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Musicians combine for '60s cover album
BY L. KENT WOLGAMOTT / GZO
Friday, Apr 14, 2006 - 12:10:19 am CDT

AUSTIN, Texas — Crammed with their band onto a stage the size of a couple of picnic tables in a packed dive called the Drink, Sid ’n’ Susie open their South By Southwest showcase with a dreamy version of The Marmalade’s “I See the Rain Again.”

Fifty minutes later, with the final chords of The Bee Gees’ “Run To Me” still echoing through the long, narrow bar, the duo pop out the door, into a waiting car and are gone.

None of the nine songs in the set were original. None were written in the last 35 years. But, according to AOL’s Web site tipsters, the Saturday night set was the No. 3 must-see SXSW showcase behind post-punk icon Morrissey and hot new Brit band The Arctic Monkeys.

Never heard of Sid ’n’ Susie?

That’s because they’re really Matthew “Sid” Sweet and Susanna “Susie” Hoffs, two of the prime purveyors of power pop since the 1980s, who have teamed up to create a luscious album of some of their favorite songs of the ’60s.

“Under the Covers Vol. 1,” which comes to stores Tuesday, includes versions of Bob Dylan’s “It’s All Over Now Baby Blue,” Neil Young’s “Cinnamon Girl” and “Everybody Knows This is Nowhere,” The Mamas and The Papas’ “Monday Monday,” The Beach Boys’ “The Warmth of the Sun,” The Who’s “The Kids Are Alright” and The Beatles’ “And Your Bird Can Sing,” along with songs from Fairport Convention, Love, The Stone Poneys, The Velvet Underground, The Zombies and The Left Banke.

The morning before the showcase, Bangles lead vocalist Hoffs and Lincoln native Sweet sat down in a downtown Austin hotel to talked about their collaboration:

Are you old enough to remember those songs?

Hoffs: “He couldn’t be. I was born in 1959. I’m 47, I just turned 47 in January. I’m old enough to have heard some of them on the radio. But when there were used record stores, we all went to used record stores in the ’70s to rediscover the Beau Brummels and the Left Banke, to go back and find out more about those bands that I vaguely remembered hearing on hit radio.”

Sweet: “I was born in ’64. I don’t think any of the music I really love I was hearing much as a kid. At first, when I was real young, I was listening to Top 40 AM radio, which was, by that time, ‘Chevy Van.’ Then there was kind of good AOR radio — I heard ‘Lola’ or whatever. But it took me until I was a little older to find music that really appealed to me from that era.

I’m just old enough that those are the songs that were on the radio when I was in grade school.

Hoffs: “At the time, they were the soundtrack to my childhood. But I didn’t run out and get a Beau Brummels record or something. I might have heard ‘Laugh, Laugh.’ I had to kind of research. I had to go back and rediscover it in a way. Now I have to rediscover it in a way. It’s such a great period for music, a golden age, I think.

What did that?

Sweet: “Everybody recorded real quickly then. If you made it into a real studio — nobody could record at home, so it wasn’t like now at all — and if you made it into a real studio, it was like your big chance and they were often nervous and somebody was pressuring them and they were trying to get a take that was half decent. It’s just a little wilder. It’s more off the cuff. When they did hit one that was appealing. …

“That’s an interesting thing — you can see that in those Beatles outtakes. It’s not like they played it perfect every time like everybody would now. It’s like they would play terrible every time and then one time was great and they used it. It had spirit and could be different. George would play a different part every time. Anything could happen. New melodies were craved by the young crowd then.”

Hoffs: “It was sort of this merging of folk and blues and pop and country coming together in really cool combinations. You’d get that with the Byrds. You’d get folk songs played with electric 12-strings with a little bit of psychedelia thrown in. It was just such a cool mixture of good things.”

Sweet: “A lot happened during that time stylistically. When you compare it with now, in my mind music now seems so …”

Hoffs: “Vapid.”

Sweet: “It’s also so definite and solid and worked out and sure. There’s so little that’s likely to go wrong, ever. It’s about how solid it is rather than the spirit of somebody’s song and what they’re saying here.”

That spirit is captured on “Under the Covers Vol. 1,” beautifully recorded and mixed by Sweet at his Los Angeles home studio.

A multi-instrumentalist, Sweet handled much of the music himself, playing electric and acoustic guitars, piano and bass. But Richard Lloyd of Television fame and Ivan Julian, who played with Richard Hell and the Voidoids, add their guitars to some songs while Van Dyke Parks, a ’60s original best known for his collaborations with Brian Wilson, added keyboards to a couple of tunes.

The home studio made for a relaxed recording environment. Hoffs would come over one or two days a week to sing. They’d go to lunch, talk about songs, then go back and do a little work. That approach yielded some brilliant, pure pop vocals from Hoffs — the reason Sweet approached her in the first place.

A month or so after he told Hoffs that he wanted to work with her in some fashion, she was meeting with Shout! Factory, a three-year-old independent Los Angeles imprint founded by refugees from Rhino Records. She suggested a ’60s duet project with Sweet. The label gave the duo thumbs up, then let them make the record they wanted to make, offering few suggestions about songs to cover and leaving them alone in the studio.

You felt like your voices fit right together from the start?Hoffs: “We’d sung a little bit together before. I sang with Matthew one time at McCabe’s (an L.A. acoustic club). That was the night I brought Mike Myers to see Matthew.”

Sweet: “I sang on a soundtrack thing of yours once.”

Hoffs: “So we’d sung enough, we didn’t really question it. We just fell into it.”

Sweet: “Don’t you think it’s odd, when you think back, that they didn’t want to hear what our voices sounded like together. They didn’t have us make a demo or anything. I just knew they’d go together. In the first week or two we recorded, we did ‘Monday Monday,’ kind of finished and they were, like, ‘Cool.’”

The only pressure in making the record, they said, was when Shout! Factory, in Hoffs’ words, said, “We actually want to release this record and you need to finish it by such and such a date.”

That led to some hurried mixing of the songs that made the final cut. A half-dozen songs that were recorded aren’t on the CD, but they’ll be available for B-sides or, perhaps, for “Under the Covers Vol. 2.”

Some will criticize “Under the Covers Vol. 1” for its retro feel. But those arrangements fit with the kind of music Sweet and Hoffs have made over the last two decades and seem very appropriate for the songs.

It sounds like the time, but it doesn’t sound antique.

Sweet: “I didn’t try to make stuff sound old. Really, we just went after the feel of it. In general, it’s a tribute to that time. It wasn’t an attempt to make the trip-hop versions of all those songs. We love that era. For a minute, we would worry: ‘Are we being too much like the original?’ But I think it’s good we did that. That’s what we’re trying to celebrate.”

Hoffs: “Celebrate. That’s the perfect word for it.”

In addition to the official SXSW showcase, Sid ’n’ Susie played an outdoor Saturday afternoon party thrown by Pop Culture Press magazine.

Originally scheduled to be an acoustic set with just Sweet, Hoffs and guitarist Greg Leisz, the show turned electric. So they were joined by the rest of the band: longtime Sweet collaborators Tony Marsico on bass, Ric Menck on drums and Paul Chastain on guitar and backing vocals.

As they concluded their five-song set, a SXSW badge-wearing spectator who saw me taking notes leaned in to say: “I’ve been coming to South By Southwest for 20 years and every year I look for a special moment. I hadn’t found one until now. That was it.”

For now, the Austin crowds and a few select audiences in Los Angeles have been the only ones to experience the gorgeous blending of the voices of Sweet and Hoffs live. The duo and band will play another show on April 22 at the Roxy in Los Angeles.

Sweet: “After that, we just don’t know. We think we’re probably going to do some dates because we’ve rehearsed a band.”

Hoffs: “It might be in the fall. But I kind of have to assume we’re going to do more. It’d be sad if we didn’t play more. It’s really fun to play live.”

Sweet: “In some sense, we don’t know how to market it. But we do know whoever we give it to are really excited about and get into it, just having fun really listening to it.”

Hoffs: “It’s really rare that I go around with, like, records in my purse and just hand them out to people. It’s really embarrassing a little bit. But on the other hand, I feel so happy about ‘Sid ’n’ Susie: Under the Covers Volume 1.’ I just feel so good about it. All the teachers at the school, (I say), ‘Here, have one.’

“It’s a little bit strange, but I’m doing it anyway. Every time I go somewhere I throw some in my purse. Luckily, Shout! Factory gave me another box. It’s the kind of record we may have to do that to get people know about it.”

Not for long.

Reach L. Kent Wolgamott at 473-7244 or kwolgamott@journalstar.com.