Interview: The Lovemakers reunite for Valentine’s Day
The Lovemakers, courtesy.
Even after their big flameout to end 2009, Oakland dance-rock duo The Lovemakers weren’t far apart. Singer-bassist Lisa Light and guitarist Scott Blonde tended bar in the same neighborhood.
The Lovemakers, Midi Matilda, Everyone is Dirty
9 p.m., Feb. 14
Popscene at Rickshaw Stop
Tickets: $12.
“When we were not speaking, we ran into each other once. I’d see his car a lot. Awkward, yeah,” recalls Light, who became romantically involved with Blonde in 2002, before they formed The Lovemakers.
Chatting in her Temescal studio about the band’s Popscene reunion concert Friday at the Rickshaw Stop in The City, she says Blonde contacted her in the fall, asking if she wanted to play a show because he had a dream about it. He suggested
Feb. 14, because it was a date far enough away to prepare, and because the duo previously had memorable Valentine’s Day shows.
“I think time goes on and you don’t care about some of the stuff from the past,” says Light, who, over seven years, released four albums as The Lovemakers with Blonde.
The duo, sometimes working with keyboardist Jason Proctor, enjoyed some national success, particularly with the sophomore album “Times of Romance” on the Interscope imprint Cherrytree. Their final album, released a few months before the implosion, was “Let’s Be Friends.”
Q&A: The Lovemakers working on a new song
On the reunion:
Lisa Light: When we started practicing again, it was just the same. We didn’t change. We reformed right where we were, like an archaeological thing. If we wanted to that, in a way it would be really easy because it’s not like we’re trying to innovate at the moment.
On the duo’s new song:
(Recording studio neighbor) Jeff Saltzman and Chris Stein, who’s the keyboard player in Blondie … worked together. I worked with him, too. They had a song, and they were like, “Do you want to take it and use it for Lovemakers? – like a base.” This was Jeff’s idea. It wasn’t our idea, at all, to write new material.
On her role with The Lovemakers compared to her work with El Elle.
We have an (El Elle) album almost done. It’s kind of Beach House-y, mellow, Fleetwood Mac-y. I can’t stay in a genre, so my job in The Lovemakers is very specific, and I know how to do it, and I like the constraint. But left to my own, I’ll just Pisces out
By then, Light and Blonde had ended their romance — which started when Light joined Blonde’s band, and they got kicked out for getting too personal — but remained a musical unit. Even that would not last.
“We were musical life partners,” Light says. “Everything we did affected one another. Everything was a problem. We had a big blowout in Chicago at a Christmas [show]. We basically never spoke again. We didn’t even speak at the [2009] New Year’s show. It was silent.”
In the four years since they last took the stage together, Light has stayed busy teaching yoga and making music in the band Garlands and with El Elle, a genre-skipping solo project for which she is about to complete a second record.
Blonde, who plans to contribute to both, has worked with other musicians, including upcoming releases by Blondie and Nick Cave, and is in school studying computer programming.
Just friends now, Light and Blonde aren’t sure whether the reunion show will lead to anything beyond new music that’s in its early stages.
“The new song we’re working on right now is just as good as anything else we’ve ever done,” Light says. “We know what our roles are; whether or not we want to spend the hours on it is another thing.”
Follow Roman Gokhman at Twitter.com/RomiTheWriter.