Archive for March 9th, 2009
“A Bunch of Small Sparks”: The Feelies Reunite — An Interview with Glenn Mercer
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I had no good excuse for discovering the Feelies too late, but by the time I fell in love with their albums (The Good Earth and Only Life, in particular) they had already broken up. As the years went by I assumed they would always remain atop my personal list of bands that I hoped would reunite, even as others, like the Pixies and the Police, got back together.
And then last year the group reformed, playing several shows in the New York area last Summer. I saw them on night two at their old stomping grounds at Maxwells in Hoboken, where they looked and sounded like they hadn’t lost a step.
As always, John Pareles describes them best: “they pushed the rock ’n’ roll basics — two or three chords, an unswerving beat — toward the ecstatic. They defined those few chords with intricately interlocking parts, bearing down on them to turn repetition into a frenetic rave-up.”
This weekend the group will be playing in Philly and DC and are a must see. I recently spent a bit of time with guitarist and vocalist Glenn Mercer and asked him about the band’s reunion and their plans for the future.
Howard: What sparked the reunion that you guys had last summer and that is now continuing into the year 2009?
Glenn: Basically a small bunch of small sparks really. It wasn’t one particular incident that brought it about. I guess the first thing was making contact with Bill again. I was talking with him after quite a long time just kind of dealing with some business stuff and the topic of playing came up — that was probably around 2001 maybe or 2002. And I guess we would get offers here and there a couple of times a year and I would always present them to Bill and he seemed interested but he had a lot of things that kind of prevented him from doing it — personal. And we really didn’t want to do it unless we could do it with 100% focus and he didn’t feel he could do that at the time. Finally things worked out where he could do it so we had the offer from Sonic Youth to do the summer stage in New York last summer and just everybody was available and it sounded like a lot of fun so we rehearsed for that, did that show, a couple of warm-up shows and it all went well so we just kind of continued from there.
Howard: And what has it been like playing together last year and then since then? Is it like riding a bike you just get back on or is it different?
Glenn: Well I have always been playing. And I have been playing with most of the people [in the Feelies] on and off over the years, Bill being the exception. It felt comfortable. It’s pretty easy to get back in to the groove. It wasn’t a big stretch for any of us I don’t think.
Howard: And now you have an upcoming show in Philly and an upcoming show in Washington. Any other plans to tour more widely?
Glenn: Probably not a tour. We get a lot of offers so we just kind of take it a little bit at a time. Each time we play we do a little bit more. We traveled up to Boston and did a couple of shows up there. It is kind of like I said just taking it a couple of steps at a time really.
I can’t foresee us getting back to where we were where it was a full time career. We’re just basically really doing it for fun and for being able to hang out with each other and stuff.
Howard: And are you guys recording at all?
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Time is Right (new song)
Glenn: I did demos of some new songs. I have kind of been recording all along. I did a solo record, had everybody from the Feelies except Bill play on it. We are kind of looking toward that as a goal. But not knocking ourselves out with it either. We never were really that prolific anyway so…I can’t foresee us having albums with this stuff any time soon but we are working towards that.
Howard: And you guys have re-issues coming out this year?
Glenn: Yes, The first 2 albums Crazy Rhythms and The Good Earth. On Bar None.
Howard: Are those the two that you own the rights to or the first of two that you expect? How is that going to work?
Glenn: They are the two that we have the rights to. Apparently some company put out Only Life fairly recently without our involvement through some arrangement with A&M or through Universal.
Howard: That must be sort of a strange thing to find somebody putting your album out without your input?
Glenn: Well it happens. I mean there are two ways to look at it. It is not what you want but it is getting the music out so…
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Let’s Go (Original on the Good Earth)
Howard: Did you all re-master the songs for the reissues in Bar None? And are there going to be any extras besides or cuts or anything?
Glenn: Yes, they have been re-mastered. We didn’t have a lot of bonus stuff though. We might put a couple things out as downloads, as an incentive for someone to buy the whole album to get a couple of extra songs that way but not on the actual hard copy CD. They are just going to be as they were when they originally appeared with extended liner notes, booklet kind of thing.
Howard: When are they coming out?
Glenn: Well we are still working on it now. Pretty far along with it so we are kind of hoping by the summer I think.
Howard: Any plans to release any of the shows now as sort of a live disc or anything or DVD or anything like that?
Glenn: We don’t have any plans to. We have been recording a lot of stuff and filming some stuff but really not the definitive plan for doing anything with it besides just for our own archives for now.
Howard: Do you hear much of a difference between your sound playing live now and 20 years ago or 30 years ago?
Glenn: No not really.
Howard: So, for the uninitiated what is the difference between the Feelies, the Trypes, and Yung Wu and the Willies?
Glenn: Well let me take them one at a time. The Trypes was pretty much basically the Feelies with some other local friends of ours that was the material of the key board player John Baumgartner primarily, and the Willies was sort of an instrumental version of the Feeliess. Yung Wu was basically the Feeliess with some local friends again; most of the people that were in the Tripes as well — that was Dave Weckermans’ material. So basically it was the same core group of people with a handful of extra friends doing either Johns or Dave’s songs. And the Willies had sort of an instrumental kind of ambient, open ended sound. Each time we played it would be a little different.
Howard: And of the 4 Feelies albums and other albums you have made since then do you have a favorite? Is there one that sort of stands out for you? Anything that works better now live? Are you playing more stuff from any one of the albums or is it sort of equally distributed?
Glenn: I like each of them for different reasons. When we play live we do at least a couple from each record and some of the covers that we used to do. So it is pretty fairly balanced I think between the whole tenure of the band.
Howard: You did the soundtrack to the movie Smithereens. Any thought of having that come out on its own?
Glenn: I don’t think so. We are not in contact with the company that put the movie out so…And it wasn’t the sort of the material that you would listen to without the film. It wouldn’t work without the film. It was just short little pieces.
Howard: Biggest change that you see now in the New York area music scene and sort of music business in general between now and when you started?
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Away (original on Only Life)
Glenn: That is a tough one. There are a lot of things different. A lot of things are the same. You definitely see a lot of people holding up their cell phones and stuff now.
Howard: Are you finding that your fans are your contemporaries — people who were following you when you were active 20 years ago or is it a new generation of fans who are discovering you now?
Glenn: It is a pretty good mix between the two. A lot of old fans but definitely some younger people that didn’t get to see us the first time.
Howard: Thanks so much for your time – I look forward to seeing you in DC
Glenn: Take care then. Goodbye.
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