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| At practice with Diego Guerrero |
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Harley Prechtel-Cortez tuning. |
Who are The Weather Underground?
Photos by Daniel Belis/Words by Nathan Solis
They’re the type of guys who would play sick. Like Ryan did for a show, where he was, as one member would put it, “he was dying.” The show went on and Ryan lived. With no record deal or an entourage of Escalades, the band members have to work day jobs and take every gig they can get. “It’s killing us, day by day,” said Harley, but the guys continue to do just that. On days when they meet for rehearsals, it's like a rejuvination for the band members. They're given new life.
At rehearsals…
Through a black rod-iron door stands a drum set, a PA system and a few amps. For most people, it's a rehearsal place. For a band, this is a blank canvas waiting to be covered with melodies and lyrics.
The sound of cars swings by the door as Harley and Diego tune their instruments. As a Los Angeles band they have seen the worst in terms of rehearsal studios. They've been in cramped, windowless studios in Downtown, where the skyscrapers block the sun. Here, somewhere on the border of Cypress Park, their new studio sits among the industrial district. Their room has paint cans in one corner, a Chinese tapestry on the wall and egg crates for chairs.
The topic of getting signed to a big label comes up. The concept of selling out and becoming mainstream alternative also creeps into the conversation. "We're not going to sound like Sugar Ray," Harley jokingly shoots back, who goes on to say that a magazine did an unforgivable comparison to the bleach out sound of the other band.
"We were in Vegas and the locals ran this article on this show we did and they said all these great things about us. But at the end of the article they said, if they get signed to a major label they're going to sound like Sugar Ray. It was like all this good stuff and then that last comment," joked Harley, who wants to get signed by a label that will give the band artistic freedom to do what they want, so they can avoid just that fate.
Someone in the room mentions Merge Records and a few lesser-known labels are chimed in. In this day and age, where bands are given their 15-minutes on reality T.V. shows, The Weather Underground have managed to stay afloat signing songs that don’t fall into any particular music category or delusion. There are ideas of getting signed, but the Weather Underground won’t wait.
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Juggling day jobs and driving from San Diego to San Francisco in one night for a gig, you'd think that these guys wouldn't have enough time to do anything else. Well they decided they should reward those fans that have stuck by them with their newest album, which should be dropping at the end of October. "Psalms and Shanties," is the band's second LP. "It was going to be called Psalms and Sea Shanties, but that would have been a tongue twister," points out Harley. "We wanted that juxtaposition. Something a sailor would sing and something that is holy," he adds. So the Psalms were inked and the Shanties were bellied out into microphones and recorded.
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Holy, Salvation. They're not trying to convert. Well they might be, but it has more to do with good music.
