Eggplant Heroes
album follows years of casual jamming
Chances are, although they’re only now releasing their first CD, you’ve already heard of most of the members of Eggplant Heroes. You’ve probably seen Joel Pace dancing around onstage with Irie Sol, or Duffy Duyfhuizen strumming with Davey J and the Jones Tones, or maybe you’ve seen Olaf Lind playing his violin with the Eau Claire Chamber Orchestra or Lucas K and the Coolhand Saints. You may have even read one of poet/songwriter Max Garland’s prize-winning books of poetry. But what this quartet produces when they’re together is nowhere near what you’ve heard before.
“Stylistically,” says Lind, “it’s a very different sort of band than most things that are happening around here. Having another outlet where I can do things that are a little bit more lyrical or that have a little bit more of shades of dynamic meaning is a great thing.”
“We actually were playing,” says Pace, “before Duffy was in the Jones Tones and before I was in Irie Sol, so we pre-exist these people. And it actually works out because between Irie Sol and these guys there’s not a genre of music I don’t play.”
Eggplant Heroes cover a wide variety of those genres themselves, singing everything from old-time gospel tunes to literature-inspired reggae. “All of us come from such different musical backgrounds,” says Pace, “that we try to let all of those streams run into one big river and feed off those different styles.”
This diversity makes the group’s first CD, After This Time, an eclectic but still very much cohesive outing. No matter the genre, each song still fits with the whole of the recording, which is strongly nostalgic with both soothing and sorrowful points.
Lind’s violin keeps each song bound together while Duyfhuizen, Garland, and Pace add vocals, which are backed by some solid guitar, trumpet, and harmonica. Some of the resulting emotion, the group says, comes from the place they chose to record.
“We recorded it with Chris Mara isolated in a barn in Clear Lake, WI,” says Pace, who worked with Mara while recording with Irie Sol. “It’s this historic red barn out in solitude … and I thought if anyone’s going to bring these songs out of Max and Olaf and Duffy it’s going to be Chris.” If Lind is to be believed, Pace definitely made the right decision. “It was a great experience to record there. It was definitely the best experience I’ve ever had recording.”
Eggplant Heroes’ CD is available at Volume One and CDBaby for $15. Or see them live on Aug. 13 at Acoustic Café.
