Monday, February 13, 2012

The Tyler Trudeau Attempt / Thick Shakes / Lead Stones @ ELM BAR



People get ready for an awesome night at ELM BAR on Friday. The Tyler Trudeau Attempt are coming out to put on a hell of a show so YOU BETTER BE THERE! Also performing will be Boston's Thick Shakes and Brooklyn's Lead Stones.
Here is the breakdown:


The Tyler Trudeau Attempt (New Haven/Brooklyn)
The Tyler Trudeau Attempt came into the world as a shy, solitary boy and a four-track. Over the years, it morphed into four righteous young men who know perfectly well how to rock and are perpetually eager to do so.


Thick Shakes (Boston)
"Gut-wrecking fuzz-rock straight off a Nuggets disc..." -Boston Phoenix


Lead Stones (Brooklyn)
"It's going to be weird" - someone


All this goes down this Friday at ELM BAR
372 Elm Street, New Haven

Tyler Trudeau was nice enough to answer some of my questions via Facebook msg and here's what he had to say:

What are the best conditions for you to write a song?


Extreme comfort in the micro sense and pronounced discomfort in the macro sense. I like a good armchair or a sunny patch in a park on a warm day, a strong cup of coffee and to dislike almost everything. When it comes to writing, I'm at my best when I have nothing in particular to do for the rest of the day and am extremely unhappy about what the next day is probably going to hold.

Tell us about the best song you have written


Oooooh. I'm not sure if I can. It might exist slightly beyond language. It's pretty tight. It's built around a classic pop chord pattern with a sweet descending progression in the prechorus. I cut out the equivocations and catty asides I tend to write into lyrics and went for something upfront and earnest, which is really risky, but I went to exactly where I wanted to go, emotionally, and it came out sounding totally not cheesy. The song's called "The Difference Between Me and Everyone Else," and the band isn't playing it out yet, though I've played it at a few solo shows over the past year and change. (I'll post a demo to my Tumblr at tylertrudeau.tumblr.com tomorrow -- the vocal's a little pitchy, but you'll get the general idea.)

Of your influences, which would surprise your friends/fans the most?


I never know what's surprising or not surprising. People seem to not expect Jimmy Page, though, probably because I'm not a "big riffs" kind of songwriter and pentatonic scales aren't really my thing. But I was exposed to a ton of classic rock right around the time I started thinking about the guitar, and so to my mind, a lead guitarist is supposed to be able to play a Jimmy Page-style rippin' solo. And I can't play like that. Every three or four months I think I've had a breakthrough and that I've finally figured out how to do it, but it always turns out I'm wrong. And that's why I'm not a real lead guitarist.

What is your favorite CT venue (currently operating or not) and why?

I can't really think too much about venues that are closed now, because so much of what I liked about any of those spots had to do with my headspace at the time, which doesn't really matter now. But my favorite CT venue to play is the Oasis in New London. It's one of a few "default hangouts" in that area for indie/countercultural type people, so it always fills up, and the people who come are looking to get excited and to have fun. Plus, bands get treated well, and the sound is always good. Not sure what I'd say my favorite venue to see a show in CT might be. Cafe Nine probably has the edge over the Oasis, if only because I'm more familiar with Cafe Nine and I always know where to stand. Once you figure out where to stand in a music venue, it kind of kicks things up to the next level.

Oh, or an alternate answer to that question: House shows. Across the board. Just... house shows.


Tell us about your upcoming release


What about it? It's awesome. We have a full-length album in the can. It's called "Something, Anything Else," and it really rips. It has 11 songs on it, and it's 44 minutes long, which is a perfect album length. There are some short, punchy garage bashers and some multi-part five-minute burners. The production sounds the same from track to track, but there are a lot of different kinds of songs in there. We recorded it with some very talented people at the helm. It's mastered and everything. There's no release date because I can't afford the kind of promotional work an album release demands, but I have some lines out. Does that sound cryptic? It should.
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There you have it, a guy who knows what he does and does it well. See you at Elm Bar on Friday!

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