Members of the group Magic City have a pretty set belief that their March 31 concert at Off Broadway will be the final time the band takes the stage together. That’s a different kind of approach to releasing an album, but Magic City’s story is nothing if not different.
Central to that story: in April of 2015, bassist Anne Tkach died in a house fire. This show, for the album Le Vie Est Chere, will take place a day after what would’ve been Tkach’s 50th birthday. The entire concept of Magic City, at this point, is about the group finding closure through the release of its last recordings together, as well as sharing their those tracks with a devoted audience.
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“All of the songs, except for ‘Tower of Song,’ were performed in-studio by the five members of Magic City,” says Adam Hesed, the group’s keyboard player and Tkach’s partner. “The recording started in 2012 and went into 2013. The recording process was very slow and spread out. Part of that was because [drummer] Sam Meyer had moved to Lexington during that period of time.”
The group, then, included: Tkach, Hesed, Meyer, guitarist JJ Hamon, and guitarist/vocalist Larry Bulawsky. For this gig, the group’s joined by drummer Drew Gowran on percussion; he’d been working with the band following Meyer’s departure, and has been behind the kit during the rehearsal lead-up. Rounding out the rhythm section will be talented bassist Kiki Solis, who debuted with the group at “Wild and Blue,” a multi-band tribute to Tkach, and who also plays bass on the Leonard Cohen-penned “Tower of Song.”
As the band began prepping for this release, they did so fully confident in the material, though they’d had lots of starts/stops along the way.
“The recording sounds really good,” says Hesed. “Partly because of the way we did the recording (we started at one studio and then moved on), we lost control over some of the stuff. We had to go with what’s there. And I’m glad we got caught in that trap, or we’d still be mixing it. It sounds like a killer rock ’n’ roll record.”
Hamon says of the tracks, “Oh, man, I just love them. They are powerful. I’m used to hearing stuff that I’ve been a part of in the past and even hearing it six months later, feeling like ‘Well, good try there.’ But this, even just getting the test pressings, was invigorating.”
The addition of “Tower of Song” came to the group after it was performed at “Wild and Blue.”
“We thought there might need to be a couple more tracks,” Hamon says. “Even with a couple of longer songs, it was just five songs, and that’s an EP. It’s not an album.”
“After ‘Wild and Blue,’ we decided it would make sense to do that song and fill out the record,” Hesed says. “Timewise it fit, but more importantly, musically. And there’s really no other way to put it: this seemed like an honest and tasteful way to acknowledge the tragedy without… well, there’s no way to ignore it, There’s no way to treat it right. But this felt right.
“It’s been a real pleasure to go back and listen to these songs,” he adds. “I love them so much. And to play with JJ and Larry again has been real refreshing.”
“It’s amazing how much I missed it,” Hamon says of his kinship with the group. “I didn’t how much I did.”
The concert at Off Broadway will take place on Friday, March 31, with an 8 p.m. door and 9 p.m. start time. Opening will be Red Mouth and Bug Chaser. A limited run of 300 vinyl copies of the album will be available, along with a digital download code; no CDs will be made, though the album will also become available via Bandcamp shortly.
You can listen to audio clips of the band discussing the album with Willis Ryder Arnold of St. Louis Public Radio here.
For a glimpse of the band performing at Off Broadway in 2011, here’s the track “Won’t You Please”:
Additional Reading: Longtime KDHX programmer Tim Rakel was recently featured on the website No Depression, and he gives a good rundown of his programming tenure at the station, which began way back in 2002, as well as his musical influences, construction of a typical show’s playlist, and general takes on the role of non-commercial radio in 2017. A good read. You can listen to the last couple of shows here…
Somehow, while dunce-ing around the web looking for information on another band, I came across a series of blog posts from 2009 about The Retros, a St. Louis group active in the late ’70s. The series of four posts by bassist Bob Chekoudjian are relatively spare, but give a great sense of the mood of young, underground acts of the moment. Well worth a read. Of course, no web noodling’s complete without a trip to YouTube, and we’ve found a piece by Dane Marti, summarizing the band’s 2011 reunion/tribute show:
