CheekyChicago

This past Saturday night, I stood with a roomful of appreciators to bear witness to Ha Ha Tonka, assembled to headline a show at Subterranean. The band came out chugging along full steam, as if the first set of their show already took place in the backstage dressing room while the opening act worked to get out of their way.

Ha Ha Tonka plays the kind of music that requires a certain beats per minute from your listening heart and a simultaneous pounding of it on the floorboards below.  This four-piece draws from the echoes of the Ozarks they hail from.  Brian Roberts leads the charge through a rough, yet paradoxically polished, Southern bellow that would make Caleb Followill (see: Kings Of Leon) cry in his own beer.

Brett Anderson, on keys, guitar, mandolin, and anything else laying around, also shares a great deal of the vocal duties.  These days you’re lucky if a band’s lead singer can even carry the vocal duties well.  Luke Long, bassist, joined with Lennon Bone – abandoning his drum kit – to harmonize with the rest of the band.  Sadly – this is so rare – could we ever be so bold or so greedy as to expect this type of all-around talent from artists all the time!?

The band drove us through a bulk of songs from their Bloodshot Records (hell yeah, Chicago!!) debut, Novel Sounds Of The Nouveau South – keep in mind that we’re on a knobby, country road, but everything else about it is just as beautiful and enjoyable when they’re driving.  There was even room for the somehow amazingly appropriate cover of Ram Jam’s Back Betty, which completely lit up the room!  Later, we were treated to a gorgeous new song titled Usual Suspects, which led to the bulk of my conversation with Luke Long after the show…

Knowing that Luke currently calls Chicago home – while two are back in Kansas City and the fourth is in California – I was very curious to hear more about their current writing process.  Luke explained it to me in a way that graciously made me feel like this had been the norm for some time now and I was late in getting the memo.

In complete opposition to their last “formal” recording process, where the band “lived on top of each other during recording,” Long seems to find a much greater enthusiasm for their current approach – not to say that he doesn’t enjoy the company of his bandmates (quite the contrary), but he feels this approach gives them more space to be individually creative before becoming collectively creative.  “We each have our own experiences and instances now… when we do get together, we each bring so much more to the table!”

Whatever they are doing to draw for inspiration and passion, it is clearly working – and let’s hope that they continue to lead the way for us into a better future of higher quality music (and I don’t mean larger file sizes).