Left Lane Cruiser (2007)

I spent much of my time in 2003 alphabetizing CDs, cleaning LPs and 45s, explaining the concept of “phasing out” to fans of the cassette format, selling music to customers and, best of all, talking about and listening to music with my boss and customers. During this busy time of simultaneously working at two music stores my aforementioned boss, Wooden Nickel’s Tim Hogan, put me onto a gritty blues garage band called Left Lane Cruiser. “Hey man, listen to this sometime tonight in between those Sonic Youth records you’ve been spinning,” I remember him saying with a smirk on his way out one night. Before I could tell him how much I liked the disc he’d passed my way, he informed me that one of our customers was in the band, and that they’d only been playing together for a few months.

Local? Really? Only a few months? No way. I could hardly believe it.

Soon enough Left Lane Cruiser released their proper debut album, Slingshot; a year after that they were on their way to winning the coveted Best Local CD Release (Non-Rock) award with their second album, Gettin’ Down On It. Oh, and they finished second in the whatzup Battle of the Bands II sometime around then, too. Not too shabby for a fresh-faced blues outfit in a rock n’ roll town.

Now five or so years into their run as a band, Left Lane Cruiser have signed a national recording contract with Alive Records, the label responsible for – amongst other things – putting The Black Keys on the map.

“I don’t know about you guys, but this feels like a victory for the entire Fort Wayne music scene,” I told Brenn Beck (drums) and Joe Evans (guitar, vocals) in a recent interview, hoping they’d at least pretend to agree. No luck. They’re too levelheaded for such hyperbole.

“I think some people think we have it made now, but I have zero dollars and zero cents in my bank account,” said Beck, effectively popping my fanboy balloon.

“It’s a long way to the top if you want to rock n’ roll,” echoed Evans with a smile, prompting Beck to tell me about how Patrick Boissel, owner their new record label, e-mailed them the tried and true lyrics to the famous AC/DC song, likely to remind them of the tough times they’re bound to face in the next year or so.

As an armchair rocker (read: an audiophile with a big record collection who has no idea how much work goes into every single second of every single song on every single album), this got me to thinking. The Black Lips (not to be confused with the aforementioned Keys), modern day rock stars in my book, still cut their own hair and dig in alleys for free food. Beck, a musician signed to a national recording contract, has less money than me, a guy driving a 1994 teal station wagon?

So maybe they’re not booking shows at Red Rocks yet, but Left Lane Cruiser have come a very long way from their primeval days as a trio of kitchen sink blues rockers. With a new album, Bring Yo’ Ass to the Table, set to hit shelves nationwide on January 8 and a good number of out-of-town shows already booked, how did this all happen? How did these two scruffy-faced, flannel-wearing rockers become their city’s impending success story? 

“I was living in Indianapolis when my then girlfriend – now wife –  Nicole was coming up to Fort Wayne to go to IPFW,” explained Evans. “Brenn knew her from high school.”

“I was seeing her all the time at IPFW back then. I’d never met Joe, but Nicole kept saying that he and I should jam together,” said Beck about his band’s unlikely beginnings.

“She wanted me to get with him because he’d been a blues drummer for years in Fort Wayne, and I was playing slide,” continued Evans. “I hadn’t played with anyone since high school, so I was kind of nervous playing my stuff for people. But, man, when I got together with Brenn it was 100 percent natural, you know.”

According to Beck, whiskey was a key element to their original chemistry.

“We didn’t even talk much until we started drinking,” said Beck. With this, Evans readily agreed.

“Three years before we got together I’d been listening to artists on the Fat Possum record label. I’d been playing slide, but pretty much Jimmy Page-style slide. So when I found out about Fat Possum it was like a whole new world of blues and slide for me,” explained Evans when asked about how LLC went about finding their sound. “When I met Brenn, that was what I was playing. When he got into Fat Possum he learned it double-time and started finding all these other artists I didn’t know about.”

From there Beck and Evans – along with their original bassist, Jesse Garrett – began developing a sound that was rooted in the work of Fat Possum artists like R.L. Burnside. Their’s was a sound unlike anyone else in Fort Wayne.

“After a year of playing it became evident that Jesse wasn’t a blues bass player. He could play King Crimson and all this really complex stuff, but our sound is minimal. His leaving had nothing to do with his talent. If anything, he was too good. We were always saying things like ‘play half of that’ to him,” explained Evans about Left Lane Cruiser becoming a two-piece band before recording their breakout statement, Slingshot.

Once established as a duo, Left Lane Cruiser really hit their stride, seeing Slingshot, the album they consider to be their proper debut (they had an earlier CD called R.V. Burnslide), winning the Whammy Award for Best Local Rock CD Release in 2005.

The success of Slingshot, clearly, was the first victory of many to come for LLC. An introduction, really.

“I went to IPFW for seven years before I realized that college isn’t for everyone. I changed my major at least five times and just couldn’t get into it,” said Beck, explaining the catalyst for his decision to make LLC into not just a band, but a lifestyle. “Shortly after I dropped out things started to happen for LLC, so I decided to just buckle down and devote a few years to the band,” explained Beck, to whom Evans credits much of the band’s driving success.

With a popular album under their belts and a steadily growing fan base at nearly every show, Beck and Evans began working on what would become their thus far signature work, Gettin’ Down On It.

“I come with the riffs and do the words – Brenn organizes it,” explained Evans when asked about his band’s writing and recording dynamic. “Half the time we’ll get to the point where we are writing a song and don’t know where to go with it; Brenn can just tell me what notes he wants. Even before he could play guitar he’d say ‘do this [plays air guitar],’ and I would, and it would work.”

“Our songwriting process is pretty equal,” agreed Beck. “It’s right up the middle, really.”

After completing the recording for Gettin’ Down On It, an album that took on a rare instant-classic status in the Fort Wayne music scene, Beck and Evans started to see new opportunities popping up. “We drove all the way to Auburn, Alabama to play one show,” said Evans. “Brenn’s friend got us a show at a cool bar and a show on the radio.”

“We went to Oxford, Mississippi, too,” remembers Beck. “We went to Fat Possum’s headquarters and knocked on their door … but nobody was home. We did drop off a copy of Gettin’ Down On It. All the way to Alabama for one show, how stupid.”

“We were like ‘Yes! A tour!,’” laughed Evans.

“That was so stupid,” chuckled Beck.

This trip was only the first of many for LLC. Soon enough they played Vero Beach, Florida and Minneapolis, Minnesota, to name just two places.

Beck and Evans’ trip to Minneapolis in particular proved an important one. The shows they played while there established a bond with Deep Blues promoter Chris Johnson, a Minneapolis-area inhabitant whom the band now cites as the single most important person in their signing of a national recording contract.

“On July 3rd of 2006 a friend that I met through music trading gave me a compilation disc of songs downloaded from artists with MySpace pages. A few of the tracks were from LLC,” remembers Johnson. “I can remember my friend handing me the disc and saying that I’d really like the LLC songs. He was right.

“An amazing thing that has happened over the last few years is that artists have become so accessible to fans [through the Internet]. I contacted LLC through their MySpace [page], Brenn replied and sent me a few copies of Gettin’ Down On It,” said Johnson. “I wanted to see these guys play live, and, since my work brings me to Chicago now and then, I planned a trip to Fort Wayne and saw them at Lucky’s Terrapin Grill.”

Johnson and LLC’s bond led to the aforementioned Minneapolis show, and, believe it or not, Alive Records’ first impression of the band.

“The owner of Alive Records contacted me about a recording I had offered on a message board in January of 2007,” said Johnson. “When I found out who he was I told him that I needed to tell him about LLC and sent him copies of their live recordings and Gettin’ Down On It.”

The owner in question, the previously mentioned Patrick Boisell, not only took the time to listen to Johnson’s LLC-stuffed package, but he, too, became an instant fan of the band.

“I thought they sounded great and had a unique take on the current neo-blues sound, a combination of Detroit 70s rock and North Mississippi Hill Country blues,” said Boisell. “I like to call it high voltage blues, or maybe punk blues.”

From there the seed was planted.

The following months saw LLC keeping in touch with Boisell while planning out their year, which included not only a fourth Battle of the Bands run, but also a new album and a significant tour to Seattle and back.

First, the album. Titled Sausage Paw, LLC’s third proper album was all but in the can when Boisell began expressing real interest in signing LLC, the catch being that he wanted to make a few changes. If he was to take on the band, he wanted to protect his interests.

“Sausage Paw was done. I’d started mixing it down when we sent it to Patrick,” said Beck. “He liked the songs a lot but didn’t like how it was recorded. He thought it sounded like an emo album; it was really lo-fi, kinda crappy, but that’s how we like it.”

“We finally had to make sure that if we were going to change all this [stuff] we had to know if he was planning to sign us,” said Evans. “He wasn’t being inappropriate or anything, we just wanted to make sure we weren’t making the changes for no reason. He said that yes, if we changed this and that, he’d sign us.”

Boisell sent Beck and Evans one-album record contracts, directing them to bring them with them on their upcoming tour; Boisell would not only be at a show but, fingers crossed, some ink would be spilled in Left Lane Cruiser’s long-labored favor.

“Patrick came to one of our shows on our tour, but we didn’t really get to talk to him much before the show. He just said ‘Why did you pick such a sh**ty club, and where are all the people’,” remembers Beck. “There were only 15 people there, but we sold CDs to every single one of ‘em, no joke.”

Over breakfast the next day Left Lane Cruiser signed a one album deal with Alive Records. No joke.

How did they feel upon returning to Fort Wayne with a record deal? According to Beck, they felt like “a million bucks,” but also “nervous as hell.”

“The Fort is what made us” said Evans. “Hopefully next time we go out we’ll come back with a bunch of new songs so people don’t get tired of what we do. That’s always the downside of playing the Fort – everyone has already heard our stuff a million times. On the road every song we play is brand new [to the audience], and it feels that way when we play it. But nothing we play on the road will ever feel better than playing the Fort, where it all began – where the kids sing along to our songs and the love and support is unbelievable.”

Once back in town LLC had some work to do: they had to re-record their album.

“Patrick asked us to redo the whole thing. He asked if we could do the whole album in four days,” said Beck. “He sent us to Suma Recording Studio in Painesville, Ohio. We walk into Suma and there are Gold and Platinum records all over the wall. They had all the old analog equipment.”

Two days later LLC had turned Sausage Paw into Bring Yo’ Ass to the Table.

“[Patrick] loved the album the second he heard it,” said Beck. “He’s going to do the whole college radio thing, he’s mailed out 300 discs to Rolling Stone and Guitar Magazine and all that stuff. That’s how The Black Keys did it: their album got four stars in Rolling Stone; then Beck picked them up for a tour; then Sleater-Kinney took them out on tour. I don’t think we can fully plan what this year holds, but we can plan on having a pretty hard year. Lots of travelling.”

Despite having a slight miscommunication with their original booking agent, Beck and Evans will be playing the famous Knitting Factory in New York City and also have shows lined up in London, Seattle, Chatanooga, Nashville, Pittsburgh, Detroit and, well, you get the point.

In closing, Evans had some choice words for his fans and friends alike: “When I moved to this town and saw how the music scene was, you know … if it wasn’t for that I probably wouldn’t have even picked my guitar back up. If it wasn’t for this town this never would’ve happened for us. We love Fort Wayne. We’ve been trying to get Tito Discovery signed this whole time. We tell ‘em that if they like us, they’ll love Tito.”

Sounds like the Cruisers might agree with my citywide victory assessment after all.