About a month ago, Madison band Locksley began a nationwide tour with a show at the Cat's Cradle in Carrboro, N.C.

The tour -- which included gigs in Austin, Seattle, Scottsdale, West Hollywood and various points between -- was designed to promote the band's new 7-inch single, "Darling, It's True," which was released on E Street Band guitarist Steve Van Zandt's Wicked Cool label, and create a buzz for the upcoming CD, "Be in Love," which is due in January.

When we talked to lead vocalist Jesse Laz hours before the tour kickoff, we found there was a hidden motive for the dates: 22 elaborate rehearsals for the band's homecoming performance at Freakfest, which is slated for Halloween night in Madison.

"That's exactly what it is," said Laz, who grew up (along with younger brother / bassist Jordan) in Whitefish Bay before moving to Madison for high school and forming the band in 2003.

"We have exactly a month to figure out what we're going to play and to work on our costumes and gags for Freakfest. One year, we were all dressed as pops and our drummer went as Jesus. It should be a great show."

We talked to Laz about the tour, the band's new video and other topics.

OnMilwaukee.com: What is the feeling like at the beginning of a tour? Are there nerves involved? Is it a feeling of excitement or one of "Man, we have to live on the road for a couple of months."

Jesse Laz: It's been a while since we've done a tour this long. We've done some shows here and there, but we were holed up in the studio for the first part of this year, so it's good to get out and play. It's a little like being on a sports team. You get into game mode.

OMC: Congratulations on the video for "Darling, It's True." We recently recommended it to our readers. I think the concept was unique and it came off as spontaneous and fun. Was it hard to execute? It seems like you had to put a lot of trust in the director. I kind of envisioned Jason Lee's character, Jeff Bebe, in "Almost Famous" asking, "Is it that hard to make us look cool?"

JL: It's a fine line. Obviously, we want to be cool. But, we also want to have fun. We don't want to be one of those bands that looks like they're trying to be cool. I don't want to name any names, but we've seen bands that do things and it looks like they're trying so hard to look cool. We didn't want to do that.

OMC: You're doing a tour with a new album in the pipeline, but it won't be out for a couple months. How does that impact the set list each night? How much new stuff will you do?

JL: We're definitely ready to play the new stuff. For these shows, it will be half new and half old.

OMC: A lot of bands go out on the road with new CDs and realize that the songs change a lot when they play them live. Arrangements change. Time signatures and keys can change. Did you find that to be the case with your last record ("Don't Make Me Wait")? Do you expect it to happen this time?

JL: It's interesting, because we've been playing the songs from the last record for two years now and for a while we kept getting better at arranging it and tightening things up. But, you can get bored playing the same thing. You have to challenge yourself. I think of Bob Dylan -- when you go see him in concert he plays things so differently that sometimes you don't even recognize the song until he sings "A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall."

We try not to stray too far away from the original melody, but things change. We have a song called "All of the Time," from the last record and it's totally rearranged. It's probably one of my favorite songs from the album, it was kind of swampy sounding, like an early Beatles song and I really like it on the record but it's a little waltzy and it never really translated well live. Now, it's an up-tempo, stomping kind of thing.

OMC: You've been described as a British Invasion / garage-rock band, which makes you a natural for Wicked Cool. How did that relationship come about? Aren't you still considered "the best unsigned band in America."

JL: We are still unsigned. Just ask all the labels that passed on our record. As we got closer to putting out the new record, we wanted to have something to get some momentum going. We thought about doing something on vinyl and that's something (Wicked Cool) had been doing. The deal is just for that song. It's more of a licensing deal than anything else. But, our real purpose for it is to promote the upcoming record.

 Page 1 of 2 (view all on one page)

Next >>

Post a comment / write a review.