With such an invocative name, it’s easy to misinterpret what Seattle’s Presidents of the United States of America are all about. Anyone even casually familiar with their music knows them to be the complete antithesis of their administrative namesake.
Irreverent, creative and funky all describe the feeling of their songs, and it’s difficult, if not impossible, to compare them using any adjective to describe any living (or dead) real president. Remaining relatively incommunicado for the last couple o’ years, The Presidents’ upcoming show at the Crystal Ballroom on Friday, Nov. 23, is the perfect way to springboard them back into the public consciousness, and must be attended at all costs.
When it burst onto the scene in 1995, The Presidents’ self-titled debut album was a surprising success. With singles such as “Kitty,” “Lump” and the often stuck-in-your-head “Peaches,” it was one of the most complete records of the 1990s, and is still relevant more than ten years later.
The group followed that release with 1996’s II, an album that was significantly less commercially successful, but, in terms of the music, just as go-getting as their initial effort. Like any other newly famous band, they went on a historic, all-encompassing world tour. Legend has it that they were such a hit in Japan that they were essentially forced to put out a Japan-only compilation of greatest hits, b-sides and rarities. This was the only possible way to appease the throngs of rabid fans and prevent them from being gobbled up like a plate of delicious yakisoba.
Much to fans’ dismay, The Presidents went on an indefinite (but still amiable) hiatus in 1998 after only four years as a group, and since then, their career has been full of high and low points. Band leader Chris Ballew departed to spend time with his wife and young daughter. Ballew and other band members used that period in their lives to pursue various musical side projects, among the most notable being the still occasionally active rock-hip-hop collaboration the Feelings Hijackers, and the worst, an ill-conceived and short-lived project with Sir-Mix-A-Lot called Subset.
Ballew is an exceptional musician in his own right, having honed his craft in the early ’90s, learning alongside the incredibly inventive (and now deceased) Mark Sandman of Morphine. He was also a member of Beck’s touring band for a short period of time.
While under the tutelage of Mark Sandman (whose bass style was also a major influence on Les Claypool), Ballew and Presidents’ co-founder Dave Dederer strived to produce original sounds with their instruments, and in the process, became early pioneers of a highly experimental method of stringing their preferred musical weapons of choice that would later come to define their sound. Playing the “Bassitar” and the “Guitbass,” respectively, the duo took ordinary guitar bodies and modified them by adding either two or three bass strings and dropping the tuning to C#, which gives them their heavy, bouncing sound.
Fully reformed since 2004, The Presidents have been exercising their hard-earned clout all over the Northwest. Playing alongside Modest Mouse and Incubus at last summer’s Download Festival was an excellent decision for them from both a musical and a business standpoint, because it helped remind the public how much they really used to dig the band.
2004’s reunion release, Love Everybody, was well accepted, and they are hard at work on a new record, rumored to come out in early 2008. Their real influence, however, shows its true colors in the context of this Friday’s concert. The first time playing in Portland in a very long time, The Presidents have called in some favors from Washington. They have inexplicably convinced the administration of the Crystal Ballroom to allow indoor smoking at their show (no easy task), persuaded the Willamette Week to sponsor them, and are doing it all for $10. Ladies and gentlemen, I urge you to support your local uber-politicians of the musical variety, and highly recommend paying attention to this band in the upcoming months: It’s going to get interesting.
The Presidents of the United States of America
Nov. 23 Crystal Ballroom 9 p.m.$10