Photo by Matt Marcinkowski
Joe Willis, Andrew Benn and Jerry Green of The Potomac Accord.
It was only a few weeks back that this magazine highlighted The Potomac Accord’s new album, Beams, which has been sneakily hiding out in plain sight via Spotify for a couple of years. On Thursday, October 19, the album becomes finally, officially, a real release, with the band offering up an hour-long show at, of all places, the St. Louis Public Library’s downtown HQ.
The cool thing about writing on a topic again so quickly is that we can correct any nuances that we misinterpreted earlier. For example, we noted that the group practices at their well-appointed basement lair on Thursdays. Nope, it’s Tuesdays; they did that one-off Thursday rehearsal for our purposes. And the band actually wrote and recorded Beams as a three-piece, adding a fourth player in order to help bring texture to the album; with vocalist Andrew Benn on both guitar and keys on some songs, that was the easiest way to bring those songs to full life.
Back to a three-piece today—with Benn and drummer Jerry Green the original members, augmented by Joe Willis on bass—the band’s got an ambitious fall and winter planned. The group will be taking part in about a dozen shows, listening parties, and DJ spins before the clock strikes 2018, a heavy dose of work for a group that’s sometimes been an enigmatic, lightly gigging presence on the local rock scene.
Benn says that “we’ve spent the last five months rehearsing” for these shows. “We’ll stay busy with this record until December 31, and then we’ll take a breather.” The early response to the album, he says, “has been positive.”
The first cut of Beams is called “Bigger or Better” and it’s what we’re highlighting as a feature track today. Benn says that he “finds the song very interesting, in that it’s in the time signature of 5. And, yet, it’s a song that you can tap your foot to, or nod your head to. As a songwriter, it’s very invigorating to write like that. It’s a long shot, a really lengthy song at almost six minutes, which is something that we’ve become somewhat infamous for. There’s a lot of variation within the song, which does keep our attention and, hopefully, those of our listeners.
“There’s a flute,” he adds, “and some chimes. A lot of different layers and textures that dance around each other. The guy from Sleepy Kitty wrote us a note, saying that it had a nice, moving narrative. And we do realize the irony of hearing a song called ‘Bigger or Better’ that’s six minutes long.”
Lyrically, he suggests that the title comes “from hearing the phrase ‘bigger is better’ your whole life. You can go to grandiose concerts and that’s sometimes entertaining. ‘But is it worth $80? Can’t you take all of this out and play a rock show for $20?’ It’s also about all the (bad, messed-up) things taking place in the world. People who have the mindset of controlling other people tend to have the mindset of ‘bigger is better.’ But we’re finally coming into the light of people questioning those motives on a more regular basis. Daily and on much more a grand scale, people are asking those good questions, rather than just being upset about something.
“The lyrics,” he adds, “are all about how one truly feels free in today’s society when the idea of being ‘bigger is better’ has been in everyone’s minds. Deep down inside, I don’t believe that most people want to practice that religion anymore, that sort of forced, fake religion.”
The Potomac Accord will also be previewing cuts from Beams with a Vintage Vinyl in-store appearance on Sunday, October 15 at 4 p.m. They’ll also find some time for shows (including one on October 27) at their unofficial home at the Schlafly Tap Room, “which has always been our perfect home. They treat bands well, and Brett Underwood’s been an underrated force in the music scene, booking some really ‘out-there’ stuff in a multi-million dollar establishment.”
The release party for Beams happpens, as noted above, on Thursday, October 19 at 7 p.m. at the St. Louis Public Library's Central Branch, 1301 Olive. Next month, on November 9, The Potomac Accord holds a listening party at The Royale (3132 Kingshighway) from 6-11 p.m. For a full list of gigs and updates, visit the band's Facebook page.
