CHICAGO | The Ladybug Transistor is an indie-pop group formed initially as a home recording project in Brooklyn, NY in the mid-1990s by Gary Olson. They reunited this year for a fall tour and we were able to interview them and watch their show November 12 at Schubas Tavern on Southport Ave in Chicago. From intimate venues like Schubas to the stages of the Egersund Visefestival, The Ladybug Transistor has developed a uniquely authentic sound over the course of 30 years. Through a harmonious collision of musical influence, this meeting of kindred spirits in Schubas Tavern was warm and welcoming to our questions.
Nora: So I wanted to know, like how it’s been reuniting for your most extensive tour in 15 years and maybe like, what some of the most memorable moments have been?
Gary Olson (Guitar/Trumpet/Vocals): Earlier this year, we did a festival in Norway and that’s kind of what got the ball rolling for this reunion. And then we had another opportunity to play a good show at the Andy Warhol Museum. So once those two came into place, we knew that we could get everyone together. These days, everybody lives in a different city, so it’s a real logistics challenge to get us all together. Julian and I live in Brooklyn and Sasha’s in Montana and Jennifer’s in Pittsburgh and Jeff’s in Vermont.
Ellie: That’s all over the place!
Gary: And then our drummer, who’s our old friend Derek, he used to play drums for Of Montreal back in the day, when we first toured with them in 99, I think. And where does he live? He lives in Bedford, Pennsylvania, from P.A.. Yeah, his wife’s family farm. So it’s really a lot of geography. There is that whole challenge and a little bit of stress with how we’re going to put this together. But we all got together at my place in Brooklyn, and I still live in the same house that I lived in when we were all starting the band back then in the late 90s and early 2000s. So we, Jeff and Sasha and Jennifer and I all live there together. I’m still there. So they’re all under the same roof.
Jennifer Baron (Bass): But that was a highlight. I think also having just downtime in Brooklyn and being able to go to the Flatbush Food Co-op and taking neighborhood walks together and revisit the house that’s on the cover of one of our albums.
Ellie: Yeah, did that remind you, a lot of the nineties and stuff?
Gary: Yeah, so much of the neighborhood inspired the album The Albemarle Sound record and Argyle Heir that, you know, that was it was nice to have that back in the air.
Jennifer: Well then going to Norway, we can speak to how that opportunity caused The Albemarle Sound to be reissued by a label called Cara Records, a small label in Norway. And they did a gatefold like a booklet and scrapbook photos and so we have a few copies of that. So that was an opportunity to all meet over there and meet there early and then practice all week. They set us up in this beautiful space like a historic building. Was it like a men’s club or something? And we practiced all week. And then we also played the festival then too. And then we also played in New York City in Brooklyn.
Gary: Yeah. So after we did that, we kind of knew that we could do it. And then once we overcame that hurdle.
Ellie: What was it like recording with Elephant Six Recording Company? Because we were kind of doing research and their name came up. And like, obviously they have like of Montreal and like all the other bands. So how was that process?
Gary: Well, you know, it’s been, you know, to even be associated with them is great. You know, a lot of those bands were really coming up around the same time that we were, you know, around 98. They were always all very active from from 98 to-. It was an exciting time, almost like this bubble between, I would say like 97 and 2002, and that all seemed to really peak. And there was always so much going on and bands coming through towns and bands staying with us in our house. And you know, that led to Jeff and Sasha’s band, the Essex Breed, doing a record for Elephant six and on Robert Schneider’s direct label.
Nora: I was wondering if there were any specific artists that inspired your music when you were producing?
Gary: Yeah. I think, you know, especially when it came to Albemarle Sound time we were, you know, we listened to a lot of stuff back then. When you listen to the oldies radio in New York, they actually played stuff from the fifties and sixties and we’d hear a lot of production that we liked and tried to apply that to what we were doing at the time. What were we listening to in the house, you guys?
Jeff Baron (Guitar): Gene Clark, Beach Boys and Zombies a lot. Yeah.
Gary: The Byrds
Jennifer: Kevin Ayres
Jeff: It’s weird at least for me and these guys, we grew up hearing the sixties music, like the Rock ‘N Roll stuff because our parents were into it. You know it wasn’t our generation. It wasn’t our generation, but we grew up with the new wave stuff, you know, like The Smiths, The Cure, The Violent Femmes, The Replacements. The Housemartins, New Order, Joy Division and all of that. They were all underground bands and now but then I think, but when we formed the band, we had moved on from that.
We’re like, okay, there’s all this other stuff from the sixties that we didn’t know. We only at least, I mean, like we knew the Beatles and the Stones. You hear what’s on the radio. Yeah, but you didn’t hear the deep cuts of the Beach Boys or the deep cuts of the Zombies or like Gene Clark, who was in the Byrds but I didn’t really know had a solo career.
Gary: We kind of stood out back then because we played with a lot of indie rock bands who were always really loud, and we were just kind of doing our thing, you know? It wasn’t even that the guitar was always the main instrument. And it just felt really natural for us.
But for other people to see this band mixed with men and women and the trumpet and flute and organ and violin, it was a real novelty to them. But for us, like, it just was very normal.
Ellie: Yeah, that’s cool. I do think it’s very easy to find deeper cuts now just with streaming services. So like, back then, finding that must have been so difficult and it just opened up a new world, I mean, with sounds and stuff.
Jennifer: Jeff read liner notes, like they were encyclopedias.
Jeff: We both worked in record stores. I guess that helped us.
Gary: That was like having a library .And I think that we would have listening habits back then, you take a chance more on an album, you just play it over and over again and then you’d have more growers. You know, you just listen to the whole 40 minutes rather than-.
Jeff: You know, the Spotify algorithms now.
Jennifer: So like I was a DJ at my college radio, which was the first all women’s college. To have an all women-run radio station, too. So of course, we were playing vinyl. I mean, we had CDs, but, you know, and we’ve just always listened to vinyl. Do you listen to vinyl?
Ellie: I have a pretty, well, it’s not a huge collection, but I definitely have about two crates of vinyl.
Jennifer: I was going to ask, are you interested in it?
Ellie: Yeah, I definitely am. And I think a lot of people our age are getting back into it because I think it just feels more authentic and genuine.
Nora: And the sound quality is a lot better. Spotify is like MP3s I think, so I know it’s very compressed.
Jeff: The Spotify algorithm where you do the song radio that you like, any song that comes on. I have noticed that it’s like what the radio used to be like. The radio chose what the hits were, and that was all they played. Now when I hear them, when I listen to stuff that I grew up in, R.E.M. and like all the bands I mentioned, if I do an algorithm based on Robyn Hitchcock or Camper Van Beethoven, it’s always the same song from all those bands like John Cale, there’s more than one song. It makes me a little sad.
Jennifer: The other sad thing is I just read an article about this. I mean, first of all, it’s so horrible that you get paid so little. They’re changing it and making it even worse that you have to get X amount of plays to get paid anything. So there’s a protest against that. But oldies are the biggest played songs on Spotify, so it’s really like a barrier against new cutting edge–if you’re underground and you want that. It’s actually getting worse, so buying vinyl is great. Bandcamp just got sold for a second time which is also really troublesome too. But still that’s the best way to support artists directly.
Nora: I also, I’ve seen a lot of smaller artists selling cassettes too. I think that’s been kind of a revival.
Gary: Albemarle Sound will turn 25 next year, so we’re thinking about finally doing a cassette edition of that.
Nora: That would be awesome! I think that cassettes are really cool.
Jennifer: Yeah. Well, and again, it’s another thing that you have to pay undivided attention. You can’t skip around the tracks, it’s super cumbersome. So you’re sort of invested in the listen.
Jeff: It’s like having to use a map to find your way through.
Jennifer: I imagine all the tours we did before social media. We were touring with atlases, the beginning of cell phones, calling cards. Do you guys remember in New York we would always get calling cards, put more money on it. Touring Europe the same thing before social media, before Siri, Alexa. And we’re Gen-X kids, so we learned how to do all this stuff anyway, being, you know, just being the way we were with our generation.
And like, even, like you were saying, with albums, like we all have other bands too, but I put out cassettes, it was on a label. It was like almost all cassettes and everything’s handmade and you have an album as a concept and you listen to the songs in order that we, the artist, chose. For Spotify, everything’s out of context.
It’s so much of you’re listening and everyone will say, “what’s playing,” no one knows. And then they have to use an app to find out because it’s not connected in any way to the album itself or the artist. You just hear the song and it’s a vibe, you know, like you were saying, you don’t even necessarily know what you’re listening to.
Ellie: Yeah, there’s definitely that disconnect. One last question, what advice would you give to younger people making music now or just some of your shared experiences?
Gary: I mean, what helped us was like, just we worked pretty hard and we worked on our own identity and we weren’t really shy about reaching out to bands we liked. That led to some opportunities for us, you know, some stepping stones.
Sasha Bell (Keyboard/Flute/Vocals): Yeah, I mean, I guess we weren’t trying to be like anyone else consciously anyway. So it just leads to a more authentic presentation.
Jennifer: Be true to yourself like what has to come out from within when you’re making music and writing music and not worrying about what label you’re on or who you sound like. I think a lot of people were probably surprised to hear we even lived in New York. Like hearing the first couple of albums, like “oh this sound, they live in New York?”.
Julia Rydholm (Keyboard): Well, this was a different focus.
Jennifer: And keep at it, I guess. Don’t be disheartened. It’s really difficult. The music industry can be so bleak. Don’t think about that side of it.
Gary: Yeah. I mean, I guess we were pretty lucky in that we had a record label. But I took that chance and I wrote a letter, in pencil, to Merge Records and I mailed them a cassette and I got a phone call back a few weeks later asking if we wanted to do a record. And like, if I hadn’t done that we probably wouldn’t be sitting here right now.
Julia: But it’s an act of love. You have to trust in your labors of love, right? And invest in your labors of love.
Jennifer: And definitely reaching out. Absolutely. Making relationships. If you have like minded people you want to play music with or who’s other music you love, send them a little appreciation note. I know that there’s reciprocity there. As you were saying, make those kinds of connections and find your community where you feel supported and try to support independent musicians.
Like you were asking about influences and stuff. I think we could say this for a lot of us. Some of the music that we were raised on is because our parents raised us on amazing sixties music and we had vinyl all over the house. It’s just all some of my favorite music stuff. It’s still our favorite or stuff we listen to in high school going between The Smiths, New Order, The Cure, you know, it’s like, still, I just feel, I feel really fortunate to have been able to be surrounded by that. Just surround yourself. Be curious, you know, dig deep, look for old 45s, go to record stores, try to find stuff that’s not on the Internet, you know? And like, I think I feel thankful to be raised by people who value music.
All photos by Nora Williams and Ellie Sherwood