Video: Lower Leisure Class – “Oxygen”

New single via Leppotone.

I graduated from Kalamazoo College thirty years ago. I’ve got tons of great memories from those four years but I also regret wasting so much time being angsty. I could have had even more fun if I’d been less uptight about so many things.

One thing I did absolutely right though was making friends with a bunch of weirdos who ended up being the most creative and talented musicians I’d ever meet. The sweetest, funniest, nicest guys in the whole world too.

There were a few on-campus venues where bands would play: Old Welles (a formal dining hall), the Quad (outdoors on the lawn), Klub K (sweaty basement hole), and the student activities committee booked plenty of shows. Off campus we had the great Club Soda, which attracted national acts as a stop in between Detroit and Chicago, and local bands were always the openers. My college friends were in the Sleestacks. A guy I knew from my high school dishwashing job was the drummer in King Tammy. But the most respected local band was the Sinatras. Those guys were from Battle Creek and a few years older, and they were intimidating. They were serious. The guitar player played a metal guitar! I’m not talking about a B.C. Rich but a Travis Bean with an actual aluminum neck! There were stories about them being scouted by Twin-Tone. Their drummer was into jazz! Intimidating! (Spoiler: Once I got to know them, they were as kind and unintimidating as my K friends.)

All these bands were playing constantly throughout my time in college and I went to as many shows as I could. Which was a lot. After college, we stayed in touch and as various people moved on and moved away over the years, the original bands morphed and combined into different incarnations: Twister, Triplemint, Fortune and Maltese, Goldstar, Loop d Loop, New Real People. Before covid, a bunch of the guys got together and formed the Lower Leisure Class: Ron Casebeer and Karl Knack from the Sinatras, Chris Simons from King Tammy, and Nathan McLaughlin, Mark Peeters, and John Kasdorf from the Sleestacks. They released a great album, Stories from The Lower Leisure Class, at the end of 2018. It’s full of multi-part vocal harmonies and well-crafted rock and roll.

“Oxygen” is a brand new studio recording of a post-Stories song they debuted for the 2019 Tiny Desk Contest.

Look around town boys it’s all fucked up
Fifty-thousand dollars for a pickup truck
And the wrong kind of people think they’re better than us
Shit’s about to get rough.

When I saw them in concert in October they told me they’d been working on a bunch of new material so hopefully this is a preview for a whole new album.

They’re playing Tip Top Deluxe in Grand Rapids on Saturday, July 22 and the Old Dog Tavern in Kalamazoo on Friday, August 11. Go see them if you can!

Video: The Lower Leisure Class – “7 x 7 = 49”

From Stories from the Lower Leisure Class, due November 9 on Leppotone.

One of the luckiest things to ever happen to me was when Jake decided to go to Kalamazoo College. As his ne’er-do-well pal, I was not really in contention for higher education upon high school graduation and so was pulling for Old Man Brown to choose the University of Chicago and the hi-jinks a big city promises.

But K was the perfect choice. Not only because it provided a safe atmosphere in which we could explore and ultimately reject our hobo interests (in the confines of a mini-Harvard), but because Kalamazoo in the early 90s had an amazing music scene. At the center of it all (for my pals and I), was Leppotone Electrical Recordings, a consortium of local bands who pulled together into a musical co-op to share expenses and promote their scene. I’ve written about my beloved Sinatras at length, and two of them (or three when you count sometimes fourth member, Nathan McLaughlin) make up the latest Leppotone creation, The Lower Leisure Class. And it’s so good.

I’ve mentioned many times that I am a nostalgic fellow and one of the reasons I relate so well to The Sinatras’ music is their hinting at the edges of nostalgia while not being complete sad bastards. Songwriter Ron Casebeer often brings me to tears, even when in the middle of a thrash, and “7 x 7” is classic Casebeer.

“I’ve got a good feeling I ain’t had in such a long time…”

God, I just know I’ll be yelling this out through a choked up throat when they release this album this Friday, November 9, at Bell’s Eccentric Cafe.

I owe so much to Kalamazoo and the bands and people I met there. They not only inspired me to write my own music, but to also get my shit together and finally get through college so I could have a decent job that allows me to continue to make music to this day. If anyone should be singing “I need you, I need you, I need you,” it’s me.

The Lower Leisure Class: web, twitter, fb, bandcamp.

Video: The Lower Leisure Class – “The Great American Witch Hunt”

Single out now on Leppotone.

The Lower Leisure Class is a brand new band from Kalamazoo, Michigan. In fact, they are a supergroup of superstars from the fabled Leppotone roster of recording artists: Ron Casebeer and Karl Knack from the Sinatras, Chris Simons from King Tammy, and Nathan McLaughlin, Mark Peeters, and John Kasdorf from the Sleestacks.

Casebeer tells me they just finished mixing their album, which will be released digitally and on vinyl this summer, but “The Great American Witch Hunt” will not be on it. This is a one-off single. The album features great songs and “tons of vocal harmonies.” I can’t wait to hear it.

I’ve known these guys for more than half my life. Many of the highlights of my college years were soundtracked by their earlier bands. I spent a lot of sweaty nights at Club Soda with Xes on the back of my hands, having my mind blown by how good they are. I haven’t had the chance to see the Lower Leisure Class live yet, but I have no doubt that they’re still capable of blowing minds.

Together we’ll remember
just who we used to be.
History has made up her mind

The Lower Leisure Class: web, twitter, fb, bandcamp.

Continue reading New Lower Leisure Class video: The Great American Witch Hunt →