouting and yelling.

So, more performance based music as opposed to recording based.

R: Definitely.  I’m definitely in “letting loose” mode. Iggy Pop I guess would be somebody.  And Richard Pryor.  He’s definitely someone who’s all about action and experimentation and making the audience respond.  I like to push against the audience.

J: Sometimes literally. (Laughs)

R: We’re in a scene right now where I know we don’t get pushed back very much, but I know that we will, and I’m looking forward to that.  Yeah.

What do you mean, “pushed back”?

R: Like, more physical contact.  We’ve been playing venues like Toad and once again, getting back to the joyous noise, it’s not aggressive or painful, there was a guy who came up to me at Toad drunk and fucked up out of his mind, he came up to me smiling and dancing and he couldn’t stand up, so I grabbed him and we started dancing around, and before I knew it motherfucker fucked up two tables and fell on his back and we just kept going.

J: He was wonderful.

R: We got another incident at the Plough and Stars, a friend of mine I work with.  She used to go crazy and she used to come out.  We were running up and down at the Plough and Stars and she was writhing like a snake on the floor and I accidentally kneed her in the face, and I went down to see if she was okay and touched her on the forehead, and she raised up on her knees and screamed.  I felt like a Baptist preacher who was exorcising demons from some fucked up person.  I only say that because I grew up in the South and have seen Baptist preachers who think they can exorcise demons.  (Jeremy craaacks up. Again.)  It was a fucked up situation! (Laughs hysterically).

So do you want your performances to be more along those lines?

R: I don’t know.  I like when everyone’s included in the picture and the performance.  It’s not just “here’s us, here’s them”; I like us to cross and intermingle.  A lot of times you have to physically go out there and do that.  I think we kind of came up in a different scene that’s not into that or used to that, and maybe that’s kind of good for me because it forces me to push harder.

Well, what instrument did you play before you acquired the gyil?

R: Piano.

Was that an easy transition, from piano to massive wooden xylophone?

R: in some ways it was a liberating switch because I was, in a lot of ways, I took myself too seriously on piano because it was “my instrument”, whereas with xylophone I was just fuckin’ around, and because of that I had more freedom, I felt more freedom to experiment, and that is a big reason… I went sun up to sun down at this master of the gyil’s place, and he kicked my ass every day for a whole month, but I’m trying to try it into the question you asked me.

So, Jeremy, what’re your influences, to bring it back?

J: Starting out, I come from a family of classical musicians and coming from that.  That was a big part of my life.

Were you a classical drummer, then?

J: No, I played oboe for a long time.  It was a big part of my life.

R: You traveled to Italy!

J: And then I found drums, my own kind of thing, it’s what I wanted, I’m self-taught and was all about improvisation and it changed my life.  Eight, ninth, tenth grade, that was when I really started jamming out in my basement with my friends.  The band that I probably got obsessed with was Levon Helm, he’s a drummer that changed my life.  Aphex Twin at the time, yeah, those were very significant, and then Miles Davis and John Coltrane were like pillars for me, those were very significant years in my development.  Besides that, I was really into Sex Mob and a lot of other electronic stuff, Em Tobin, Square Pusher… I saw Em Tobin live here; he was the shit.  As I’ve progressed and grown older –

R: He’s an old wise man.

J: I’ve kind of figured out everything about life at this point and I could tell you what the meaning of life is but I’ll let you figure it out for yourself. (Laughs)

What’re you listening to right now?

J: Mikachu kicks my ASS.

R: OH!  MIKACHU!  Yeah!

J: Ponytail and Mikachu are two bands with female singers.  Interesting connection.  They have this joy noise thing that’s loud and aggressive and fantastic and crazy and controlled and the emotions I get from that are love and joy, and that immediately translates to me.  I get sick of hearing angst and anger and testosterone-driven music, but I do like aggressive music, so it’s awesome to see new bands playing with that, and that’s what we’re playing with.

R: Mmmhmm! Very good Jeremy.  That’s very articulate of you.

(Jeremy cackles.)

R: Why are you cackling? I like how he’s going over the whole picture.  That’s good.  I like how you did that.

You did a good job too, Rex.

R: Thank you.

Any final thoughts, Rex?

R: Final thoughts?  Let us all enjoy ourselves and hold hands and look at the candlelight flickering amongst our faces.  This has been a joyous evening.  I’d like to thank whatever it is that brought us together-

J: He’s a preacher’s son.

R: I feel the power coursing through my blood.

J: … Amen?

R: “Amen” is an exclamation.  It’s a way of saying, “Yes!”  It’s a way of saying “I feel good!” It’s a way of saying “I WANT TO SQUEEZE YOU.”

J: Oh!  I didn’t know THAT.

R: It’s a way of saying, “I want to FEEL you!”  It’s a way of saying “I want to drink my water until I quench my thirst!” It’s a way of saying that that fire flickers the way the fire flickers within my vein!  It’s a way of saying, “I want to keep on going and having a good time!” Amen.

J: Amen!

…Amen…?

J: That’s a good finale, I think.

Back in June, I found myself sitting underneath the vast ceiling of the Armory Center of the Arts in Somerville completely and utterly intoxicated with the swells and soaring of Nicole Nelson and Dwight Richter’s voices.  As Dwight and Nicole played to the sounds of each other’s resounding heartbeats during the first Somerville Jazz & Blues Festival, I and the rest of the audience could sense that the connection between the dynamic “rock and soul” duo was one that can only exist between two people whose incredible talents are matched by their deep appreciation, creatively and affectionately, for each other.  Dwight and Nicole have been playing with each other for years, but the couple onstage and off haven’t always been rocking out to the minimalist drive behind their guitar and tambourine driven side by side: Both musicians met while holding residencies at various jazz and blues bars in Boston, and both credit Boston as being the city in which they honed their craft and built their fan base.

Since moving to New York a few years ago and exploring the multitude of musical opportunities provided by Manhattan and the surrounding boroughs, Dwight and Nicole have recently left the Big Apple for Boston (Brookline, to be precise) in order to record a follow-up to 2007’s self-titled album.  They’ve been playing some of their favorite haunts in the city throughout the summer as well, including Precinct, the Lizard Lounge and numerous festivals and venues along the North Shore while billing with assorted artists/friends in the area including Jesse Dee, the Mieka Canon and the Sea Monsters.  With tambourine and Flying-V guitar in hand, Dwight and Nicole will continue to appease their fans from their stomping ground until the finishing touches are put on their forthcoming disc, so be sure to catch them in action at the most intimate acoustic, blues and jazz spots in Somerville and Cambridge while you can.

-Hilary Hughes

OPENING ACT: DWIGHT AND NICOLE AND THE TEAPARTY TEN

What’s your favorite breakfast cereal?

Dwight: Honey Smax, or Large Frosted Mini Wheats.

Nicole: Captain Crunch with Crunchberries.

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

N: Mouth.

D: Yeah, Mouth.  I like the Cyndi Lauper song from that movie.

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

D: Toaster oven.

N: I’d be a standing mixer.  Those things are AWESOME.

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?

D: Animal!

N: I don’t know! I love Miss Piggy.  She was probably the first Muppet I wanted to be as a kid.  I love them all, though.

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?

N: Some big ridiculous rainbow and clouds.  Something astral.  I have a tattoo with stars already.

D: I’d probably have “Nicole” on my neck or something.

N: [Gasps] We’re getting you drunk!  Drink up!  (Laughs)

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

N: Sumo wrestler.  I like the thong. (Laughs)

D: Sumo wrestler.  The rodeo clowns are brave, but…

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

N: Oh, they’re all good!  I’ve never met a cheese I don’t like.  I’d be Brie.

D: Pepperjack.

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

N: I would definitely be mutton chops.

D: I’d probably be a goatee, I wear one every once in awhile.  Not a great answer, either.

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

N: “Borderline” by Madonna!

D: “Hungry Heart”, by Bruce Springsteen.

What’s your favorite word?

N: Raw.

D: Breathing.  Probably breathing, right now.

THE MAIN EVENT: THE DWIGHT AND NICOLE TPB INTERVIEW

So, tell us the back-story of Dwight and Nicole.

Dwight: All right!  We lived in Boston.  I lived here for four years and Nicole lived here for about the same around nine years ago, and we each had bands in town, the Dwight Richards Band and the Nicole Nelson Band, and we each had a residency here.  Her’s was at the Times Pub.

Nicole: I played a lot of blues; he played a lot of original stuff.  I played mostly blues; it was a blues jam.  He used to come and sit in on my shows, and some of the people who were here tonight, like John Aruda, he’d come down a lot.  Afterwards there were lots of dance parties in the streets outside of the Cantab [Lounge] and after-parties. (Laughs)

D: I was working construction at the time, and then I’d get off a work gig, then we’d go see her, we’d eat dinner and then we’d go to my gig later.  The first time we sang together was on a tune called “Move Right” which I wrote ages ago, she came up and sang with me, and we just always had a really good chemistry together.

N: Yeah, it’s very familial.  He felt like a long-lost boy from kindergarten and we loved each other and lost each other and found each other again.  It’s a really beautiful thing.  We both moved to New York around the same time and we started playing a little bit together, but mostly we each had our own gigs.  We’d just sit in, because it was like, “Oh! Dwight from Boston’s here!  Get up and sing with me!” Or I’d get up and sing with him, and then that turned into a thing.  People were like, “Do you have a CD of the two of you, together? Because these harmonies…” and we were like “Oh, no! But you can buy each of our albums-“ and they were like “Wait. No.”

Liiiike maybe something should happen.

N: (laughs) Yeah!

D: So, we’re in Brooklyn where she grew up, incidentally, and I grew up in Asbury Park, New Jersey, and we were low on money, so we decided to book a few shows and we got some gigs as a duo, and Nicole’s on the tambourine –

N: -I had never played tambourine before-

D: -And it just caught on.  We both feel the beat the same way.  We both sort of- I guess you’d say we compliment each other, and we just had a thing that really took on.

N: It did.

D: We recorded an EP at Club 39 in Sudbury a few years ago.

N: One day we just went in and played the songs, and we just sat down and made a five song CD in five hours.   We kind of just had to talk what we got, but we wanted to make something really beautiful.  We got lucky.  Phil, who played guitar tonight, he has a beautiful studio in Brookline and it’s called Rear Window Studio and it’s UNBELIEVABLE.  So, he was just like, “Come stay at my house and record.”

D: I think he recorded Godsmack’s record.  Phil basically dug a pit in his basement and the ceilings are twenty feet high, almost 10,000 pounds suspended by spring, so when music hits it the whole room gives.

N: We’re thinking of doing our record release at the Somerville Theatre, because we’ve got a good thing going in Somerville, but this place [the Armory] is awesome!

D: Yeah, it’s a very cool room.

N: So, yeah, that’s how we got our thing together.  Just sort of organically playing duos.

D: I’d play guitar and she’d play tambourine and we’ve developed this really cool thing as a duo, and now we’re gonna go and play with a band, a larger group.

N: Not to sound strange, but performing is a very spiritual thing for me.  It feeds me.  That conversation between the audience and us is this thing that bounces back and forth.

You can absolutely say that.  And I’m gonna blow up your spot a little bit: When we were watching you earlier, we were like, “That girl can work a tambourine like nobody we’ve ever seen before!”  The connection between you two was very strong in the sense that you were playing to her heartbeat.  That absolutely comes across to your audience.

D: We’ve been friends for about ten years and we’ve been together for almost five, and it’s so nice to be able to reaffirm that onstage a lot.  It’s cool to be able to go onstage and do our thing.

Can you take us through the creative process behind Dwight and Nicole’s music?

D: We both bring songs to the table, so it’s very collaborative.

N: I have to be in a clear-minded state in order to be creative.  When things get jumbled because of stress or confusion, I have to try to clear my head in order to feel that thing where you’re focused and creative.  It’s not easy for me at all.  I’m always critical of what’s around me.  I want it to be perfect and I want it to be very precise, I want it to have that great point, so I tend to throw things out before they’re done.  He’s the complete opposite; he’s like, “Keep going! Keep going!” and I’ll be working on a song all day, and he’s like “Work on it all year! It’s a rough draft, keep drafting!”  He’s constantly writing and coming up with ideas and riffs and tunes.  For me, it’s always been hard but it’s getting easier and I’m learning my triggers.  I know how to just clear my mind and go for a walk and sit and do that kind of thing so I can be creative.  Dwight has taught me how to get through all that stuff.

D: Thank you!  Going back ten years the Aruda brothers and I had a group that would go around town playing all over the place and that’s actually how those guys got into the original scene.  We built in a big following.  So Johnston, who plays with Club D’Elf, we released two records together, and I got going with the creative stuff with that project and just kept up with that.  This project is so cool because we’re together, she can write songs, and I can write songs, and I can talk to …. So, yeah, this thing is like a, we have a creative house that we can bring stuff into and write stuff together and do whatever, and it’s like, all under our little roof and it’s cool, you know?  The original music thing, writing tunes has always been my passion, it’s my thing, and then with her, we’re doing it.  It’s really cool.  We’re very lucky to be where we are right now.

N: And he can rap, too! (Laughs) He can freestyle.  Every little thing he can pull inspiration from!  He can start talking about your scarf and your eyes and he can turn everything into a rhyme.

Can you give us one about those Donutties on the table over there, on the spot?

D: No!  I wish I… if I ate all of those I’d have a heart attack with that round one, in a black stack of, lovely powdered sugar treats, what would be great with a whole table of eats, would be luscious donutties, perhaps some ice cream and cereal, too, but more than anything, I’d like to share… a donuttie with you.

That was great.

D: See, it’s just things to make her laugh and make our life fun.  It’s just funny ridiculousness.  So, yeah, we like to write songs.  Our influences would be EVERYTHING.  We love Michael Jackson, we love Dolly Parton, we love the Beach Boys, we love Van Halen, we love Nirvana, Black Sabbath, B.B. King, Patsy Cline, Merle Travis, Ricky Lee Jones, Solomon Burke, Sam Cooke, Jimmy Smith, Bill Hailley and the Comets, the Rolling Stones…

What about Boston bands, maybe some current local acts?

D: We like The Sea Monsters, Mieka Pauley-

N: Yeah!  She’s like my favorite singer.  You know Eva Cassidy?

Yeah.

N: If Eva Cassidy was like, rock n’ roll like Joan Jett, she’d be Mieka Pauley.  She’s amazing and writes songs and plays guitar, she’s also one of our dear friends.

D: Yeah, and Jesse Dee.  Jesse Dee’s our BOY!

[Editor’s Note: Jesse happened to be walking through the backstage area in the basement of the Armory just as he was mentioned.  Dee, upon hearing this, beamed.]

D: That’s my guy!  I love his music, I love his painting, and I love his spirit.  He’s another one of our favorites around town.  We also love Ryan Montbleu, he’s a great guy.  There are so many original songwriters here that are good.  When we moved to New York, and we’ve been there for about four or five years, I came back here and there was an unbelievable singer/songwriter scene.  Jesse, and Christian McNeill, and Danielle Miraglia… and Four Piece Suit, too!

N: Yeah!  They did all the music for Sex and the City for the first three years.  I’m gonna segue into the whole Boston thing.  The Boston music scene is very family-like:  It’s a lot of friends getting together, there are a lot of late night jams and stuff.  New York has this really ridiculous level that comes there and just any night of the week you go out in New York, any little whole in the wall, you can go and see some music.  I mean, first of all, Eric Clapton might walk in, that kind of stuff happens all the time.  The other thing is somebody just flew in, like the hottest band from Belgium or something, and they’re playing there for like, a bucket or something.

D: James Hudger!  I saw James Hudger’s first show in America.  Do you know him?

The name sounds vaguely familiar. I would probably recognize his stuff if you pla-

[Dwight and Nicole then break into song, on the couch, Nicole’s clapping and they’re both harmonizing and I’m sitting on my chair with my mouth gaping open like a four-year-old with a chronic sweet tooth who just walked into a candy store.]

D: I mean, Norah Jones, even, everyone’s out on the scene and around.  The people who are famous, Moby and those people, they hang in the scene and proliferate the buzz or whatever it is.  And everything is made up of slots, so you’ll have five bands a night- Like, we’ll take the Lower East Side, there’s like ten clubs, which means five slots each on any given night.  You could see fifty shows a night.  Here, people can actually have two or three hours to themselves to develop something like The Sea Monsters, to develop a project.  It’s not like showcases for labels, necessarily, and New York is much more a Mecca for that, and there’s a million great artists there, too, but Boston, I mean, it’s more relaxed in that area and can give someone who would be overwhelmed by New York a chance to develop their sound and their maturity as an artist, and the community here is amazing,

N: That’s what I love about here, besides the fact that it’s just gorgeous, too, it’s a beautiful city.  It’s a beautiful place to exist in with all this water and these parks and the river and all that.  There is a family kind of vibe here.  We’ll hang out with friends, like all these guys, and we’ll all jam for five or ten in the morning.  There are a lot of clubs that support that kind of thing, and they’re dwindling and it’s sad, especially the blues scene, because we came up in that and all those clubs are gone.  The House of Blues in Cambridge is gone-

D: The Yard Rock-

N: We both loved it here.  I came up in this town.

D: I love Boston, I love the musicians here, and I love people like you guys who are fiends for music.

N: And the school scene here drives that so much.  I think that so many young people are hungry for creative energy.

D: Christian [McNeill] was saying that he started out playing Matt Murphy’s or something, and just getting people interested at a little place like that.  Same thing with Tim Gearan at Toad, people get sucked in.  To bring back the blues thing we were talking about, we saw the last movement of that.  I’m talking The Yard Rock, the original House of Blues, the Cantab Lounge was like, the most unbelievable place ten years ago.  When I moved here, it was old, old cats doing their tunes, and it was absolutely insane.  You’d have every type of person there singing songs.

You have a really special place on that stretch of Mass Ave in Central Square, between the Cantab Lounge and TT’s and the Middle East…

N: Yeah!  I love the Boston scene for having those heavy roots in the blues and jazz scene.  Everything came out of that stuff, and there’s a great rock scene, too.  Boston has just all these great music scenes where you can just hang.  You can hang in New York, too, but everybody’s working all night in these spots all over the place.

I think that the fact that there aren’t really 18+ venues in Boston is a problem, too – you have a lot more of those in New York.

D: Yeah, I don’t like that at all.

N: That’s awful!  When you have a good college following that cuts your audience way down.

D: For the amount of revenue it would generate, you should be able to find a staff that’s trained well enough to card people.

N: Plus, going out at that age was huge.  Going to see people when you’re in those formative stages of creativity, that’s how you learn!  You don’t learn from reading a book about music.

D: Yeah, that’s so true.  Those are defining years.

N: A show like tonight, for example, it was 18+.  I’m like, “Hey, why can’t it be 16+?”

We haven’t touched on challenges you guys have faced, either creatively speaking or even about the transition between here and New York.  How is it for you guys, being a couple that also happens to make music together? I’m sure it comes with a whole set of difficulties!

N: It does, but we’re surprisingly well-suited for it.  We have a really, really good thing.  For me, we wear all these different hats, and sometimes we’re business, and sometimes we’re lovers, and sometimes we’re friends, and sometimes we’re maniacs who are trying to kill each other!  Well, not maniacs (laughs).  We’re like, in business mode half the time, and the challenge from that, while we do work really well together in all the different areas, we’re still always together, so we’ll be in business mode at home and dates happen less and less when we get busier-

D: I take you out on dates!  You’re crazy!  We went out dancing last week!

N: (Laughs) I know!  That’s true.  So, that’s where we found the biggest challenge, to keep all these things growing all the time and healthy and moving forward.  The New York/Boston thing?  They both have their challenges.  Down falls and great things about them?  I think our feelings about both cities are pretty positive, and they’re just different.

D: We suffered the financial thing by doing original music.

N: Yeah, but it’s worth it!  When we switched into doing original stuff, all of a sudden I switched and was doing solo stuff with a guitar, and people were used to seeing me with a big band and horns and a gown, and people were like, “What’s this? What happened?”  It’s worth it, to get to what it is that I really have to say.  Everything that Etta James already did, I’m not going to do it better, so I need to do my thing!  I guess that’s a challenge.

D: It’s a challenge going into Club Passim with a full-length beard and not scaring the crowd away! (Laughs)

So, what’s next for you guys?  You mentioned that you’ve been recording your album and that you’re excited to play in front of people again.  What was your performance tonight like, how did it feel?

D: It was so great to be with you guys.  It was fucking awesome.  It’s been a long time.  It feels so good to go back playing gigs.  We’ve worked so hard on this record and when the record comes out, we’re gonna do that whole push that everyone talks about doing with a new record.  We’ve built up a very good thing, and then we’re gonna do the thing and hit the road.  The great Boston musician Marty Blue is going to be hitting the road with us too, he plays with Dennis Brennan sometimes.  Dennis Brennan, too, he’s one of the greatest people.

N: Very rarely do I feel the whole, you know, “I don’t wanna follow that!”  But going on after Dennis Brennan?  His band is ridiculous, and I’ve definitely felt that when we’ve played with him before.

D: Yeah, the song that made us feel that way was Charles Browns “Fool’s Paradise”.  That was the tune.  Dennis is awesome.

Can we talk about the songs on the new record?  How is this a departure from previous material we’ve heard from Dwight and Nicole?

N: I think it dives a lot deeper.  With the blues and jazz and folk stuff, we were in the ten-foot deep section before, and now we’re like, in the center of the earth.  Everything is just a direct connection between what we’re hearing.  We’re so psyched.

Is that “My Hell is Burnin’ for You” song on the new record?

D: Yeah!

Yeah, that song really hit us.  Hard.

N: It stands out?  It does for me too!  I wish we could play you some new stuff…

D: (Looking around the room) Does anybody have a guitar?  Seriously?

N: We can after-hang, maybe!

(Editor’s note: This is when I became smitten with Dwight and Nicole, and wanted to become best friends with them.)

What kind of journey has it taken to get to this point, lyrically and musically, for these delving deeper new songs you’re doing?

D: Production wise, too, we’re doing a lot of different sounds and a lot of different styles.  We have this tune that we did as a duo, a song that she wrote for her grandma, and now it sounds orchestral.  It sounds bigger, and fuller, and the potential of the song has come out more because there’s more people involved musically, more musicians, more production things-

N: When I say that this record goes deeper, too, I mean that we are diving deeper into what it is that, pulling out every little influence. For me, I’ve always been like, “Well, I’m singing blues, so I’m going to sing blues”, but I think of the blues style of singing or jazz standards, and that’s changed since I’ve gotten older and that’s what I’ve been looking for.  The reason why I never did a record is because I felt, before, that I had nothing to say that hadn’t already been said.  It’s cool for me to say something new.  If you’re going to say something, say something new; Otherwise, it’s just noise.  We’ve been diving into all of those things, so you’ll hear a little Sheena Easton in there, and you’ll hear all this other stuff, and that’s all part of me so you have to dive in and get it and let it come out and get your own voice that way.  For me, that’s what it is: Not trying to sing a certain style or try to do a song justice, which is what I used to kind of do, but now, I’m not gonna think about anything and whatever comes out comes out.

Let’s talk about the Boston crowd and Dwight and Nicole’s Boston fans.  How is your relationship with them different than your audiences in other cities?  Does it go back to the familial nature of the singer/songwriter scene in Boston?

N: I feel like that the people who are working in New York and living in New York are doing really well, and it’s ridiculous to try to exist there as a musician professionally and that’s all you do, so the guys who are on a really high level are all the musicians who are on Saturday Night Live and the Letterman Band and they’re totally like that, too.  New York has this influx of all these other people all the time, so you get this sense of, “Holy Shit.”

D: Boston is our highest drawing city, so we do big publicity pushes for our shows here.  Every show counts and it doesn’t make a difference, but in New York, we’re smaller, so it’s cool to have more people in Boston and it makes our shows here bigger events.

N: I feel like there’s another difference too where I feel like Boston- like, in New York, people want new stuff, and that changed me for the better as an artist, because when I got there people didn’t want to hear covers of somebody else’s stuff at all.  They wanted us to just be ourselves.  In Boston I feel that there’s such an appreciation for the roots of the scene here, where people want to hear the jazz tradition and they like the tradition and want to hear standards.  The city, to me, feels very heavy with a lot of tradition, and people take it very seriously and respect it.  If you play old blues, people love it.