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Long one of the most ambitious bands in Chicago, Head of Femur made a big
splash on the local scene with its 2001 debut, “Ringodom or Proctor,” and it
spent a year and a half touring the country in support of its second album,
“Hysterical Stars” (2005). “It was when we were touring that a lot of the
ideas for [the new album] ‘Great Plains’ came to us,” says band co-founder
Matt Focht. “Being in the van and thinking about travel and crossing the
plains made us think about being like the early pioneers, not having a lot
of money and having to live off the land — or at least park the van and
sleep in Wal-Mart parking lots.”
With songs such as “Covered Wagons” and “Napoleon’s Boots,” the group’s
new third album is, indeed, lyrically evocative of an earlier, simpler time
in America. The irony is that in addition to all of that time in the van,
the other big inspiration was a trip that Focht took to the other side of
the world not long after the band’s label folded and left the group in a
lurch following its second release.
“After ‘Hysterical Stars,’ we were meandering and kind of floating in
weirdness. After we left [the label] spinART, we were really confused, and
we really didn’t know where we fit anymore,” Focht says. “We were trying to
figure that out when I took a 34-day trip to Asia, and it was a
mind-altering experience. We all kind of felt like we were in a bubble in
Chicago — trying to fit in and trying to make the band happen — but I took
that trip and it really opened my eyes to what everybody else is doing and
what else is out there in the world.
“The idea of being in Asia and seeing the rural, primitive way that some
people still live translated into some of the songwriting for ‘Great
Plains.’ We were writing about how it all began for early Americans, and in
some of the places in Southeast Asia, some of the people are still living
like the pioneers here did.”
“Great Plains” is the band’s most cohesive album musically as well as
lyrically. Yes, the disc still boasts complicated arrangements and
multi-part suites, with lovely serpentine melodies delivered by a small
orchestra’s worth of instruments. But believe it or not, this actually is
the sound of the band paring down.
The three core members — Focht, Mike Elsener and Ben Armstrong — are all
multi-instrumentalists who share in the songwriting. They started playing
together in their native Omaha, Neb., in the early ’90s, sometimes
moonlighting as members of Bright Eyes. When their band Pablo’s Triangle
broke up, they scattered across the country but eventually regrouped in
Chicago. A few years ago, Armstrong returned to Nebraska. He no longer tours
with Head of Femur but still contributed songs to the new album.
“It used to be me, Matt and Ben who’d write everything, and then we’d get
whoever we could to play with us,” Elsener says.
“But the bars we were playing at didn’t exactly accommodate an
eight-piece band with horns and strings,” Focht says, laughing. “And after a
while, the van just got extremely crowded and it was hard to pay everybody
what they deserved. We were also getting into a lot of music that was more
stripped-down.
“So now we’ve switched over to being a five-piece, and it’s worked out
great. Now, when we have the horns, it’s like a special occasion.” (The
group will, in fact, expand to a 10-piece outfit when it performs the new
album in its entirety at its record release show tonight.)
As for Armstrong, whom his old mates describe as “our silent wizard,” the
distance only seemed to help the collaboration this time.
“For the last record, me and Matt wrote a lot of songs up here and Ben
wrote a lot of songs back there, then we got together, combined them and
worked on them solid for a couple of weeks before Ben went home again to his
family,” Elsener says. “For this record, we were more separated, so me and
Matt would work on songs, and Ben would do things on his own.”
“Despite that, we feel like this is the most cohesive group of songs, and
also the most thematic record,” says Focht. “It all ties together very
well.”
The band’s goal? That listeners will follow the 13 tracks on “Great
Plains” and experience something of the journeys it has undertaken in recent
years.
“We all still love vinyl, and we still feel that when you put a record
on, you don’t just go right to your favorite song,” Elsener says. “You start
at side one, and then you listen to side two. And that’s very much how we
would like people to handle Head of Femur.”
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