Gringo Star rocks out at Fontana’s at the 2010 CMJ Music Marathon (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
Thursday, December 1, Mercury Lounge, 217 East Houston St., $10-$12, 7:30
Saturday, December 3, Cameo Gallery, 93 North Sixth St., $8, 8:00
www.gringostar.net
On the second song on their sophomore album, Count Yer Lucky Stars (Gigantic Music, October 2011), Atlanta band Gringo Star proclaims, “You want it,” followed on the next tune by “You got it.” Originally known as A Fir-Ju-Well, Pete DeLorenzo and brothers Pete and Nicholas Furgiuele have been delivering great music since 2001. They added Matt McCalvin and became Gringo Star in 2007, and the next year their self-released debut, All Y’all (My Anxious Mouth, November 2008), was making a major impact on the indie music scene. Their 2009 tour of Europe was captured in Justin Malone’s 2011 documentary Hurry Up and Wait, and the band, with Chris Kaufmann replacing McCalvin, are back on the road again, supporting Count Yer Lucky Stars, an infectious collection of such 1950s- and ’60s-infused nuggets as “Shadow,” “Beatnik Angel Georgie,” “Jessica,” and “Light in the Sky,” featuring lilting harmonies, jangling guitars, and classic pop melodies. Gringo Star will be playing Mercury Lounge on December 1 with J. Roddy Walston & the Business and Gunfight and Cameo Gallery in Williamsburg on December 3 with Hammer No More the Fingers and Bird Hand. With their latest tour winding down, Nick took some time to answer some questions about the past, present, and future of the band.
twi-ny: It’s been three years between the initial release of All Y’all and Count Yer Lucky Stars. Why so much time between records?
Gringo Star: The reason we took three years to follow up All Y’all was mostly because we were so busy touring and taking opportunities that our “self-release” of that album created that we didn’t have a chance to get back in the studio. We just kept getting offered tours. We got to go to the UK and Europe eight times during those years, supporting Best Coast, …and You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, Wavves, Black Lips, as well as doing our own headlining dates. Then this German label, Cargo Records, signed us to put out All Y’all in Europe, so the album’s life got extended another year, and we went back to tour on it again. It was an amazing time, but we were so busy that we didn’t have a chance to stop and record. When we finally got back from that last Best Coast tour, we pretty much immediately went into preproduction with producer Ben Allen again and rehearsing/refining the new stuff.
twi-ny: ForLucky Stars, did you set out to make something consciously different from All Y’all ?
Gringo Star: When we started recording CYLS it wasn’t so much making something consciously different from All Y’all as it was to just create the greatest album ever made.
You can count yer lucky stars if you get to see Gringo Star this week at Mercury Lounge and Cameo Gallery (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
twi-ny: Well, you’ve certainly made a damn fine record. Early in Hurry Up and Wait, Matt McCalvin says that he hopes that the documentary will open a lot of doors for the band. What kind of impact has the film had on your career?
Gringo Star: We never really had expectations for how the documentary would affect our “career.” The Malone Pictures guys who made it we had never met until a couple weeks before we did the tour, and they saw us play in Dallas and were looking for the next documentary they were gonna do and just decided we were it. They really dug what we were doing and just called us up a few weeks before the tour and asked if we would mind them coming and filming.
twi-ny: What was it like being followed around by a camera night and day, capturing every warts-and-all moment, including a lot of outdoor tooth-brushing?
Gringo Star: It was a really fun time. You know, it’s always kinda weird to see yourself, on camera, talking about a bunch of dumb shit, walking around, like, “Oh . . . I look like THAT, or “I sound like THAT,” but it’s kind of cool to have a sliver of that time recorded. Those were some amazing shows, and we had a blast . . . outdoor teeth-brushing, bench-sleeping, armed robberies, and all. People that have seen the movie usually seem to react to us and our music in an even more positive way, I think, because they had some insight into the band and us as people. We played the premiere at the USA Film Festival [this past April], after they showed the movie to a sold-out theater, and it was crazy how much people were into us. They were so excited by the band and the songs. It was total uproar. Then after it was a little strange when random folks we’ve never met were calling us by first name.
twi-ny: Speaking again of playing, you, Pete, Pete, and Chris are known for your relentless touring and energetic live shows. Does it ever get overwhelming?
Gringo Star: Life can get overwhelming playing two hundred shows a year, not playing any shows a year, driving in traffic, wrecking your car, stuck at some dead-end job, loading and unloading the van, doing homework, studying for tests, or whatever if you let it. We love playing shows and staying busy playing and recording music that we love and try to roll with the punches. . . . Sometimes it does get a little overwhelming, especially in California, when it’s like, “Do I go with the Sour Diesel? Or Grand Daddy Purp? Or the Earwax? OK, I’ll take them all.”
twi-ny: Earlier this year, we asked your fellow Atlanta band Today the Moon, Tomorrow the Sun what was in the water down there that has led to so many great new bands over the last few years, including Deerhunter, Black Lips, and you, and they thought that it was because the water was laced with PBR. What do you think it might be?
Gringo Star: PBR is the worst. Clearly it’s the grits and cotton fields . . . and the gospel according to Lightnin’ Ray Jackson that all fine southern boys are brought up on.
Based on the play by Charles Bennett, Alfred Hitchcock’s 1929 thriller, Blackmail, is both his last silent picture as well as his first sound film. The transition is evident from the very beginning, eight glorious minutes of a police arrest with incidental music only, highlighted by an unforgettable mirror shot (courtesy of cinematographer Jack E. Cox) as the cops close in on their suspect. After those opening moments, the film switches to a talkie, as New Scotland Yard detective Frank Webber (John Longden) gets into a fight with his girlfriend, Alice White (Anny Ondra, later to become the longtime Mrs. Max Scmeling)), who goes off on a secret rendezvous with a slick artist named Crewe (Cyril Ritchard). When things go horribly wrong at Crewe’s studio, Frank assures Alice that he will help her, but slimy ex-con Tracy (Donald Calthrop) has other ideas, thinking he can use some inside information to make a small killing. After shooting the picture with sound — including having Ondra’s dialogue spoken off-screen by Joan Barry because Ondra’s Eastern European accent was too thick — Sir Alfred filmed some scenes over again in silence, resulting in two versions of this splendid psychological thriller, both laced with elements of German Expressionism and early film noir as well as flashes of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” and Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment. Look for Alfred as the man on the subway being menaced by a young boy. The rarely shown silent version of Blackmail is being screened December 7 and 8 at the Nitehawk Cinema in Williamsburg, with Hayes Greenfield and the Eclectic Electric providing live musical accompaniment.
