After a recent all-ages show in Milwaukee, Pit Er Pat singer and keyboardist Fay Davis-Jeffers took her turn hawking the band’s merchandise, including a secondhand T-shirt embroidered by drummer Butchy Fuego. He’d spent nearly two days stitching on the group’s name and an assortment of oddly shaped patches–it’s the only shirt he’s made so far, since Davis-Jeffers can do the same job in less than an hour. “One kid was like, ‘Shit, 15 dollars, I don’t have that much money,’” she says. But the next night in Minneapolis the band had better luck: “There was this thirtysomething guy who said, ‘Fifteen–that seems really cheap for this.’”
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Pit Er Pat’s current 16-date tour is their first extended trip away from Chicago, and pushing a national release on a respected indie label will require lots more time on the road, away from those other pursuits. But that might not be such a bad thing. The band’s slippery, guitar-free art-pop has already benefited from the extra attention they’ve devoted to it since the release of Emergency: the songs on the new album are more fluid and flexible, the arrangements more detailed. As ever, Davis-Jeffers’s sweet, airy singing threads through her electric piano lines, which sometimes sound like a slowed-down music box; Doran’s melodic bass and Fuego’s bustling, off-kilter drumming give the delicate tunes harmonic heft and anxious energy. “I’ve stopped doing some of the things I was doing, but I think it’s something I wanted,” says Davis-Jeffers. “I was writing scripts for movies, I was drawing a lot, I would help friends with their movies. Rob and I started calling it ‘taking care of other people’s business’–instead of TCB it was TCOPB.”
“I got really freaked-out,” says Davis-Jeffers. “I said, ‘Maybe you guys should talk about it.’ Then Josh said, ‘Fay, what do you think we should call the band? What do you think about “Blackbirds”? Do you like that name? Hey, do you want to go to Midwest Buy & Sell? You need to get a piano.’” Luckily Doran and Fuego shared Gleason’s enthusiasm, and soon the quartet was playing the occasional gig. In summer 2002, when Gleason announced that he was moving to New York and leaving the band, Doran, Fuego, and Davis-Jeffers barely hesitated before deciding to continue without him; the rhythm section, with its experimental leanings, had already been chafing at Gleason’s relatively straightforward songs, and Fuego and Davis-Jeffers had started dating. The trio wrote five new tunes in two weeks–mostly loose instrumentals with plenty of room for improvisation–so they could play an Empty Bottle gig they’d already booked.
Pit Er Pat headlines the Empty Bottle on Friday, March 4, and Shakey comes out on Tuesday, March 8–the same day Polyvinyl releases a Pit Er Pat/Icy Demons split single. Pit Er Pat’s next local show is at the Open End Gallery on Friday, March 25.
Info: 773-276-3600 or 800-594-8499
Bob Mehr is on vacation.
