I had a nice sit-down with a pair of nice boys outta Champaign-Urbana (and there are a few). Their names are Patrick Lyke and Chris Davies, and they are BFF (my words, not theirs). They went to high school together and started making music together in a basement while drinking cheap beer (from Walgreens, probably) and that is really the most intimate relationship out there.
Smile Politely: How did you meet and start making music together? What’s your origin story?
Patrick Lyke: We went to high school together. When we graduated from high school we ran into each other at a show and Chris Davies had started a band and needed a drummer. Another guy, Kyle Dunn, who is a photographer now, was in the band, too. We played a few shows but it ended up being a terrible time to be in a band. Chris went to ISU and I went to Parkland. Plus, there was a lot of personal stuff going on and all of our music tastes were changing.
Anyways, a few years later when Chris was moving back from Bloomington, he hit me up. I lived in a shitty house with a really crappy basement and we started practicing down there. We drank a lot of that Walgreens brand beer down there. Big Flats or something like that. It’s terrible.
Chris Davies: Yeah, I had four or five songs after I graduated and Pat was the person I had most enjoyed playing with in the past. He also happened to still be in Champaign, which helped.
That basement was hilarious. It had a dirt floor and it was only over 6 feet tall in between the joists, so I had to duck everywhere I went then pop my head up into cobwebs. After a few months of doing that I moved into a place that had space for us to practice in. Since then we’ve been above ground almost exclusively.
SP: How we suffer for our art…
Two white, middle class, heterosexual ghosts
SP: Where do you draw inspiration? What gets your song writing juices flowing?
Davies: My inspiration comes from a lot of places. Musically, it could be something I’ve heard or a tone I stumbled upon while playing guitar. For me, a song normally arises when I find a riff or chord progression that I enjoy. From there I try to build on that, adding more of what I feel is tonally similar -or something that is the opposite that I can break off in a different direction with.
Lyrically, inspiration is also diverse. Pat and I write lyrics both collaboratively and individually. On the new album there are songs that were written from a personal view point, songs written with our take on a folk tale, and songs written from abstract ideas. I wouldn’t say any one thing gets our juices flowing, in particular, but when we get on a roll we have a lot of fun with it.
Lyke: I usually just try and do what is right for the song. Chris will have a song and I will add drums that I think fit. I have a tendency to go overboard and beat the hell out of the drums, but I’m working on knowing when to lay back. If I’m playing guitar or bass on the song, I just try to think of a part that fits with the sound we, as a band, have already created.
We share a lot of common interests so…we can kind of look at those and come up with an idea. When I’m writing lyrics alone, it’s a challenge. Chris has set a pretty high standard so I try to meet that standard. He has an incredible grasp on language that I don’t have, so I’ll come up with two songs for every ten he has because I’m trying to reach the level that he is on.
SP: Maybe your lyrics are a feeling or color/sound and Chris just has the “right” words for it? Maybe?
Why do you work well together? If you don’t, why not and how are you faking it?
Davies: I think you’re right to some degree about the feeling/color/sound. When we write collaboratively or edit lyrics together we will bounce ideas off each other or (for lack of a better term) riff on something small until we come up with something that seems right.
The reason we work well together…I don’t know. Pat is a Stones guy and I prefer the Beatles. I’m sure it’s the combination of our similarities and differences that help us balance each other out.
For the album our band expanded to include Sven, who is producing everything, and Alleya Weibel (An Evening With Your Mother), who played violin and trumpet on a couple songs for us. There wasn’t much feeling out of one another going on; they just stepped right in and did things we liked. They’re smart and know what sounds good, so it just worked. We didn’t question it too much.
SP: Don’t question things when they work, just analyze them after a few drinks…
Do you tour?
Lyke: I suppose we tour. I mean we play shows, mostly in town, but some out of town. I work a 3rd shift that’s been running mandatory Friday nights for a long time now, so it makes it hard to play every gig we are offered. Shows are a lot of fun though. We play pretty loud. Being just Chris and I, we have to fill in a lot of space where a bass player or another guitarist would normally be. People seem to like the energy we bring.
SP: What are some of your favorite venues?
Davies: In C-U, I really like Cowboy Monkey because it always has great sound and feels pretty intimate. Playing shows in the Mike ‘N Molly’s beer garden is fun, too, because playing outside is the best.
Lyke: I always have a good time at Cowboy. It’s a relatively small space so you know the people who are there are there for the music. I like seeing shows at Memphis on Main, although we haven’t played there. I wish they still put on shows at the Courtyard Cafe. That was always a good spot to see shows growing up.
SP: I like The Highdive, as an audience member, because of how much room there is, but The Monkey is a favorite of mine for live music.
Are you friends outside of the band? Do you socialize and barbecue and all that?
Davies: Pat was my Best Man, so you could say we get along. We didn’t really get along in high school, when we first met, but we both dropped some pretense after graduation and grew to like one another.
Lyke: Chris and I are close. I think it helps, creatively, that we are friends. I want him to like what I do. If it was anyone else I could care less if they liked what I was contributing.
SP: Makes sense.
What’s the future for you two? Are you thinking beyond the record release or just focusing on that for now?
Davies: I’d like to get us out of Champaign more. Likely not a real tour, but maybe some weekend warrior type stuff where we play one or two cities at a time. It works out in my mind but doesn’t always work once life has a say, so we’ll see. Most of all, Finer Feelings is fun for us, so we’ll just keep having fun and see where that takes us.
Lyke: I’d like to continue supporting this album in cool ways. Maybe release more singles with cool b-sides. But definitely play more shows. I’m so excited about this album, I would love to spread that excitement.
SP: How ’bout this album? What’s the major theme, if any? Did you do anything far and away from your regular routine?
Davies: There’s no overarching theme to this album, it’s not a concept album or anything like that. When we were recording we did guitar and drums live to try and capture what the two of us do live — so we were trying to keep it like our routine. To get away from that we added extra instrumentation we can’t do live, like lap steel, bass, piano, and of course violin and trumpet from alleya.
Finer Feelings’s Gemütlichkeit comes out Saturday at Cowboy Monkey
SP: What kind of mood will this album put me in? Or what kind of mood do I need to be in to appreciate it?
Lyke: The album has many moods. It’s not an album you only listen to when you are sad or you only listen to when you want to party or anything like that. It’s loud, it’s soft, it’s twangy, it’s fun, it’s thought provoking. I think each song has something special to offer.
I would say, while there is no unified theme, there are some subjects we touch on more than once. What’s fun for me, since I didn’t write the majority of the lyrics, is interpreting what Chris is singing about. I think he sings about making the most of it on more than one song. I think that’s something everyone thinks about. We tell a lot of stories on this album, and we even touch on some social issues which is a first for us.
SP: What kind of social issues do you tackle?
Lyke: Chris wrote the song but I am going to try my best to explain it. (Maybe he can chime in if I get it wrong.) The song is called Modern Muscovites. (A Muscovite is a resident of Moscow but also a very old term for Russian, pre Czar if I’m getting that right.) The song is about loving everyone equally, specifically dealing with sexual preference, because, hey, isn’t that what our parents told us when we were kids, or perhaps what your pastor, rabbi, teacher, president told us, too? We use the term Muscovites because this has been a very big issue in Russia for a long time, but particularly over the last year with the Olympics and Pussy Riot and what not. However, if we look past the political/social reference, I’d say the song is really about love.
Speaking of Russia…we also make a Bolshevik reference on this album, proving that we are know-it-alls and deserving of eye rolling.
Davies: I also use the term Muscovite because it’s one of the coolest names for residents of a particular city. I mean, what are we -Champaignians? Urbanaites? Those are terrible compared to Muscovite.
There’s also a song on the album that is a loose reinterpretation of Enoch Soames, an early 20th century British short story. So, yeah, we’ll take all the eye rolls thrown at us. Hopefully people can still enjoy the music, though.
SP: Sexual orientation and gender identity are becoming more and more publicly discussed. Do you think art influences life or the other way around? How can music introduce ideas to the public consciousness (or ideas become an inspiration for writing)?
Davies: Well, we’re definitely not introducing any ideas to the public consciousness. The fact that sexual orientation and gender identity are bigger issues is awesome, and I think art played a role (e.g., the aforementioned Pussy Riot), but I don’t know if we’re the right people to bring that issue to anyone’s conciousness. I mean, We’re both middle class, heterosexual, white males. The best we can do is share our feelings about issues of greater concern, I think.
SP: Fair enough. (And a very mature attitude. There are a ton of middle class, heterosexual, white males who like to pretend that their individual problems somehow equal a widespread oppression.)
Davies: I try to avoid being a part of that group (whose ringleader is probably Bill O’Reilly, right?) as much as possible.
See Finer Feelings and get their new album, Gemütlichkeit, at Cowboy Monkey this Saturday.