In a world filled mostly with cold hard musical disappointments, you take your rare pleasures where you can find them. And it's one of those delightful surprises that catches my attention on a a dreary Monday afternoon: the news that The Dream Syndicate are not only reunited, but that they intend to play their first North American show in twenty five years at Wilco's Solid Sound Festival on June 22, 2013.
What's better than a summer that kicks off with the unprecedented return of a band that defined cutting edge alternative music, and influenced some of the best musicians in the world? Nothing! That's what!
Following a string of hugely successful and critically acclaimed shows in Spain last September where they blew people's minds and left them begging for more, it was clear that there was still more to accomplish, and no matter what happens when the band takes the stage on a warm summer day in June (and trust me, with their live shows, anything can happen), you can bet you haven't seen or heard the last of The Dream Syndicate.
So June 22, 2013 is going to be penciled onto the calendars of a lot of people living in North America. This is something people have really been waiting eagerly for, for twenty five years, and Wilco's Solid Sound Festival sounds like a great place to do it. Any chance you'll do more shows or will this be it for the States?
We've been taking the whole thing a little bit at a time. We played Spain last fall, the idea was if we have a good time and it feels like the music is still exciting to us and people we're playing for, then we'll do another little bit. So then we booked a tour of Europe for this May and of course the show at Solid Sound. I think each step along the way, if we're digging it we'll keep doing it and if not, we'll stop. And so far, it's been great.
I heard those shows in Spain blew the roof off, and it whet the appetite of those who have been starved for The Dream Syndicate. During your initial seven-year run, you produced some enduring music that really stands up when you listen to it today. The Days Of Wine And Roses exploded in 1982 and nearly everyone I talk to has you on their most influential or "best" lists. Did you worry about revisiting all this well-loved material live initially? And after last fall's excellent stage shows, was there an element of relief like "Damn, we still got it?"I tell you now, at this point, the first round of the band seems like a long time ago, and not just as far as years and eras and decades and stuff like that, but as far as where we all were at the time, and what we thought about music and why we made it and what the process involves. And yes, you know, I think at this point all of us are just better at what we do and kind of have a lot of perspective about it. That's kind of why I wanted to reform the band, it was just kind of to see how our current state of mind would fit into the music and how that would work. It felt like unfinished business. What we did back then went by in a blip. It may have seemed like a long time back then, but really it was a short amount of time. I wanted to go back and make some of the music I wish we'd made and do some of the things I wish we did and experience it in a different way. Now all that is great in theory but it doesn't really matter until you go out onstage. The first show we did in Spain was a festival in Barcelona, and it just felt, from the very first song, like that daredevil high-wire manic adrenaline thrill that I used to have with The Dream Syndicate back when the band first started.
