The Chairman Dances: your fave library band (photo via Steady State Productions)
If the Philly music scene were a school, The Chairman Dances would be the library, an endless trove of information and stories; if it were a food court, they’d be an artisan bakery, selling handmade pastries crafted with care. The Philly art-pop foursome take a classical, craftsmen approach to songwriting—while other bands are getting stoned in the basement and jamming mindlessly, The Chairman Dances are fastidiously arranging string and horn parts, and working in allusions to their favorite literary works. It’s all in a day’s work for the band, whose members all boast music degrees, and whose new LP Michael and the Prophetess, out Friday, teems with lush strings, horns, and yes, allusions.
“We’re sort of library band,” says bassist Ben Rosen with a smile.
It’s an appropriate description, given that Rosen met vocalist/guitarist Eric Krewson while working at U Penn’s rare books department; the friends teamed up with drummer Mike Giuliana (a classmate of Krewson’s) in 2010, and The Chairman Dances were born. Guitarist Andrew Ciampa came on board earlier this year, rounding out the current line-up.
The band’s name is a nod to the 1985 outtake of John Adam’s opera Nixon in China, which Krewson (who adapted the moniker while still an undergrad), finds particularly inspiring. The rest of the band shares his fervor. “Modern classical music has always had an influence on our songwriting,” says Ciampa.
As eldest statesman, Krewson is the band’s primary songwriter. A wiry, bookish type who graduated from Drexel’s music industry program, and Temple’s musicology program, he gushes about the influences of Mikhail Bulgakov (who Michael was named after), Vladimir Nabokov, and Gabriel García Márquez in his songwriting, and explains how Michael employs magical realism to access complex emotions.
“In some ways I think that [magical realism] can be more true than writing in a sort of Hemingway style,” he explains, noting how Michael fuses the magical and the mundane— “because I think when you make that leap, or use hyperbole in that way, it can resonate more emotionally.”
Michael tells the story of a young man growing up in 1956 Brooklyn, and peppers its narrative with supernatural elements. Continue reading
There are plenty of reasons for a band to head out on tour: the lure of the open road, the promise of new fans in new cities, the release that comes from jumping on stage and rocking out, after spending all day crammed into a van. And then of course, there are the pitfalls: constantly lugging around heavy gear and equipment, sleeping in the van or on strangers’ floors, getting lost or breaking down in strange cities with poor cell phone reception.