Ill. communication

With Tuesday’s EP release, Bucks County’s own Illinois takes its buzz national

by Joseph Simek         
Philly EDGE Correspondent

It’s an hour before Illinois is scheduled to take the stage at the North Star Bar in Philadelphia and frontman Chris Archibald is ordering a shot of whiskey. That’s appropriate enough: “Irish Whiskey” is the name of one of the Bucks County band’s songs.

“It’s not just a song,” explains Archibald with a grin. “It’s a way of life.”

Later, as Illinois tears through its set opening for New York art-rockers stellastarr*, the whiskey begins to rear its head: Archibald is trying his damnedest to spur on a rather lifeless crowd.

“Hip, hip…” he yells between songs, waiting for the crowd to answer: “Hooray!”

Although the crowd’s response is lackluster at best, Illinois doesn’t seem to care. This five-piece of Archibald, Martin Hoeger (bass), Andrew Lee (guitar), JohnPaul Kuyper (drums) and Kyle Goldbach (multi-instrumentalist) simply grows more rambunctious as the show progresses. At one point, Archibald pokes fun at the band’s own reputation for drunkenness: “Sorry, this is the first time we’ve tried to play these songs sober.”

This is a quintessential Illinois live show, and it’s nights like these that have pushed this quintet forward as much as they have held them back.

“For a long time we were known as an inconsistent band,” Archibald, in his late-20s, says over chai tea in Doylestown a few days later. “It depended on how much I drank on any given night.

“We were playing showcases in New York with back-to-back shows. They called it an ‘A’ show and a ‘B’ show. The [labels] would say: ‘Show A was fantastic, but show B was a nightmare.’ But that’s kind of the magic about it.”

As another example of the band’s on-stage theatrics, Archibald points to the remnants of a black eye he suffered at a recent show when Lee accidentally bashed him with the neck of his guitar.

Archibald says he stumbled around the stage in a bloody daze, but… “Everyone cheered.”

If it seems like Archibald and company are out of control, don’t be fooled. They

currently have a firm grip on the steering wheel.

After flirting with various record companies, New York’s Ace Fu Records will release the band’s second EP, What The Hell Do I Know? on March 6. Illinois will celebrate locally with shows at Big Head’s Town & Country in Warminster on Friday, The Well in Feasterville on Saturday and in-store shows at fye on South Broad in Philadelphia on Tuesday and at Siren Records in Doylestown next Wednesday (Mar. 7).

According to Archibald, the band had its choice of labels, including

“the bigger ones.”        

“They are like sharks. One starts eating and then the rest start biting. It started a little bidding war with the labels, but we took the smallest fish.”

Archibald says the band prefers Ace Fu’s goal for the EP to sell 3,500 copies to the pressure and unrealistic expectations that come with being a major label artist.

“3,500 is a lot better than 35,000,” he says.

Illinois knows the realities of the music industry from experience. When Hoeger was a teenager, his band, Trip 66, released an album on Columbia Records. Archibald and Kuyper also saw the trials of major label life while playing guitar and keyboards in Mad Action, an incarnation of current Philly-area band The Cobbs, when they toured across Europe.

Illinois essentially formed as a side project when Archibald and Hoeger started writing and recording literally hundreds of songs in Archibald’s basement. While on tour with Mad Action, the songwriter passed out demos of his new project, which generated the initial buzz about the band.

“People started to say, ‘The dude who plays guitar and sings out of a telephone in Mad Action has his own band,’” Archibald says.

The telephone he speaks of is indeed just that -- a telephone. Archibald, whose day job is doing electrical work, rigged a telephone with an instrument jack so it could be plugged into an amplifier. The distorted sounding vocals it produces, along with the banjo that Archibald plays, have become part of Illinois’ trademark sound.

“The Monkees were my first musical love, and are still my favorite,” Archibald says of his influence to pick up the banjo. “Every time I hear them I get all pumped up. There’s quite a bit of banjo on a lot of their stuff, especially the Michael Nesmith songs. I just always loved the way it sounded. It’s unmistakable.”

So are the band’s roots: as referenced on its MySpace site, press releases and everything in-between, Illinois is from Bucks County, not Philadelphia.

For Archibald, it’s as simple as geography.

“That’s where we are from,” he says matter-of-factly, “People ask, ‘Are you from Philly?’ Well, not really, we’re from Bucks County. I couldn’t really tell you where the hell to go out in Philly.”

For Derek Crew, the band’s manager and longtime friend, the connection has even deeper roots. Crew’s management company, MayDay Management, is soon moving to Doylestown, which he hopes will become “the next Athens, Georgia.” The reference is to the southern college town whose music scene produced R.E.M. and the B-52’s, among others.

Central Bucks County has certainly been kind to Illinois; the band has played many standing-room-only shows at the Cigar Parlor and Moose Lodge in Doylestown and at Big Head’s in Warminster. Crew was adamant about keeping those strong ties intact.

“I’ll correct these guys in any company,” Crew says in a phone call about a recent photo shoot for the band. “If they happen to say they’re from Philly, I’m making sure to say they’re really from Bucks County.”

To an outsider that may not seem important: Doylestown is close enough to Philadelphia.

However, there is certainly an indie-rock scene in Bucks County that is not only forming its own identity, but also producing bands that have been gaining national recognition -- especially among Illinois’ circle of friends.

The members of Illinois, Eastern Conference Champions and The Cobbs are all Bucks natives, and according to Archibald, “grew up together playing Little League.”

Now, all of them have opportunities to make major league music.

Illinois is most certainly an indie-rock band, though the touches of Americana via the banjo and the pop reference points make its music hard to classify into a genre. The early basement recordings of that unorthodox sound would become the band’s first EP, the 2006 self-released The Revenge Of Some Kid.

Archibald says the recording quality of that EP turned many labels off, as they felt that although the band had a growing following, especially in New York, it was a liability in the recording studio. It wasn’t until Illinois signed a publishing contract that labels started paying more attention to them.

“We signed a publishing deal with Chrysalis,” Archibald says, “Dave Ayers, who signed Ween, was very familiar with Bucks County, especially New Hope. He liked the recordings I did, but knew there was a bigger potential. So, he gave us a production deal to get us into a real studio and prove that we could actually play and sing.“

That real studio was Ishlab in Brooklyn, where ex-Girls Against Boys bassist- turned-producer Eli Janney, (Jet, Ryan Adams, Secret Machines) polished both the band’s older songs and newer material.

“I’ve always recorded myself, but (Janney) would listen to parts over and over and make adjustments,” Archibald says of the experience. “I couldn't tell what the hell he was doing, but after a few hours, it sounded a million times better. I guess it’s good to have the tech geek behind the board and not me, an impatient, un-perfectionist.”

To further erase any notion of inconsistency, Illinois recently added Goldbach, a friend of the band, to the lineup to play guitar and keyboards in a live setting. He had only been with the group a week before the North Star show. It was obvious from his mellow demeanor that his role, as Archibald put it, “is to play the guitar parts as they’re meant to be played.”

Although the band is performing a majority of the 16 songs from the Ishlab sessions, only seven of the tracks made the new EP. Until Illinois receives a bigger commitment from Ace Fu – the contract only called for a one record deal – the fate of the rest of the Ishlab songs is undecided.

In the interim, however, Illinois has maintained a busy schedule. At the CMJ festival in November the band played Spin’s New York 2 London show with fellow buzz bands Oh No! Oh My! and Silversun Pickups. Spin recruited Archibald to interview the bands and fans at the show, then posted the footage of the interviews online.

At the end of the video, Archibald meets Dave Grohl and spends the interview time literally kissing the famous Foo Fighter’s feet.

Illinois were also recruited by Playboy to design a T-shirt for a rock ‘n’ roll fashion shoot for its annual music issue (March 2007 issue). The band’s T-shirt features its members holding up a copy of the iconic men’s magazine.

Archibald was pretty sure Illinois’ T-shirt was the best.

“All the shirts sucked,” Archibald says with a laugh. “Well, except for The Flaming Lips and stellastarr*.”

The band is finding local press opportunities at its fingertips as well. The day of the North Star show, Illinois was the “My Morning Download” artist on WXPN.org. During that night’s gig, Archibald went out of his way to point out the station’s program director, Bruce Warren, and mention the Web site, saying, “We worked hard for that.”

Asked about it later, Archibald says the band tried again and again to get the landmark Philly music station to pay more attention to Revenge Of Some Kid, but it never really did.

Now, with all these pieces in place, Illinois hits the road for the next few months as main support for The Kooks on the UK band’s stateside tour. But before that, Illinois is scheduled to play at the all-important South By Southwest (SXSW) festival in Austin.

“South By Southwest has been great. This year we are playing five or six shows,” Archibald says. “Last year we only played one. We’re going to tour down and tour back now, because it just makes more sense.”

Archibald knows that touring is something the band must do to sustain its buzz. Even though he now has a wife, two kids and a new home in the Willow Grove area, he is still motivated to maintain a rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle; that includes not only the glamorous aspects, but also the time he spends as a “mad scientist” in his basement, surrounded by music equipment and recording gear.

“I like music more than my wife; I’ve known music longer,” Archibald says.

When asked if that sentiment should appear in print, the singer just shrugged his shoulders.

“She knew what she was getting into. I decided that this is how I wanted to provide for my family.”

Is fame the goal?

“Yeah, but I don’t think of it as selling out. I’ve been doing it so long, I think I’m owed something.”

From some musicians, that statement might seem self-righteous. From Archibald, it seems like a legitimate claim. He has indeed been at this for quite some time, and it’s difficult to imagine the guys that make up Illinois quitting anytime soon.

For them, it’s not just music; it’s a way of life.

See Illinois

Fri. Mar. 2, 8 p.m. Big Head’s Town & Country (County Line Rd., Warminster)

Sat. Mar. 3, 8 p.m. The Well (Loretta Lane, Feasterville)

Tues. Mar. 6, 6 p.m.  FYE (100 S. Broad St. Philadelphia)

Wed. Mar. 7, 6 p.m. Siren Records (22 S. Main St. Doylestown)

Th. Mar.15, 11 p.m.: Playboy 8th Annual SXSW Late Night Party, Action Figure Studios – 3000 East First St. Austin, TX w/ Ghostland Observatory and Monsters are Waiting

Sat. Mar. 17: Philebrity SXSW Party