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When one thinks of Thanksgiving, one usually thinks of turkey, stuffing, gravy, and the works, but when you have some of The Parson Red Heads over for Thanksgiving, it’ll usually end up being something like a breakfast, a tofu scramble with pumpkin pie and other desserts, toped off with mimosas. As you all may or may not have noticed, I’ve been mentioning The Parson Red Heads a lot recently on Indie Schmarm. I honestly believe they are the next ones to get some serious attention from the “Silverlake scene” and actually already are. In the last year or two, Cold War Kids and Silversun Pickups came out of the “scene”, and the Red Heads are right on their tales. They’ve played shows with Cold War Kids and other bands such as Cursive, Maria Taylor, The Autumn Defense, The Mother Hips, and in August played The Sunset Junction.

It is true that I am also friends with them, but this isn’t just a plug, I honestly believe they have what it takes and just make really good music. It’s catchy, fun, along with jams and solo’s to make any Pavement fan proud. Like I said in another post, how often do you see a 60’s-esk sounding but bringing it to the present clad in white centuplet band? Listen to The Parson Red Heads, or better yet, just go to one of their free residency shows every Monday in January at Spaceland. It’s going to be a party every night along with great music. You won’t want to miss it.

In true Parson spirit, I had some of the Red Heads over for a “Thanksgiving Breakfast”. We were all busy later in the day with family and other friends and what not and what have you, so we decided to throw down in the morning and break some rules. Evan Way (lead vocals, guitar) and Brette Marie Way (drums) and Sam Fowles (guitar, vocals) arrived at about 10:00am with delicious goods and other friends in tow. We started it right up and got to cooking. Sam started with the potatoes while Brette started on the desserts.

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Sam stirs potatoes

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Yummmmmm

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Brette mixes batter.

Evan shortly after this attempted to help out on the dessert. Not enough words can be said about the guy’s effort in making the batter for one of the desserts. When one confuses teaspoon for tablespoon though, it can lead to disaster. Attempts were made to save the already completed batter after the realization, but to no avail. Brette did however come prepared and brought two fruits, and her raspberry one made it through the front ranks splendidly.

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Hopeful.

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Troubled.

As we gathered about, I asked a few questions here and there about their recent 3 week tour up the coast and back, their album King Giraffe, what’s in store for them in the near future, and Magic the Gathering. They had a lot of cool stories about tour and played a lot of cool sounding places. When asked about his favorite moment on tour, Evan Way recalls, “I’ll divide it into two sections. One, the show section, and two, the non-show section. For shows, probably the show show in Redding in which we were playing at a bar that was closing down and only 7 people were there but we got to play for a really long time and they were all big fans and we had a giant dance party. For the non-show section, one night driving late in the van, David took the wheel and Charlie and I took the back seat with a lantern and played Magic for four hours.”

As was just mentioned, for this tour they got their previous band mate, Charlie Hester, to play bass for them. He and Evan both have pretty good Magic skills as far as I hear, and through the grape vine I heard that Sam had won the most Magic tournaments on tour. According to Evan, “He got a good deck. Played spores a lot.” That’s a good job for Sam considering he was going against veterans. “When I was in 7th grade, I had some cards, and I didn’t really understand how to play, but I knew what “to tap mana” meant, you know what I mean? I didn’t really play. So this is really my first experience playing and I had this premonition that when we were on tour that I’d get really into magic, probably more than I should,” remembers Fowles. “Sometimes when we were on tour, and we had to load, or do something other than playing Magic, I’d find myself feeling like, ‘ah dude, I really want to play Magic right now, that’s all i want to do right now’. Yeah I won a bunch on tour with the green deck.”

A little over a year ago Sam came out to LA from Milwaukee to join The Parson Red Heads. He had met Evan in college back in Eugene, OR, and had been in a band with Brette and former Red Head members, Nate and Anastasia Bennett, that was the super ghost of a shell of The Parson Red Heads called Vulture Town. When Sam Left to go back to Milwaukee for a few years, Thom Shelton took over on guitar. From there, the name changed to The Parson Red Reads and slowly molded and shaped into what was to become the current Red Head’s look and sound. Sam then made the right move and came out to LA to be with this current roster of musicians, David Swensen (guitar, trombone), Dane Garrard (bass), Erin Way (keys, vocals), of course Evan and Brette, sometimes Aaron Ballard (guitar), Charlie Hester (anything amazing), and Jason Wrightsman (tambourine).

Both Sam and Evan shared similar number moments on tour with Magic and the Redding show. Sam however added Autumn Gathering Festival and a show in Seattle with Crystal Skulls and J. Tillman as some of his favorite moments. “Number three, I’d say the Folk Yeah Festival (Autumn Gathering Festival), that was really fun in Big Sur,” says Sam. “We hung out with awesome bands and tons of crazy hippie people and it was really fun. A bunch of bands played. Everest was there and they played. Lion Fever played, and Fiery Furnaces is the band that headlined our night. There was a bunch of camping and it was really cool. We just hung out with Everest all night by a fire, it was so much fun. Number two was probably the show in Seattle with J. Tillman and Crystal Skulls, but especially J. Tillman. He was SO good. His band was amazing, and like, it’s not every show that I go to, in fact it’s almost no shows at all, that even some bands that I actually like, there’s a moment in the set where I go, you know…I don’t know how do I say it? (laughs) Not every moment of a show that I wish would last longer. Every song, I was like, ‘please go longer please go longer’, and I don’t usually think that way. But it was like magic it was so good. Number one was probably the Redding show. One of my favorite parts was afterwards. We just danced and sung to the whole Funeral (Arcade Fire) album. The only thing that kind of sucked about that was that I drank too much, and then we drove through the mountains from southern Oregon. It’s so funny because David was driving, and he drove the whole way, and I was in bad shape and was pretty convinced I was gonna vomit. So I would roll down the window a little bit to get air coming in on me, but it’s the northern most tip of California, and it’s October, so it’s COLD outside. So I would be sitting there and feel the air on me and doze off to sleep, and then when I would wake up again, sometime had passed I wasnt sure how much, the window would be closed and David had closed it because it was so cold. But then I would just put it back down…and I apologized to every body a bunch (laughs) I made it though, and I woke up the next morning and was fine.”

At this time in the festivities of the morning, we had food done and ready to go, so we chowed down. We had pumpkin pie along with two other desserts and Sam added Avocados to the tofu scramble that made it quite delicious. We also had a center piece to accompany us (our friend and honorary Parson member, Ashley Powell, had brought). General merriment ensued, especially with eating the desserts that survived the Evan holocaust.

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In August, The Parson Red Head’s label, Yukon Records, officially released their full length debut, and they have been playing show after show in support of it. King Giraffe is just a fun good solid record. You get a little bit everything, yet it doesn’t get too pretentious or too 60’s sounding, but finds a really good balance and rides it all the way until the end. They have super catchy songs like “Punctual As Usual”, then take it the other way and give us a rock jam like “Full Moon”. They recorded it at Aermotor Studios, and it was produced by Jason LaRocca and Zach Schrock and mastered by Rob Dennler. They worked hard on it over the last year and really tried to make the best record they could make due to what was available to them. “It was like working 9 hours a day, then driving to Sunland in traffic, then getting to Sunland, then recording from 8:30pm until pretty late, being really tired, and then going, ‘I guess we got to go home’. Then doing it again and again, and then weekends it was just constant recording…and tons of Jack In The Box. It was just a lot of day job, night job,” recalls Evan.

The plan for the next record is unknown as to how or where it will be recorded…well to the fans at least, “We are planning on going to a special town, out of town, and spend a couple weeks there just living and recording with a bunch of people,” explains Evan. “If we have to do some re-takes or some over-dubs when we get back home, that’s fine with me, but we’ll get basically everything laid out while we’re there.”

As I mentioned at the opening, every Monday in January at Spaceland The Parson Red Heads will be playing a free residency show. December of last year they did a residency at The Echo, which was some of the most fun anyone has had on a Monday night. For January, they are playing with some really good bands. “Idaho Falls are playing the last night,” says Evan. “And there’s a band that’s on Park the Van Records, which is Dr. Dog’s label, called Golden Boots playing one of the nights. They are from Arizona and they are awesome. They are like Dr. Dog having babies with the Silver Jews. It’s filled with harmonies and “Dr. Doggy”, but really country, and one of the guitar players looks exactly like Vincent Gallo. Exactly.” I told Evan I think sometimes Vincent Gallo and Devendra Banhart could almost be the same person. He agreed and added, “This guy looks more like Vincent Gallo. Banhart’s more like Vincent Gallo to an extreme, this guy’s like on the other side…you know? Banhart is like Vincent Gallo if he lived in a hippie commune and lost weight. This guy is more on the conservative side, so in ways he’s more like Vincent Gallo.”

There you have it, words and plans by The Parson Red Heads themselves. I’d sum it up as a bunch of kids having the best time of their lives playing music, or as Fowles describes it, “There’s not much I don’t love about The Parson Red Heads. I guess…the general agreement in everything. We think so much alike in terms of the music for sure. We work really well together on that, and every member has tastes that I really connect with, and is really tasteful in what they do, and that’s cool. So we all kind of agree there, which is one thing that’s impressive. We all sort of seem to agree on how to be as people in a way, you know what I mean? How to talk to people after a show, or what not say, there’s no “Maverick” ego in the band and I’m never embarrassed for any body in my band. It’s something I’m really happy about.”

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(After a few people left, Sam and a few of us struck up…you guessed it…a magic game).

End Scene,
Dan Tana