Washington City Paper: When did this adventure begin?

Jesse Elliot: 2005, actually. Near the end of ‘05 was our first show, but you know it morphed quite a bit along the way. 2008 is when we started touring really hard and put out our first two albums.

WCP: Do you have fond memories of your earliest time as a D.C. band?

JE: It almost all has to do with meeting other people. Music is a collaborative venture. Meeting Mark Heidinger [of Vandaveer] at a show... the first time I heard Rose [Guerin] sing... meeting Laura Burhenn... I’m walking through these memories right now in my mind and I can actually picture it, which is rare for me because I have an awful memory.

WCP: I hear rumors that you might be collaborating with [former D.C. resident] Burhenn, is there any truth to that?

JE: Yeah, she’s touring with Bright Eyes right now when she doesn’t do The Mynabirds—she does keys and vocals in Bright Eyes. She was here last week, and Justin [Craig, of These United States] comes to New York pretty often. She was in town and had played a show, and we had some things we were both excited about. If things go as planned, and they almost never do, she may have a little spot on our next album.

WCP: Are there any early shows you remember playing that were a big deal?

JE: Yeah, I think we were actually really fortunate and a lot of that had to do with The Federal Reserve [a now-defunct recurring songwriter’s showcase at Iota]. Trying to pick a memory from that would be like wandering through an old attic that had been soaked in booze and set on fire.

It sounds funny to say it, but we’ve kind of always been half a D.C. band and half not. D.C. was one of the first places we had some big shows at, like the first time we played the main stage [at the Black Cat]. That was the place I remember coming and seeing heroes of mine like Olivia Mancini, The Cassettes... it was a place that we’d seen people play before, and it’s a special moment seeing you’ve gotten to that point.

WCP: Why is this the last D.C. show?

JE: Tom was the last remaining D.C. resident, and he left just a couple weeks ago. He moved to North Carolina. We were a D.C.-Kentucky-New York band, and now we’re a North Carolina-Kentucky-New York band. Tom pulled the pin.

WCP: Why did he move?

JE: You know, it’s other things that pull you. His lady friend whom he loves got into grad school down there.

WCP: Does that spread make it hard for the band to function?

JE: Yeah, it does. In the last year, we finally realized how hard it makes it. It’s like being born with an extra eyeball on your shoulder, you just see the world that way. We’ve never all lived in the same city, and we only realized recently how much more difficult that is.

WCP: What was the most number of TUS members here in D.C. at any given time?

JE: At its height, we had three out of four members in D.C., but we always had other people from Kentucky and other places. The first LP was made in Chicago, Iowa City, and D.C. We’ve had moments of it being more pure D.C. than others, but never was it a D.C. thoroughbred racing horse. We’ve always been kind of a mutt.

WCP: Aren’t mutts often the strongest?

JE: Well, they’re the ugliest, so let’s hope they’re the strongest in the long run. We’ll see.

WCP: I think mutts are the evolutionary champions.

JE: I like that descriptor, I think I’m gonna use that when someone asks what genre of music we play. I’ll just say, ‘Oh, we’re kind of like evolutionary champions, that’s kind of our thing.’

WCP: Your band has been known to get into occasional fights—didn’t you have a feud with another quasi-D.C. band a while back?

JE: Oh, I think you’re talking about the Jukebox The Ghost vs. These United States knife fight–the famous knife fight of ‘09, or whenever that was. I think we were playing the Black Cat and they were playing the Rock & Roll Hotel, and we happened to also be in the same city five nights earlier, so we had a knife fight on the waterfront.

WCP: Who won?

JE: I think in war everyone loses and has a good time. I also think a lot of bands are getting to be [more spread out] now that things are more portable. Any band that’s been at it for a while, the last thing you want to do when you’re off tour is see each other. So, you could go back to the same town, but what’s the point? You’re just going to live in the same neighborhood and never call each other anyway. At least for bands that tour eight months out of the year or whatever, but in general that seems like the future; musicians are a fickle bunch.

WCP: What’s the future of TUS?

JE: Well, we’ll take over North Carolina, continue annexing the less desirable parts of Brooklyn and New York, move eastward into Kentucky, and we’ll keep running in circles around the country until we die.

WCP: Is there a new record in the works?

JE: We’ve started some tracking on it this summer.

WCP: Is it a departure, or is it simply another TUS record?

JE: It’s hard for me to tell, honestly. It all sounds like TUS, but I’m too close to the material. To me it’s just another batch of songs.

WCP: With so much touring, is it hard to write?

JE: I’m not as much of a sit-down-and-writer. If I sit down and write, it’s on a bus seat or an airplane seat. I like writing while in motion.

Sometimes I like to sit down in a place for a week to really try and do a concentrated burst, but that’s usually a frustrated necessity. When it’s more casual and tossed off, that’s nice. I’ll put down something and maybe it’ll make its way into a song. But sometimes I’ll hole myself away, say I’ve got to do this and beat it out of myself. Both are really useful ways to create new stuff.

Sometimes you sit around and wait for the muse, and sometimes you try and kidnap the muse and beat it to death in a dark alley and steal all of its prized possessions.

WCP: What about D.C. will you miss the most?

JE: I think it would be different for all of us because, you know, we’re all unique individual snowflakes. I know Tom’s gonna miss Galaxy Gut, and I’m gonna miss taking people to Ben’s Chili Bowl, as cliché as that sounds. Shoot man, some of those places, you spend enough time there and every street corner I pass has some meaning... Dupont Circle, Rock Creek...

The thing I love most is just the spaces—the public parks and museums and monuments—places people can go and exist for free, whether they’re incredibly rich or incredibly poor or in between. Come to think of it, there’s a song on the new album that’s going to be a tribute to one of those places. Maybe this has already been working on my subconscious—missing D.C. and missing Parks and Recreation.

These United States plays The Black Cat tonight with The Cassettes and Southeast Engine.

Photo by Sarah Law

D.C. was well-represented this year at South by Southwest, with a ton of local bands present at showcases like DC Does TX and others. Amid the massive festival's insanity, I caught a sampling of D.C. talent, from These United States and Wild Flag (featuring Mary Timony) to Ted Leo (hey, he lived here for a while) and Bad Brains. Shooting the Brains' whole set, without injuring myself or my Nikon as a mosh pit raged around me, will long remain an incredible (albeit slightly scary) memory.

These United States

Wild Flag

Ted Leo

Bad Brains

Additional photos from these sets, as well as for various other SXSW bands like The Kills, Duran Duran, and Wanda Jackson can be found here over the next couple of days.

My night as an electrocardiogram.

GOOD MORNING: Good morning!

ABOUT LAST NIGHT: I saw the Folger's lean—indeed, lean!—take on Henry VIII, and I'd spare you my opinion since usually one doesn't want to weigh in after his critic has, but it turns out I agree with Trey Graham here: weak-sauce Shakespeare, but what an impressive, lavish, slyly innovative production.

Theeeeeeeeeennnnnnnnn I stopped by Red Door and caught sets by doomy post-rockers Mirrorgate—who brought with them an actual mirror gate! see above—and Skeleton$, both from New York.

AND I BOUGHT: And I bought the latest Sockets Records LP, a self-titled 12-inch by Big Gold Belt, from the label's Sean Peoples, who put on the show. Want a tease? Sockets put up this remix of Big Gold Belt's "Do Not Disturb." Perfect for your morning dojo workout.

SO THIS WEEKEND: Yeah, there's a rally. I will be covering it along with a handful of other WCPers. Here is our primer! Here's WaPo's obscene amount of pre-rally coverage. Then there's TBD's even more obscene amount of pre-rally coverage, and here's the latest nugget, which is veering dangerously into meta territory. Also yesterday, TBD told you where to find tampons near the national mall, you know, just in case—at which point, my colleague Emily Kaiser declared herself sick of this shit. Her advice? "We’ll play it smart and just tell you to stop being an idiot and plan ahead."

Then on Sunday! I guess you could dispense candy. OR you could hit up the Yeah Gates Halloween Spooktacular, which doubles as a record release party for two of the bands on the label, America Hearts and Foul Swoops. The Cheniers, who released a 7-inch on Windian this year that you should cop, are also playing. Earlier this week, All Our Noise posted a pretty lurvely session with America Hearts:

It's Howard Homecoming! More on this in today's Weekend Music Roundup.

The West End Cinema opens today, which brings the state of D.C. independent movie houses from pathetic to almost acceptable. Among the films there: Howl, which Tricia reviewed this week, and Budrus, which we caught over the summer, when it screened as part of Silverdocs.

SOME LINKS: Jeff Krulik talks to Click Track re: historical NoVa rock & roll. Geoff Himes reviews These United States' latest record in WaPo (his opinion's a tad more positive than ours). And, um, DC Theatre Scene reviewed a lot of theater, in all likelihood! (Go check for me and report back.)

HAVE A GOOD WEEKEND: Have a good weekend!

Good morning, D.C.! I'm sure we're all ready to kick the August doldrums out the door, but this week's temperatures could set records. There might be a hurricane, too. All that on top of paying more to get around via WMATA—awesome, right?

If it makes you feel better, we're the third-brainiest city (according to the questionably prolific rankings guru, Richard Florida). We're also a top online dating city (according to the purveyors of "real dates caught on film" commercials, Match.com). Find a correlation in that, if you're so inclined.

True country-rock pioneers, The Byrds are a great place to start. Anything off the Gram Parsons-assisted Sweetheart of the Rodeo will do, but their take on Dylan's "You Ain't Going Nowhere" evokes a near-Pavlovian thirst for Negro Modelo in this writer. Here you can catch them performing it on Hugh Hefner's short-lived Playboy After Dark.

With his supremely underrated Lost Highway debut, Trouble in Mind, Hayes Carll cemented himself as another fine Texas songwriter in line with Townes Van Zandt or Steve Earle. Alcohol and heartache play heavily into most all of his tunes, including "Drunken Poet's Dream," and that's just fine by me.

D.C. troubadour Jesse Elliot is four albums deep with These United States, and when I listen to his folksy, ramblin' tunes, I always seem to find myself reaching for the nearest bottle. "I Want You To Keep Everything" brings more of their rock 'n roll tendencies to bear, and it's most certainly best enjoyed live. The rag-tag TUS crew will be bringing its pedal steel goodness to the Kennedy Center's Millennium Stage for a free show tonight at 6 p.m. Although the drinks ain't cheap there, the early set should leave you with plenty of time to hit a dive on the way home.

It’s a Thursday night at the Black Cat, and aloof 20-somethings in shapeless shirts and skinny jeans are leaning against the bar, angling for drinks. They are temporarily out of luck: The bartender is deep in conversation with Arthur Harrison, 55, and the topic is theremins.

At her request, Harrison produces the instrument seemingly out of nowhere. Reaching below his barstool, he picks up two flat metal plates, and attaches them to a black box. Then he switches the battery-powered contraption on, waves his hands, and produces a warbley, space-noise version of “Somewhere over the Rainbow.” “It’s easy to draw a crowd with these contraptions,” Harrison says.

He’s right: It doesn’t take long for people to gather around Harrison like eager science students, asking what the thing is and how it works. They’ve found the right guy. Harrison may look like an average middle-aged man, but among theremin enthusiasts, he’s a damn big deal, says Jason Barile, curator of ThereminWorld.com. “Pretty much everyone who has thought about buying or building a theremin has heard of Arthur Harrison,” Barile says.

That’s a small world, but even people who don’t know the theremin by name probably know its sound. On movie soundtracks, the instrument’s otherworldly warble is aural shorthand for “spooky,” and a theremin-like instrument takes the lead on The Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations.” Invented by Russian engineer Lev Sergeyvich Termin around 1920, the theremin caught the attention of Vladimir Lenin, who took lessons and ordered hundreds built. He also sent Termin on a tour of the United States to showcase his instrument (and conduct a little industrial espionage along the way).

In America, the theremin worked its peculiar charisma on RCA executives, convincing them that the instrument belonged in every living room. Advertisements from the 1930s trumpeted it as “an absolutely new, unique musical instrument anyone can play.” They were about two-thirds right, says Barile. The theremin was certainly new and unique. The only instrument you play without touching, it works by generating electrical fields that the player disturbs with his hands. But it’s not easy to play. “Anyone can get a noise out of it, but playing a recognizable tune takes a lot of practice,” Barile says. That difficulty, and the fact that RCA released it during the Great Depression, resulted in poor sales.

What makes the theremin so tricky is the instrument’s lack of frets or keys. Theremin players pluck notes out of thin air, a skill that takes hundreds of hours of practice as well as excellent muscle memory and pitch perception. But, despite its difficulty—or perhaps because of it—the theremin has inspired a devoted cult of players, builders, and designers.

“The theremin finds people that have that kind of weird passion about them,” says Barile. “There are a lot of characters in the theremin space.”

That’s a fair description of Harrison, who built his first theremin in 1996. That instrument was an odd bird, even by theremin standards, as it used infrared light instead of electromagnetic fields. Harrison found more success with less innovative designs, including a vacuum-tube theremin with a vintage sound, says fellow theremin designer Mark Kepp. “The tubes have a personality and a warmth and a feel to them,” says Kepp. “People really like the crackly radio-in-grandma’s-living-room sound.”

That vacuum-tube contraption is just one of many theremins scattered around Harrison’s otherwise tidy Rockville house. Here, a dozen artfully arranged instruments chorus together on a sun-dappled windowsill. A metal wrack in the dining room holds pieces of theremins-in-the-making, and a brightly colored plastic arch on the floor contains a weatherproof, crank-operated theremin that may someday find its way into a playground.

While Harrison sells his inventions, hundreds of them a year, he also publishes his schematics online so that anyone can copy his designs. That open-source ethic has made him popular among theremin enthusiasts—the kind of people who tend to own soldering guns. “There’s something special about building your own theremin; it’s like a Jedi making his own light saber,” says Barile.

For Harrison, it’s more like building his own vocal chords.

“I love singing, but my range is terrible,” says Harrison. “With a theremin, I have all the vocal range I need and more.”

A limited singing voice, however, hasn’t kept Harrison away from D.C.’s music scene for the last 40 years. In the 1970s, Harrison spoke-sang and played homemade sequencers in the band Jobs for America. The group released basement recordings, played at open mics, and managed to book a few shows at legit clubs, including D.C. Space. (The drummer, Brian Horowitz, went on to found The Ubangis.) For the next two decades, Harrison played with a variety of bands, made dozens of recordings, and performed in D.C. and Baltimore, but his music career didn’t really take off until 2003.

In October of that year, Harrison visited Arlington’s Galaxy Hut to see The Cassettes, a local, self-described steampunk band with odd instrumentation: Shelby Cinca on slide guitar and vocals; Saadat Awan on tabla, a classical Indian drum; and Stephen Guidry on accordion and keyboard. Guidry had forgotten the keyboard’s power cord, so he invited Harrison to fill in. (Harrison and Guidry played together in another outfit.)

“Artie, of course, always has a theremin with him, so he just got up and played with us,” says Cinca. Though Harrison is two decades older than the other members of the band, his theremin fit perfectly with The Cassettes’ sound, says Guidry, and the band recruited him as a permanent member.

“We were all playing instruments that in other contexts could have been novelty-style instruments, and we, I think, took them and really did something musical with them,” Guidry says.

Soon after acquiring Harrison, the group signed to L.A.-based Buddyhead Records, and released ’Neath the Pale Moon in 2006. The album caught the attention of some music critics and bloggers, and the group went from playing tiny Arlington cafes like Galaxy Hut to, well, larger Arlington cafes like Iota. Farther-flung shows, however, posed a problem for Harrison. In addition to the usual aches and pains of middle age, Harrison has fibromyalgia, which makes sitting for extended periods of time extremely uncomfortable. “I don’t travel well,” he says.

So when Buddyhead sent The Cassettes on a four-week, cross-country tour, Harrison joined them at the halfway mark, in Seattle. He spent two weeks on tour in a crowded Chevy van, crashing on couches and sleeping on floors like his much younger bandmates. “Sometimes, I’d beg Shelby to drop me off at the nearest motel,” he says.

What kept him going despite the discomfort? “My ego,” says Harrison.

It’s true that Harrison had his share of fans, says Cinca. In fact, Harrison’s the only member of the band to be flashed midshow, by a woman at the Black Cat who then laid down underneath the theremin and rolled around moaning, Cinca says. But he suspects Harrison is more driven by his love of his instrument than the groupies.

“We’d get to the club and set up, and Artie would go straight outside on the street with his little Vox amp and play theremin for two hours until the show,” says Cinca. “He’d bring in huge audiences that way.”

“He literally wants to play his instrument 24 hours a day,” says Guidry.

The Cassettes never found mainstream success. After the cross-country tour, the band’s booking agent quit and its label became less supportive, says Cinca. The band went on hiatus in 2008, when Cinca moved to Sweden to be closer to his ailing father. Cinca is now contemplating a move back to America to reunite The Cassettes, but Harrison worries that his rock star years may finally be over.

“I don’t know what will happen,” he says. “I don’t want to give up my music career over some aches and pains, but [touring] will be more of a challenge now than when I was 47.”

Nerve pain and creeping arthritis, however, haven’t kept Harrison from becoming a sought-after studio musician. Connections he made through The Cassettes have brought him dozens of recording gigs, including a movie soundtrack (for a John Goodman-narrated documentary about hot rods) and a heavy metal album (Dead To Fall’s Are You Serious?). He’s also become D.C.’s go-to indie rock thereminst, playing local shows with bands like The Torches (Guidry’s current band) and These United States. These gigs often bring him back to the Black Cat, where he spends the hours between soundcheck and showtime playing on the sidewalk in front of the club. But more often, you can find Harrison practicing his theremin outside of his favorite Chinese restaurant, the New Mandarin, in Rockville.

“Oftentimes the best place to play is in a lonely parking lot,” he says, “sitting on the tailgate of your car.”

Photos and video by Darrow Montgomery

Good morning, people. Happy Wednesday! Only one more day of random torrential downpours, and then it's sunny Thursday, and then it's the weekend again! And the Rock & Roll Hotel's Summer Eve party! Kind of late for summer's eve, no?

In case you missed it, NYT writes that Imagining Madoff is indefinitely postponed, Bluebrain graces us with another WTF project, and T.I., M.I.A., and LCD Soundsystem, among others, are headlining the Virgin FreeFest on Sept. 25. Tickets go on sale Saturday! In other news, Mike Riggs pens his review on These United States—the record is kind of a snoozer.

Tonight's NoMa Summer Screen features Logan's Run–life must end at 30. Intriguing. If you'd rather keep on believin', then sing your little heart away at Little Miss Whiskey's Kostume Karaoke event tonight or let the music sing for you over lunch on Woodrow Wilson Plaza.

ReadysetDC reports that Seth Goodin, bestselling author of books such as Purple Cow and Tribes (WTF?), will be live at Warner Theatre tomorrow chatting up on his latest book, Linchpin. Huge McLeod reviews:

This is by far Seth’s most passionate book. He’s pulling fewer punches. He’s out for blood. He’s out to make a difference. And that glorious, heartfelt passion is obvious on every page, even if it is in Seth’s usual quiet, lucid, understated manner.

A linchpin, as Seth describes it, is somebody in an organization who is indispensable, who cannot be replaced—her role is just far too unique and valuable. And then he goes on to say, well, seriously folks, you need to be one of these people, you really do. To not be one is economic and career suicide.

Sounds completely marvelous, except an all-day VIP ticket runs at $595 (what's he smoking?), but don't fret! The half-day ticket is only $195 and ReadysetDC is offering $50 discounts! The District's one in 10 unemployed residents probably won't be attending that session, but maybe Politico's elites will pop in?

On a sad note, the body of missing Montgomery County artist Azin Naimi was found in the District.

That's all for this morning. Please enjoy the video, and hop off to better times. I'll be finding some time to watch Inception—everyone and their mother's been raving about this mind-fuck.

These United States

For the record: I am not saying this as some scuzzy, shoeless shut-in who ripped What Lasts (out today!) for free. No, I took a break out of my busy day, opened iTunes, and I paid $9.99 for this album. Nor am I saying this as someone who only recently came to country music, or alt-country, or whatever the plaid-shirted 'tards in your yoga class are calling it. I played with cow shit before it was cool for hipsters to walk around smelling like they slept in a dumpster. I got rodeo day—not president’s day—off from school. I have eaten bull testicles, with barbecue sauce and without barbecue sauce.

So believe me when I tell you that good country music should make you move, rev your engine, dance, go out for a grape snow cone/drop her off early, but not go home, etc., and that this album makes me want to take a fucking nap in a house undergoing termite treatment.

Why does These United States do this? I don't know. I've never spoken to Elliott or his mates, and I doubt I will now. This being such a terrible review and all. I have a theory that hipsters demand really boring music; music that they can listen to while they smoke opium or write in their diaries, but I'll spare you the conjecture and just give it to you straight, right after I take a quick nap.

OK. Back.

Let’s dial it down for a minute. There is one really good song on What Lasts. It is called “Water and Wheat” and it sounds exactly like “I Want You to Keep Everything,” which is the best track on TUS’ previous record, Everything Touches Everything. Maybe you think I am going to slam TUS for being derivative? Nope. I don’t even care that “Water and Wheat” has the same rhythm as “I Want You to Keep Everything,” because now that this song is on, I am too busy jumping up and down in my office, pumping my fist in the air, and freaking out on the guy who sits next to me.

“Water and Wheat” is so good, in fact, that I will probably buy a ticket to TUS’ next show, even though I hate live music. (I just accidentally let another song from this album play, one that is not “Water and Wheat,” and now I need another nap.)

This isn’t to say that the entire rest of the album is shit: “Ever Make You Mine” has a decent Doobie Brothers-style breakdown; “Life&Death She&I” features some sweet-sounding steel guitar and Elliott dueting with Dawn Landes (a Kentucky native, occasional vocalist in Hem, and wife of Josh Ritter).

But otherwise? This album is boring as hell. That said, I’ll probably buy the next one, and the one after that—ad infinitum!—in the hopes that Elliott will have figured out what, exactly, lasts.

Either he's generous or he's crazy, but David Isaacson’s passion for independent music eclipses any financial incentives. While still in high school, Isaacson created IndieMuse, a blog whose slightly redundant mission is to be “a place where people who are as passionate about music as we are can come together to listen and talk about music.” Initially conceived as an outlet for his ramblings, Isaacson’s IndieMuse began attracting attention, garnering around 4,000 hits a day. Now a student at American University (which I also attend), Isaacson wants to promote indie rock by creating a site where artists can sell their music and keep every penny. And Isaacson doesn’t want a dime. This is his vision for MusicFloss.

As Isaacson describes it, MusicFloss operates on two levels: It's a music store where independent artists and labels sell or give away music directly to fans; whereas most music stores pocket a 30-50 percent commission, MusicFloss doesn’t take a cut from sales. He also sees MusicFloss is a Web community for like-minded music fans and artists to directly contact other artists.

Some notable bands who have signed on to the site include These United States, Hey Marseilles, You Can Be A Wesley, and Pale Young Gentlemen. Despite the laborious process of creating a site like MusicFloss, Isaacson has been going at it alone, paying a fairly low overhead cost, he says.

“I took off some time from school and invested some of my savings,” says Isaacson. “I’ve been working on this for three years and it’s taken this long because I’ve done most of this on my own.”

But Isaacson’s pocket change can’t keep the site running for long. But recently, he entered a contest sponsored by Pepsi, which hands out $50,000 grants to projects supporting independent music. MusicFloss was voted into the top 100 of the applicant pool, and Isaacson is now waiting to see if his project will make the top 10, which will be decided at the end of the month.