Leaves, a Chicago quartet of drums, guitar, bass and sax, stands tall w/in a 
burgeoning scene of rock/jazz that’s coming from all corners of the city, which you’re more likely to stumble upon than hear broadcast from the rooftops. Having just released Live at the Ice Factory (Fresh Produce), Leaves are busy, but don’t expect them to go on a “look-at-us tour” – each member can be found in one of their countless side projects throughout the city, and naming every one of them would take a companion volume. Go to their myspace page instead.
I was fortunate to hear Leaves perform a live set on The Rock Show on Northwestern University radio WNUR, 89.3. It took awhile, but I eventually met the band at a Logan Square dive called Winds Cafe, and talked to them as bass player Dan Thatcher prepared to set up for a Tuesday night gig with The Ed Breazeale Group.
1. When historians listen to your most recent CD 1,000 years from now, what will they say?
Tyler Beach (guitar): [unhorsed by the thought of how far away 1000 years is] If it were still around in, wow, 1000 years, I think they’d find it strange, experimental, unpolished…
Dan Thatcher (acoustic bass): … if it’s not totally lost, maybe they’d find an organic connection that has been lost in the music that’s getting made in 3007.
Charles Rumback (drums/nord): They won’t understand how we fit in, how to categorize us. We’ll be a big mystery.
[Saxophonist Charles Gorcynski was not available for comment]Â
2. If you could play a show with any band/musician living or dead, who would you pick and why?
TB: I don’t know, I guess John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Elvin Jones, God rest his soul…
CR: Sure, those, and Pharaoh Sanders… maybe Bowie too…
DT: The band I play with – Leaves.
TB:Â Me too.
CR: Definitely. You’d always like things to be perfect and to play with a legend, but if you find a group of guys that work well together, then those are the guys that you really want to be with. Not that playing with Coltrane wouldn’t be great, but when you’ve got guys that enjoy each other and are part of something really excellent, hopefully that’s the band you want to be in the most. It is for me.
3. What is the strangest band-related dream you’ve ever had?
TB: I’ve had a couple…I had this one dream where I had to play with 311 on keys and back-up vocals. We were on this huge festival stage, and I was scared shitless, but played anyway because I kind of, in real life, knew the songs okay. The gig turned out awesome and was to date one of the best shows I ever played.
CR: Not freaky, but I have this reoccurring dream where I play the sax really well…
From a heckler at stage left: “Hah, what’s that feel like?â€
CR: [banter w/ the heckler and continues] It’s amazing how your brain makes you feel after you’ve dreamed up a gig, because a lot of the time it’s the best music you’ve ever heard. Your brain is processing so much during its waking hours that you don’t know realize you’re storing it, but you are.
TB: Another dream I had is, well, my mom is this neo-Catholic priestess – she’s not a super-religious person, but in this dream the pews are converted to movie-theater seating, and it’s nothing like a stuffy Catholic church, but I know it’s Catholic because that’s just in the dream. So it’s this really hip Catholic thing, and my mom conducts this enormous choir in ‘Amazing Grace’, and it was the greatest music I’ve ever heard.
4. What do your fans look like?
CR: You or me.
TB: Our friends.
DT: Definitely unique.
TB: Diverse.
CR: People who look like they wouldn’t be into our music who come up to us and say, “That’s amazing.â€
TB: Yeah, one of my friends was playing our CD at work the other day, and her boss overheard it – now he wants a copy. So I guess our fans look like her boss.
5. What bullshit do you run into at most every show that makes you think, “man, this bullshit again?â€
TB: It took a long time to get our stuff to the point where we could hear each other when we played live. That took awhile, but I think we got it now.
DT: Things don’t happen when they’re scheduled, which is kind of like bullshit, but they often turn out to be fortuitous.
CR: You have to see each day for what it is, and not focus on what you were expecting to happen that doesn’t, or you’ll get bitter. The bullshit I find comes from where I expect a show or a night to be a certain way and then it ends up being something different – you can see it as it is and have a good attitude about it, or you can be negative and it becomes a lot of bullshit.
Bonus question: why won’t you forget to tip your bartender?
DT: so they take care of you, and that happens in more ways than one – you know that some bartenders are in with the owners, and if the band is shitty to them, then they’ll tell the people who hired you.
TB: Dan, don’t give away our secrets…
CR: They hook you up – more whiskey, less coke. It’s an investment in the drunken-future fund.
DT: Plus, you can’t hang out with just your band at setbreak, or at least not during every set break.
There was much more to be said after Five Questions formally ended. To wit:
SSC: How does Chicago treat its artists? Does the scene support itself well?
TB: People are definitely willing to come out to shows in Chicago
CR: The reason that some shows aren’t that good is often because there’s something else to do, and you can’t do everything.
SSC: Time for a boring question – what are you listening to now?
TB: I’m listening to Joanna Newsom – total genius
CR: I just picked up this Don Cherry record…
DT: I’ve been picking up everything – really, everything – on the Rune Grammofon label. It’s this Norwegian label with lots of electronica and experimental material, and I’ll get anything I can find used on amazon.
Each member has other projects that are not only playing constantly, but are also putting out important material. I had to miss Charles & Charles 3-disc release party tonight to finish writing this thing, but the Ed Breazeale Group is at Winds Café weekly, Fingers and Toes will be at the South Union Arts building on April 19th, Salamander comes to Leila Jane’s in February… there is ample opportunity to catch any of The Leaves or their friends in Chicago’s best venues. Look too for Charles Rumbeck to spend every Tuesday in March at the Velvet Lounge, each week with a different project (Leaves, Charles & Charles, and two other yet-to-be-named combinations).
SSC: Is there a place where someone can go to get in the middle of all of this? It seems that there’s too much to get your mind around if you’re not part of it.
TB: I don’t know, the Ice Factory? Myspace?
All:Â Yeah, myspace.
TB: umbrellamusic.org, and hungrybrain.net are also really good places to get an idea of what’s happening and who’s where.
CR: [about the websites] Yeah, all those scenes are musicians coming together.
SSC: Have you noticed any music scenes that are specific to the neighborhoods of this city, like fashions, restaurants, different levels of gentrification have become?
CR: North and Southside maybe, but not so much anymore.
TB: Some places are more musical than others, but we’ve been all over the city, and even north and south there isn’t a divide – just a lot of people making music, and if there are divides it’s because of taste in music, not geography, race, income or that.
CR: That’s right, and music really shows that people have more in common with each other than we do that separate us.
SSC: You guys really do have a sound that attracts people if only they can hear it in the first place. Is it your focus to continue making excellent music and letting people come to you by word of mouth, or is the intention to actively turn people on to your stuff?
CR: If you can get it out there and get people to hear it and maybe make some money doing that, then you get to spend more time making music. We don’t have a need to make a whole lot of money by playing out, but it would be nice get to a point where by making music we are in a position to continue on and make even more music.
DT: We play music for the sake of the music – if there’s a way to find people who are interested in it, then its all the better, for us and for them.
TB: If we inspire just one person then that’s cool and we’re another step closer to getting to play more music than if we hadn’t been part of their life experience.
The Leaves album Live at the Ice Factory can be ordered through their website or at Fresh Produce Records.
3 Comments »
Not as much as your spelling, Nads.
Right on, Nads. Musicians should always be funny, because only lame people whose music sucks take their bands seriously.
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Comment by Nads — February 1, 2007 @ 5:32 pm
That’s the lamest answer to question 2 you guys have had on the site yet. These guys lose for sense of humor and I bet thier music sucks too.