“’Weeds In The Wheat’. May I take that as a personal insult?” Inter-Disciplinary Dance indie rock band from Brooklyn listen to my opening question, then look at me in bemusement.
“Weeds In The wheat’?” they inquire.
That would be the first song off People Get Ready’s eponymous debut album and it is quite adamant about wanting to be left alone. “It certainly hit me as though you didn't’t want to explain yourself…” I continue.
“’Weeds In The Weed’? What’s that?”;
“We have no idea what you’re referring to.” I search for the quote stuttering while Steve Riker, People Get Ready's singer and guitarist looks at with a baffled expression. "Hmmmm, hmmm, I don't know."
Drummer Luke Fasano looked at his band mate. "Did you ever say that?"
"I never said that. Did you?"
"No…"
The four members of People Get Ready surround me backstage at the Highline Ballroom just after their Summerstage Showcase sound check and I search for the quote and a wiser man than I might have dropped it here. "Yes you have" I exclaim indignantly.
"No, no… I might start saying it now…"
Instead of losing the weeds in the wheat line of questioning as fast as humanly possible, I go in search of the song and People Get Ready begin to wonder when somebody plans to actually question them. "I used to work at Steve's Weeds, maybe that's what he's talking about…."
"Maybe it's about your tolerance for weed…" That's keyboard player Jen Coma and if I was less flustered I might have mentioned how much I loved her previous band A Sunny Day In Glasgow.
"'I'd rather go unnoticed than keep repeating ourselves'".
"Go un want? eh?"
"Unnoticed, you'd rather go unnoticed…."
"I don't think I've ever said that in public."
Oh great, I've spent half the time listening to the wrong People Get Ready for the past week. The twits at Spotify mixed two albums together and I listened to both of them.It would take a better man than me to recover from this and I don't come close. "So you don't mind explaining yourself?"
"Nooooo, I mean no one even knows who we are yet so we've got to keep repeating ourselves as much as possible I guess."
"Just until people figure out who you are and then…
"And then maybe switch it up a little."
People Get Ready are being self-effacing, since forming in 2009 the buzz on People Get Ready has been loud and constant. Dancer Steve Riker was performing with David Byrne when he became friends with Yeasayer drummer Luke and formed a dance and music interdisciplinary band who moved between the two forms. Jen Toma and bassist James Rickman were added to the line up.
My feeling about interpretive dance is it is easy to suck at it…
"We don't deal with interpretive dance at all, we deal with more like choreographic models, and our choreographic structures that we use and impose them upon the songs."
I remember hanging out with Tony Parsons and a couple of other writers in the late 1980s, under the mistaken impression I was one of the boys. Within half an hour I realized everybody at the table thought I was a complete tool and from the look on Steve's face he would have fit right in. Talking with the band, who appear to be the closest of friends, I feel like a plank of the first order and Steve looks ready to jack it in.
"Specific Ocean" is the name of the show that brought the band to attention of the New York dance world when it was performed at the Kitchen. The New York Times covered it in the dance section. Will they be performing it at Summerstage this season?
"We'll see, if they let us. If the stage is big enough."
Getting nowhere with Steve, I turn to Luke for some quotes. How did he enjoy playing drums with Yeasayer?"
"How did I enjoy that? I enjoy this a lot more. It was fun to play but we just didn't get along as well as I'd hoped. I found the right people to play with here.
Oh dear. I don't want you to get the idea this lousy interview is People Get Ready's fault, it is 100% my fault. Though that doesn't help. Their debut album, released last year, is pretty good and sometimes better than pretty good. "Windy Cindy" (which I misname "Windy City" – I haven't even mentioned getting stuck back stage and and the earlier EP "Uncanny" are excellent slices of indie rock , the closing song "a Squandering" extends itself and envelopes you and "Three Strangers" is brilliant in their "Specific Ocean" performance. Produced by Amanda Palmer's bassist Jherek Bischoff, Jen sang with Jheroff as the opening act at Amanda's Webster Hall gig. Another lost opportunity to actually conduct an interview as I misremember the venue and give up on the line of questioning. though I would have loved some inside dope about one of the best shows of last year. "If you got there at 8pm, that's when you probably started getting turned on to Amanda Palmer, I'm responsible." Around about now you might get the impression People Get Ready are really nice guys and I am a blithering fool. Well, guess how I feel as I soldier on…
By now I should have given up on Steve, but I soldier on with some boiler plate stuff about dancing with David Byrne. "I was on the Brian Eno tour. I got to sing with Eno once so that was cool".
SO… you are taking too different concepts and putting them together. "uh huh" says Steve but Luke comes to my rescues, "But they are related concepts. People usually have access to both of them at the same time or know how to get from one to the other or how one flies with the other. I think the music that's used for dance, is in a lot of ways very specific or it is used very specifically. It has to either have obvious counterpoint or it's supposed to be mood, atmospheric sort of thing. And we have just been trying to not do either of those things, instead make one a logical outburst of the other."
Thank God. A quote I can use. I hereby take back every mean thing I've written about Yeasayer over the years. Luke is a good natured guy and he actually bails me out whether he intends to or not, with a scruffy beard and a cool, personable tude, he isn't the frontman for People Get Ready, they don't have one (during sound check, Steve calls the keyboards the lead instrument) but today he is fronting for em.
I ask them about the single "Windy City"
"Windy Cindy?"
I'm not doing too good here, am I?
"That's what we're here for to bail you out…"
OK, to hell with that line of questioning… In many ways, People Get Ready are the epitome of a modern band. They used Kickstarter to raise $2,000 to help complete their album. "That's all we needed." Is this a different way of conducting business? "No, we just got away with it once and that's probably all we'll do."
"No, no… it was a wonderful opportunity that we had. We had the time to do the Kickstarter and the opportunity to make the record so it all fell into place. The straight up recording took us a week."
"nine days, ten days…" That's the bassist.
"You sounded better on stage than you did on the record." I say, of course, I was listening to a different band for much of the time which might have had something to do with it.
"It's a process. One is like putting a million little pieces together to make a perfect thing, and one is expressing yourself to other people."
OK, I still haven't figured out I'm discussing the wrong album so I claim the band is aggressively neutral lyrically. This one stumps the band completely. "All I have to say to that is 'hello'" says Steve.
Maybe a little more downcast than one more hope for.
"Oh. What would you hope for? The subject matter of the lyric is depressing? Maybe you're listening to the wrong album. That's probably the problem, you're listening to Morrissey."
Jen: "The lyrics aren't depressing, they're pretty upbeat." Kill me now. Back to dance.
Steve: "we don't deal with interpretive dance or interpretive music. There is no message. "
Luke to the rescue: "I don't think it's like a discrete 'here's our message'
Jen: "We don't see it as all separate, it is all part of the same expression, it is all part of the same thing. "
Luke: "The movement is there for its own sake, it accompanies and is part of the music during those performances. So you have us moving around and we're also singing and their making noises and they're swinging stuff around and that's making noise and so all these things are part of a real sonic landscape that is made up of both movement and music."
"There is no divide".
Later that evening, People Get Ready, or certainly Steven, put the concept of dance movement to music that wasn't integral to meaning to work, with a herky jerky stylized movement that as the evening continued encompassed the entire band. By the end of the set, which was very very good to a less than forthcoming audience, the entire band was moving, beating anything that comes to hand, singing in harmony and then singing solo. Jen, who is a remarkably pretty young woman, has the best voice but Steve can't help but keep your eye train towards him. He is always doing something, and reminds me a little of a Dave Longstreth as he messes with his melodies. The entire band has an energetic and absorbing aura. All four members click very well. In conversation as well. The band are a little light tunewise, but they mesh very well together and the sharing is caring singing and playing make em more then the sum of their parts. Add to that the dance component and People Get Ready seem on the verge of a different sort of career.
Jen: "It is like the opportunity to make music and dance at the same time, it is not like we make music to dance to."
I ask the band about favorite albums of 2012 and Swing Lo, Magellan is referenced as is label mates Buke And Gaze: James: "They are label mates of ours and they brought an album out as a duo to create enough sound for like an 80 piece orchestra. Just two people with no tech, no samplers, no nothing" The album James discussing isn't released yet but their 2010 Riposte is great.
OK, 15 minutes in and I am a person as ready to run as hard and as fast as I possibly can. Indeed, I forget to take a band pix. Except I get stuck backstage when the door won't open. Well, now, remind me to never interview any one ever again. Still, People Get Ready are a really good band and their mix of idioms draws you in deep and holds you. They were actually very kind top rock nyc and so return the favor, particularly if they play Central Park.