“Empty Room”
from the album Self Help Serenade
2005
iTunes
“Empty Room” is the iTunes Free Download Single of the Week, available for free through next Monday.
You can also watch the video for “Empty Room” at iTunes.
They say you can tell a lot about a band by its behavior on the tour bus. Typically, stories of groupies gone wild and illegal antics abound and become rock ‘n’ roll folklore. Last month the Los Angeles band Marjorie Fair rolled into town from Atlanta an hour before taking over a table at Malo, a Mexican restaurant in Silver Lake, CA. They had been touring the United States for the past month.
Anything crazy — wink-wink — happen on the road?
“Evan taught me how to sew,” the bassist, Scott Lord, said with genuine reverence. “He could thread a needle in the dark even when the road was bumpy.”
“Er, that’s not really a good image for our image,” said Evan Slamka, the 30-year-old lead singer and guitarist. “I was making alterations.”
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Marjorie Fair |
It feels right that Slamka, with his unruly hair and sad, bourbon-colored eyes, can stitch. He has pieced together a few different incarnations of Marjorie Fair since January 2004, and this grouping, which includes Mike Delisa on drums, Dain Luscombe on keyboards and Lord, is the perfect fit. Yesterday their debut album, Self Help Serenade, hit stores in the United States. It was released in Britain on May 31. Mojo magazine has already suggested the record as “a candidate for debut of the year” and The Independent gave it a five-star review. The songs are both melancholy and lulling. If you were to call into work sick with an aching heart, the plaintive lyrics would make for good medicine.
Over dinner the band discussed the group’s integrity (“very solid”), longevity (“hopefully like Neil Young’s career”) and past struggles with puberty (“Hair spray causes horrible zits.”) Within the group Slamka is the most talkative, Luscombe is the most meditative, Delisa is the most definitive and Lord — the youngest member at 20 — is mostly silent.
When a smiling young woman stopped at the table to hug Luscombe, 30, it was the third person he had greeted at this neighborhood joint. “That girl works at Philip Morris,” he said. “Wait. No. That’s the cigarette company. I mean William Morris. Maybe we should sign with her.” He stubbed out an American Spirit.
In that moment the table grew quiet. It was as if these guys were suddenly rolling the idea of success around in their mouths like a sweet cherry Life Saver.
“We’re not going to change and become jerks if we…” Luscombe trailed off.
“We have this ’60s idealism,” Slamka said. “We just want to hear our music and know that it affects people who are like-minded.”
The others nodded, though earlier all four had agreed that they got into music to get girls. The consensus, however, was this: In high school the opposite sex can’t get enough of the guys in the band. Later in life, however, women prefer a man with a steady job.
On to the Silverlake Lounge, a charming and gritty little place for live music. The band ordered a round of beers and settled in to catch a show by Becky Stark, a folk singer. It was clear, as she crooned the refrain “Don’t go to sleep,” that the band wanted more than anything else to do just that. They had spent the last two days driving and sewing and catching up on episodes of the hit TV show “Lost“.
“I’m so dazed and exhausted that I’m not even tired anymore,” said Delisa, with glazed eyes. “I feel great.”
Don’t believe everything you might read in Rolling Stone. Here’s what they said in an “In Brief” section earlier this month:
Singer-songwriter MARJORIE FAIR will release her new album, Self Help Serenade, on July 19th.
As you read previously, Marjorie Fair is in fact a band comprised of dudes, not a lady songstress. Oops!