The 1900s have only been playing live shows since September, and their debut EP, Plume Delivery, doesn’t come out until May 30. But they’ve led a charmed existence so far. They landed a deal with Parasol Records shortly after their first gig, the EP’s enjoying positive advance notices on indie-rock tip sheets and MP3 blogs, and they sold out a recent headlining gig at the Hideout.
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Anderson was classmates with Tim Minnick, who got into music while playing percussion in the school band. In high school the two formed a noisy experimental outfit called M.O.P. (short for Minotaurs of P) that included another classmate, Mike Jasinski, on guitar. But after graduating in the mid-90s the three friends went separate ways: Minnick to art school in England, Jasinski to Carbondale to study recording and composition at SIU, and Anderson to the University of Oregon to study anthropology and folklore.
In 2001 Anderson returned to Chicago, where Minnick was playing with the eclectic local roots-rockers Forty Piece Choir. Anderson soon joined the group as a seventh member, but his ambition to play a larger songwriting role in the band soon got him kicked out. (“I kinda overstepped my bounds creatively,” he says.) The following year he joined Plane, a postpunk combo led by Edgars Legzdins, who’d recorded Forty Piece Choir. Plane frequently played with local power-pop band Turner Joy, and Anderson became friends with that band’s bassist, Charlie Ransford.
Anderson approached the two about joining the 1900s shortly after the demos were finished in the summer of 2004. “I remember we spent a long time on the deck at this dinner party talking about music and what the band would be,” says O’Toole. Neither she nor Donovan had been in a group, but both were sold after hearing the demo tracks. “I totally loved it,” says O’Toole. “I remember telling Caroline, ‘This is a band I would totally listen to.’”
For Anderson the growing attention is gratifying but also a little unsettling. “The response has been pretty incredible, almost weird as far as everyone being super helpful and friendly, and other bands asking us to play shows,” he says. “We’ve kinda been looking at each other like, ‘What’s happening here?’”
