Deleted Scenes’ cynical poetic lyrics blend triumphantly with a musical style that is surprisingly symphonic for a four-piece rock band. The band’s popularity continues its upward slope with a recent article in Spin and an 8.0 rating in Pitchfork. Deleted Scenes returns to Atlanta for a show at 529 on Wednesday, July 6th, playing with Baby Baby, Howlies and Low Five All Stars.

If you are familiar with this band’s output, It is not surprising to you when you find the latest Deleted Scenes single stuck in your head. “Bed Bed Bed Bed Bed Bed Bed” is slightly absurd and yet very catchy and musically infectious. The three-letter word repeats itself over and over, lulling the listener into a musical dream where sleep is it’s own hypnosis. Waking up might mean the end of a great moment in time, or maybe the beginning of a new hope. Either way, we’re addicted and once you hear it, chances are that it will get stuck in your head, and before you know it you’ll be rhyming in your waking to the word bed, as it repeats. Listen for yourself.

We had the chance to catch up with Deleted Scenes frontman and songwriter Dan Scheuerman to find out more about this touring band.

Interview by Justin Sias

JS: How has preparing for this tour been different than in the past?

DS: We’ve been incredibly busy leading up to this tour. We are releasing a 12″ EP, which we have been cutting and gluing the sleeves for all week. It’s a ton of work, but pretty fun. The decision was inspired partly by the fact that we’re too broke to afford professional sleeves, and partly by stories about the old Dischord days when they would hand-assemble the packaging for their early 7″s and mail them all over the world.

JS: That’s cool. So now you are going to take it on the road. Anything in particular you are looking forward to about this tour?

DS: We’re doing a live one-take video in Omaha with this great new video collective called Love Drunk that I am super excited about. I highly recommend their videos on www.lovedrunkstudio.com. The quality of sound they manage to get out of single live take is really hard to believe, so I’m looking forward to learning a lot by being part of that process.

JS: What are the pros and cons of being a band in DC?

DS: DC is expensive, and hard to find practice space in. However, it’s really unpretentious and homey. If you go to a few DIY shows, you pretty much know everyone making music in town, so there’s a community vibe that we really appreciate.

JS: I really like in the new song how when it gets to the final bed bed bed part, how there feels like a shift, taking the mood to a new level. Did you do that intentionally? Is it a key change?

DS: I think it’s called a re-harm—where you take the same melody and put it over a different set of chords. Matt came up with the new chords for the ending part as a way to sort of uplift the song. It’s one of the benefits of working with a songwriting partner. I will often feel like the song is totally complete, and he’ll add another layer that boosts the whole thing.

JS: How is the upcoming album release Young People’s Church of the Air different from your last – Birdseed Shirt?

DS: This album was done in a professional studio in a more condensed period of time. We still spent a lot of time exploring sounds and re-imagining the songs, but this time it was more concentrated and orderly. As a result, it was also a lot more intense and pressurized, which I think might have added a kind of doomed energy to the mixes. The songwriting on this album is more rhythmically adventurous. We are working with some more exciting feels than the Americana vibe we explored on Birdseed Shirt. There’s a song that’s inspired by DC’s native dance beat, “Go-Go,” a song that’s inspired by UK garage music, and a kind of R. Kelly club banger.

Some of the textures are a bit difficult. I was inspired by Burmese pop from the seventies, and by Elliott Smiths’ last album From the Basement on a Hill to put distortion in some places where you wouldn’t normally expect it, and leave it the process open to accidents and strangeness whenever possible. I think it’s a more confident work, more cohesive — more the work of a band digging in and discovering itself. We also started employing some double-kick grooves. Most people associate double-kick with cheesier music, which was part of the appeal for us. We wanted to see if we could find a hidden artfulness in it.

JS: Your lyrics have a poetic and almost literary quality to them. What writers are you influenced by?

DS: Well, thanks! It’s hard to say. I mean, I like a lot of writers. David Foster Wallace and Flannery O’Connor are probably my two favorites. They are both hilarious and deeply serious at the same time.

JS: What comes first, the lyrics or the music?

DS: On this album, it was mostly the music. Most of the songs started out with a fruity loops drum pattern and developed from there. The lyrics for those came last. There are a few songs I wrote by myself, where the music and lyrics came simultaneously in a sort of lightning bolt. There’s always a few of those.

JS: Musically, what kind of a tone are you going for?

DS: I think there’s an attempt in the new songs to take happiness seriously, and to cultivate a state of mind that guards itself against cynicism. At the same time, there are a lot of troubling and heavy themes on the album, which aren’t brushed over, but rather looked at without defaulting on negativity. Doubting the doubts. Tenuous hope.

I moved to Cabbagetown nine years ago. Those were different times. Back then you could still buy any drug at any hour on any street corner you wanted. Sure, the gentrification was well underway, but there was still something untamed and slightly dangerous about the place. And there were lots of ‘characters’. Now it’s all the boring kinds of crimes, and lots of yuppies in BMWs road-raging against each other on Carroll Street.

The REAL Kristofferson

When he noticed me, he called, “Hey boy, you look like James Dean!
Anybody ever told you that?”
“Nope,” I replied. “Never heard that one.”
“Oh yeah. You got the curl an’ everything. My momma used to do me like
this,” he continued, pulling a comb from his pocket and combing his hair
back in the reflection in a car window. “She used-ta slick it back with
homogenized butter.”

He got a pretty good quaff going, I must admit. Even without the butter. Said he liked to think of himself as a cross between James Dean and Jerry Lee Lewis. He assured me, several times, that he was not a bum, then he went on to give me his life story. Moved to Cabbagetown with his mother in ‘57, worked the factory when he was seven years old, used to “run dogs all up and down these streets” (whatever that means), and once, allegedly, replaced several missing stones in the Oakland Cemetery wall. Said he left Cabbagetown in ‘68, when he went to ‘Nam.

“I’m the oldest living veteran with seven Congressional medals of honor
and two purple hearts,” he yelled, “and I can’t even spell my own name.”
He walked away, teary-eyed and apologetic. I called back “It was nice
talking to you,” and I meant it.
Still, I didn’t catch his name.

Bon and Jon . Matt McCalvin . Ronney Danger . Louise Le Hir

We get to St. Louis Wednesday afternoon, and of course it’s raining. The venue is down the street from Vintage Vinyl, one of my all-time favorite record stores. I go in and drool on their records for a while, but I have zero money to spend. I almost buy a $3 Billy Squire record just to be dumb, but I reign myself in.

Cicero’s is a sports bar with a divey music room in the back. The bartender is a mean, no-nonsense blonde girl who we have to practically beg for our drink tickets and band pizza, but eventually Matt Forsee wins her over with his easy Southern charm.

The first band (who shall remain nameless) are hands down the worst band we’ve ever shared a bill with. Their lead guitarist was unable to make it tonight, so the singer’s dad is filling in – a spent metal-head in his fifties with a Marshall amp and one of those lime green Steve Vai guitars with the hand grip cut into the body. he kid plays a red Jackson, and his GF plays the drums. It’s a family affair. They play their ridiculously shitty funk-metal to the kid’s mom, who dances all serpentine up front. The other twenty people in the room look on, pained. They are friends or family members, forced to be here out of obligation. As much as our music might have the power to cleanse their aural pallette, they will obviously not be staying for our show.

As predicted, the first band’s crowd files out immediately following their set, and Dad is so busy shmoozing them outside he forgets to move his shit off the stage. Off my side of the stage. Finally, after we are all set up, line-checked, and ready to play, he figures it out, and loads his stuff out of my way with not so much as a ‘sorry, bro’. Amateur.

We play to the third band, their GFs, and about six die-hard Howlies fans. Inexplicably, we sell almost $100 in merch to this microscopic crowd.

We drive to Memphis, the last show of the tour. Today is the first day we’ve had in a week. Blue skies and sunshine. But there are signs of last night’s severe weather. Flooded farmlands, interstate signs and billboards bent into weird angles. The Mississippi River looks ready to burst.

We’re very early, so we load into Hi Tone and walk across the street to the park. There is an ultimate Frisbee game going on, and lots of dogs running around. One dog races across the park flying a kite tied to his collar. He makes it all the way across, then crashes the kite into a tree. We stay here until dusk then walk back to Hi Tone for our band pizza and beer.

There are sometimes more people backstage at Hi Tone than out front, and this is the case tonight. All the people who might like our show are in the back room smoking and playing foosball. Maybe they come out front to watch us play, but I have my glasses off so I can’t tell. We have a good show, but the crowd is pretty fratty. Our usual Memphis fan base is mysteriously absent, but we’re all just ready to go home so we don’t really care. We load out and drive straight back to Atlanta. Matt takes the first shift and I catch a few hours of sleep. I am woken up at dawn outside Birmingham. It’s my turn to drive. We are right in the path of the now-infamous tornadoes. Everything, everywhere, as far as the eye can see, is destroyed. Houses and cars in ruins, trees like splintered toothpicks. The radio stations are all in emergency mode. I drive through these ruins, still half-asleep, as if in some nightmare. I keep my eyes open til Atlanta (by listening to a modern country station at top volume), and soon I’m home in my bed, where I will remain for a day and a half.

Chris Wright’s Morbid Anatomy is interactive wooden sculpture…  Lots of puppet like things. There will be show cards, popsicle stick puppets, 3 kinetic masks, one pulley system, and a system of winches. This is going to be art interaction and it will be a lot of fun!

View the event on Facebook

part 3: Columbus to Chicago

by Justin Brooke

Saturday night, Columbus Ohio. We head straight to Carabar. This is where we always play, but we’re not playing here tonight. We just stopped in to drink a few shots of Powers whiskey with Ron, who is the man. It’s only 6 pm, so things are still tame. Ron just got a new Colt 45 Slushie machine and he lets me try one. It’s grape-flavored Colt 45. For the record, malt liquor + grape saccharine flavor = disgusting.

The venue we’re playing is called Treehouse, because there’s a massive oak tree in the middle of the room, growing up through the roof. This was no accident. The whole building has been constructed around this tree. Somebody saw the tree and said ‘I love this tree so much I have to build a dive bar around it’. It’s been raining all day, and the rain has trickled down the tree, and now the inside of the venue is sopping wet and mildewy. I get the impression it’s always this way, but clearly it’s worse when it rains. We play to the tree and about fifty people. I stand in a pool of rainwater, getting electrocuted by my microphone every time my lips touch it. Not a little shocked, mind you. Electrocuted. The tree is six feet in front of me and it soaks up all the sound. No matter how loud we play, the music sounds dead and distant, like an outdoor show at some county fair. It’s weird. But the crowd seems into it.

We make it back to Carabar at around 2:45 a.m. They are closed. I call Ron and he lets us in. I drink five Colt 45 grape drinks and three Colt 45 margaritas (slightly better than the grape but still disgusting).

Sunday is Easter so we drive halfway to Chicago and get a hotel in Lafayette. Nothing much to report here, except several drug deals seem to be going down in the parking lot. We stick to the vending machines, and only venture out to eat across the street at IHOP, where the waitresses are all wearing rabbit ears.

It’s a cold and rainy Monday in Chicago. Everything is obscured by fog. Only the lower floors of the Sears tower are visible. It is definitely not springtime here. We eat breakfast in an amazing Polish diner then spend all day sitting in our parallel-parked van, watching movies on the laptop. We watch the Lemmy documentary. I have a new respect for the man, but the film makes Matt sad.

Pancho’s is a Cuban restaurant and bar, which has apparently taken over the ‘Official Wicker Park Dive Bar’ torch from Ronnie’s, which is down the street. Pancho himself tends the bar, and simultaneously plays very loud maracas along with the first band. This is vaguely annoying, and I hope he won’t do it when we play. But Pancho’s excitement is aroused by the second band. He pulls an alto saxophone out from under the bar and begins wailing along with them. He does this for a few songs, while still serving drinks, until the singer invites him on stage. Now it will be impossible to get a drink. Pancho stands on stage, squealing up and down the scales, searching for the key of the song. The band stops cold and he keeps glissando-ing out of control. He trades a few awkward licks with the guitar player, and then goes back to bartending. For our show, he keeps quiet. I’m not sure if it’s because he hates our music, or because he respects it.

Next morning we feast on a breakfast of Pequod’s pizza. This is the greasiest, most delicious deep-dish pizza I have ever eaten. I save a piece and eat it a few hours later. It’s like biting into a sopping wet sponge.

by Justin Brooke

Part 2: Lexington to Toledo

It is a beautiful spring morning, and we’re driving from Knoxville to Lexington, through the majestic Daniel Boone National Forest.

We arrive in town early, so we hit up a park. I trek out across a hilly expanse of grass, looking for a place to sleep. I find it, and drift into a very calm, meditative state. This probably lasts about ten minutes. Then a distant but persistent buzzing noise grows louder until it’s right on top of me. A remote-controlled airplane. It mocks me with loopy-loops. I spot the top of a bald head peeking over a hill, and the remote control antenna, protruding like some penile substitute. This creep can fly, but he’s ruining my nap. Is he intentionally fucking with me? Is he the cops? Is there a tiny camera on his plane, recording my every move? No, no stop that. That’s just paranoid. Then his plane takes a dive bomb straight at me. He pulls it up just in time, but I decide to get out of there. I grab my stuff and walk toward the lake. I half-expect to be chased down by the plane like in North by Northwest, but the creep keeps his distance.

It’s windy down by the lake, but it’s quiet. I play guitars with Aaron for a while, then we head toward the venue.

Cosmic Charlie’s shares a strip mall with a sports bar, a laundromat, and a liquor store. We’ve never played here, and I’m skeptical, but they tell me this is where you play in Lexington, and the college is right down the street, so maybe the kids will show up.

Because we’re in Kentucky, and because our advance sheets say nothing of free beer tonight, we decide to invest in some Kentucky bourbon. Brandon and I opt for a brand called Very Old Barton.

As we feared, there’s no hospitality to be had at Cosmic Charlie’s, so we order soda waters and add our VOB right in front of them, really just daring them to say something about it {our behavior here might seem strange to some people, so let me explain: when a band comes from out of town to play your venue, a modicum of free beer is expected, and those establishments/people who, as a policy, refuse to come across with the free beer are, as a policy, dicks}.

Brandon and I sit at the bar watching the Hawks/Magic game. Hawks win. A gaggle of college girls appear. This is promising. Usually, where there is a gaggle of girls, others will follow. And yet, nobody does. These girls are definitely here for the other band, and I can tell they’re all going to leave before we play, so I do what I never ever do: I approach two of them and beg them not to go. I say ‘just give it one song’. They politely explain they’ve gotta go blah blah blah, and then they all leave. I must say I detected a heavy religious vibe from them, and I think I scared them a little. The crowd is now reduced to the first band plus one girlfriend, two random dudes, and a seven foot tall guy we know from Asheville who just moved here and is blindly drunk.

I hit my VOB bottle pretty hard, order another soda water, and get on stage. I take the glasses off again. As we get into the first song, I see a vague ruckus on the dance floor – someone is whirling around the empty void, and it’s our boy from Asheville. I put my glasses back on. He is beautiful, flinging his giant limbs around, falling all over the other six people in the room, spilling drinks everywhere, screaming FUCKIN HOWLIES! over and over.

After the show, he insists that we stay with him, but we have decided to take our chances with Random Dude #1, whose real name is Roy. Roy lives twenty minutes outside town, in a smaller town whose name I will never know. His apartment building shares a parking lot with an IGA straight out of 1952. Apparently, the soda machine in front of the IGA is the town’s biggest teenage hang-out spot. Tonight it’s deserted, but a bunch of kids are standing around across the street at the bus stop (the second biggest hang-out spot in town). Roy’s power is shut off, but there’s an extention cord running from the basement of the building, and the TV, Xbox, microwave, and christmas lights are all plugged into a lone surge protector. Brandon and I stand on Roy’s back deck, smoking and admiring the old-timey surroundings. Brandon informs me that he just drank the majority of his VOB in the van, on the way here. I say ‘wow, you don’t even seem that drunk.’ And he says ‘I know!’ Then he tries to trade me a granola bar for the rest of my VOB. Ten minutes later, he’s doing an impression of Jimmy Page hawking up a loogie, his head practically buried in the lap of Random Dude #2, who has definitely chosen the wrong place to sit. Somebody says ‘Brandon, stop simulating fellatio. You’re freaking this guy out!’

Eventually, Brandon passes out with his arms around the toilet. I pass out on my army cot near the back door. An hour later some kids hop the A/C unit, climb up on Roy’s back deck, and waltz in through the back door. They stand over me yelling ‘Hey Roy! Where you at?’ Roy is asleep in his loft. They climb over my helpless body, drunkenly and awkwardly. I want to knee them in the balls, but I keep my cool. Roy wakes up and tells them to take their drunk asses home. Moments later they climb back over me and exit.

It is a long, rainy, dreary drive to Toledo, which (I’m sorry) is looking pretty bleak. Maybe it’s just the weather. Then again, it’s raining every time we come here. We sell some vinyl to Rama-lama Records then drive around the city several times looking for a Little Caesar’s (because you can get two large pizzas for $10, and we are that broke). We load into Frankie’s downtown. Brandon and I watch another Hawks/Magic game. Hawks win again. Not that I really care, but being this far from home, it feels good that Atlanta is winning. It’s Friday night and Atlanta is winning, baby.

The crowd is pretty decent. I drink the rest of my VOB and too much free PBR (it’s the bare minimum of hospitality, but I will take it). Up there, Howlies get loose. It’s the loosest show we’ve played in ages. It feels good.

We stay with the other band’s bass player, who lives twenty miles away in Bowling Green, Ohio. His apartment has a very shagadelic vibe. About 375 people sit around smoking cigarettes in the living room. Dozens of ashtrays made from melted 12″ vinyl, all overflowing with butts.

Next morning, I wake with heavy lungs. I must have inhaled a pack of second-hand smoke in my sleep. And now it’s on to our old friend Columbus.
On to Chicago

by Justin Brooke

Part 1. Nashville to Knoxville

Backstage at the Mercy Lounge, I stand behind giant windows, gazing out at downtown Nashville, and mentally preparing myself for the first night of an eight-show Howlies tour – and Howlies plan to kick this thing off right, with a show so teenage, so stupid, so loud, so drunk, and so fuckin… fuckin… well… okay, to be honest, I’m a little worried about the turnout here, because my eyes cannot help peeking down at the empty parking lot, and it is a Tuesday night, and it is raining, and yeah, Lady Gaga is playing down the street, and okay I admit Howlies and Gaga share a fan base (pretty much demographically identical), but I have faith in the rock n roll spirit of Nashville – no – I have faith in the people of Nashville, and I know how to make their little ears bleed.

Moments later, Howlies take the stage to less-than-roaring applause. Okay, the room is pretty much empty. Maybe fifteen people out there. Fuck it. I take off my glasses, and give it to the blur.

After the show, we repair to a very hip East Nashville bar full of Big Howlies Fans who couldn’t quite make it to the show earlier. Nashville is full of these people. They are called musicians. I sneak in some beers that the Mercy Lounge’s bartender gave me, as a pittance (let it never be said that the Mercy Lounge has no Mercy). I commence getting drunk. Fade to black.

We arrive in downtown Knoxville at dusk. It’s been raining all day and the city is sodden. There is nothing to do, except wait for this venue to open. Well, there’s a shop next door with old records and vintage guitars, and it makes me want to cream myself, but I’m broke so I walk out after five minutes. I wander around downtown. I am accosted by a gang of teenage Christians who pretend to be my pals before trying to sell me useless trinkets. I tell them ‘good luck raising money for your trip to Peru, but I am a bum and I have nothing for you’. I go into a pizza place. The leader of the Christian gang follows me in. He asks me if I’m with the table of kids across the room. I say no. He goes over and tries to sell them his trinkets. They are immediately turned off by his fake-niceness. They ask him to fuck off. I eat my pizza on the walk back to the Pilot Light.

I appreciate this venue. It’s an unpretentious dive with a stage and a record player behind the bar. What more do you need? And there’s a decent crowd here, too, for a Wednesday night. This will only be the second show we’ve done in Knoxville, but it looks like we’ve got some repeat customers. And we need that, because last night kinda sucked. We proceed to rock the fuck out, as they say. You can tell how much a crowd likes you by how much merch they buy afterward. I think we did $7000 in merch. But it could’ve been like $40. I don’t remember. I was pretty drunk.

We spend the night with a friend. He lives in his aunt’s house in a retirement community. As we’re getting our sleeping bags out of the van, some old guy walks past in short shorts and no shirt. He gives us a suspicious glance, then walks on down the street and straight into the woods. We’re thinking that’s kind of weird, but apparently, this guy decided to call the cops on us – because ten minutes later, I’m jammin the fuck out on our host’s VOX acoustic guitar (I know, I’ve never seen one before either), and suddenly the Knoxville Pigs are ringing the doorbell. Our host has to explain that we are guests not burglars, but I want to know why the shirtless guy gets to walk around like a character from a David Lynch movie without having to ever explain his deal to anyone. That’s America, I guess. Crucify the long-hairs.

Read more of Howlies Tour log

by Justin Brooke

If there is a living archetype for rock ‘n’ roll, it is Keith Effing Richards. And now, The Man Who Drugs Could Not Kill has given us a manual for living.

Life (co-written by James Fox) could just as easily have been titled Keith’s Little Instruction Book; hidden between anecdotes about supermodels and controlled substances, there are nuggets of sagely wisdom. Example: if you ever find yourself in a knife fight, the best move is no move – the knife is meant to distract your opponent while you kick him in the balls. However, if you must use the blade, a quick cut above the eyebrow does the trick – you won’t cause any real damage, and your opponent will be blinded by their own blood.

Keith chalks up his own survival to 1. pharmaceutical-grade dope, and 2. never overdoing it (though if you’ve seen Cocksucker Blues, it’s kind of hard to believe that last one). I get the impression that his longevity comes more from an unstoppable creative drive. He may not be the front man of the Rolling Stones, but he’s clearly the bandleader.

The casual Stones fan might be surprised to learn what a born leader Keith Richards really is. From the early days in the London club scene, up through the stadium-filling present, he’s been the glue holding the World’s Greatest Band together. In the early chapters, we see him honing his leadership skills as Patrol Leader of the Beaver Patrol, Seventh Dartford Scouts. There, Keith learned how to use a knife, and more importantly, how to hold a group of guys together (though he admits, “discipline was a little lax”).

Along the way, we get guest commentary from luminaries such as long-time Stones saxophonist (and Keith’s best friend) Bobby Keys, a wild Texan who made the perfect outlaw sidekick. Upon learning that the two shared the exact same birthday, Richards told Keys: “We’re half men and half horse, and we got a license to shit in the streets.” And shit in the streets they did.

Keith is unflinching in his description of his long, tumultuous relationship with Mick Jagger (un-affectionately referred to as ‘Brenda’). Yet, for all their differences, something (money?) continues to hold them together after all these years.

I’ve read plenty of ghostwritten musician bios in my day, but Life takes the cake. Not even the Miles Davis autobiography comes close to the all-out hedonism described in these pages. There are lots of pro tips for guitar nerds, too. I give Life five ‘bumps’ out of five.