Chicago's Interiors dig deep inside for inspiration

Katjusa Cisar  —  8/26/2008 10:01 am

The day after the Interiors signed a record deal for their first album in Chicago early last year, the harsh Lake Michigan wind slammed a door on guitarist Chase Duncan's hand and he lost half an inch of finger. Blood spurted everywhere, and he had to dig his fingertip out of the door jam with a key before getting rushed to the hospital.

The doctors "were talking about, like, cutting a piece off my inner elbow and grafting it onto my finger tip. And I was like, "This is wrong." I just pulled the IV out and left. I was like, "Give me my finger tip," and so they put it into a cup for me." He had a friend pick him up and take him to another hospital where he "went under the knife of one of the best hand surgeons in Chicago."

The ordeal, along with a car wreck in the winter of 2007, delayed the Interiors' work on the album but gave 29-year-old Duncan "an appreciation of the fragility of things. It changed me as a man. I quit smoking after 13 years and started trying to live a better life."

The finger injury also changed his approach to performing in the Chicago-based rock band, which is opening for local punk-a-billy trio Underculture at the Frequency this Friday night, August 29. Duncan, who also sings lead and writes the lyrics, has adapted his guitar playing by shaking chords differently and incorporating his pinkie more.

"To a guitar player, half an inch is really significant. It's made it harder to do default rock chord progressions," he said. "Our first couple shows back out after the injury, well, I kind of sucked because I was just very conscious of the loss. I realized I had to get past that somehow, so I threw that aggravation and energy and pain into the performance. I think my performance was that much more fierce for it."

The three members of the Interiors --Duncan, bassist Collin Jordan and drummer Brian Lubinsky --met through an ad in The Reader, the Chicago alt-weekly. Jordan joined the band mainly because the ad listed British reggae pioneer Desmond Dekker as an influence, said Duncan. You can hear the reggae and African percussion influences in the songs on their self-titled album, which came out this June.

All three have jobs that are "conducive to leaving," said Duncan, and that's made touring a lot easier. He works at a futon store, Jordon runs a music mastering studio called the Boiler Room and Lubinsky does independently contracted IT work.

The Interiors' touring schedule is a little unusual. They spread the tour out, focus on major cities and then hit them repeatedly throughout the year. "We don't feel like the way the world works now that it's necessary to go out on the road and kill yourself for two months. I don't see why a band that no one's ever heard of should go out and just play a bunch of dates to empty rooms," said Duncan.

As they've traveled around, Duncan has noticed how weak a lot of the music scenes are in cities that have been renowned at some point for having a supportive culture for music. "They're resting on their legacy," he said, not naming names. In comparison, Chicago musicians have a lot of support. "I think there's such an influx of people in Chicago that it's vibrant. Every year, we have a slew of new bands coming up."

The name "Interiors" made sense for a lot of reasons. Not only is it the title of Woody Allen's 1978 film and in the title of an Anais Nin book ("Cities of the Interior"), Duncan said he had long loved the word itself and thought it was a "geographically appropriate" name for a band from the Midwest.

Duncan, who is from Georgia originally, lets the Southern Gothic tradition of writing slip into his lyrics. "There's a lot of flair and drama to the South. And mystery, too," he said. On the song "Wingman" off the new album, he wanted to write about "9/11 and how the Bush administration had used all these people's deaths for personal gain. I feel like a lot of their agenda has really just done nothing but line the pockets of their friends. I wanted to write about that, but I don't do topical songs. I didn't want to write a song like, 'George Bush is an ***hole who uses the deaths of people for personal gain.' That's very now."

Instead he wrote a song about a man who drags a corpse with him everywhere he goes, using it to get girls or to scare people into giving him a better seat on the bus or at the movies. "Women would just think about their own mortality and throw themselves at him. He prays on people's sympathies even though the corpse means absolutely nothing to him," he said.

The lyrics are just his way of making sense of the world, a "selfish act" in comparison to writing the music. "If someone finds some meaning in any of the lyrics, whether I intended it or not, I appreciate that. I mean, assuming it's not Charles Manson with the 'White Album.'"

Duncan likes to unleash his inner Southern "drama queen" on stage, especially on tour: "We're going to places where people have never even heard of us. We've learned as a unit how to get up there and bring it before anyone is even responding to you. If it's just the sound man in the room and one drunk dude, we still just get up and blow the room out."

Duncan takes inspiration for his energetic stage show from Guy Picciotto, guitarist for the punk band Fugazi. He still "actively draws" on the first Fugazi show he saw in Seattle.

"All the rock shows I had been to before that were very dry. Fugazi was like a revival. It gave me an appreciation for how spiritual a rock show can be," he said. "Guy Picciotto definitely (follows) the school of James Brown as filtered through post-punk. YouTube the guy. He's such an invigorating performer. I feel like a lot of indie rock performers at this point, they just kind of strum their guitars. It's such a self conscious act. I like to dance a bit, within reason."

"Performing well, or even just living a good life, ultimately is (about) just figuring ways to refine and amplify the person you are. I think everybody has great things to amplify. I think when people get lost is when they start trying to amplify something that's not them."

Underculture, with the Interiors, Elusive Parallelograms and Eddie Ate Dynamite: Friday, August 29, 10 p.m. at the Frequency, 121 W. Main St. ($5, ages 21 and up)

Listen to the Interiors song "Ghosts" or other songs on their myspace page.

Katjusa Cisar  —  8/26/2008 10:01 am