Metro Pulse/Music/Crackpot

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What:
The Crackpots with Tim Lee

When:
Saturday, Feb. 15, 10 p.m.

Where:
Patrick Sullivans

Cost:
$5

Legendary producer and indie rocker, Mitch Easter, returns with a band of his own

by Tim Lee

As a recording engineer and producer, Mitch Easter has worked with a massive cross-section of musical artists, from R.E.M. and Marshall Crenshaw to Pavement and Superchunk to Alejandro Escovado, Caitlin Cary, Wilco and the Squirrel Nut Zippers.

That wide range of studio experience—and much more—also informs Easter's own work as a singer/songwriter and guitarist. And more than a decade after the demise of his acclaimed 1980s combo Let's Active, Easter is back with a new band, the Crackpots. Featuring Let's Active drummer Eric Marshall and bassist Shalini Chatterjee (who fronts her own projects, Shalini and Econoghost), the Crackpots pick up where L.A. dropped off, presenting Easter's skewed mixture of hard rock, psychedelia and perfect pop in energetic fashion.

So why so long in between? According to the North Carolina native, it wasn't intentional. "Like everybody does at the demise of their band, I figured I'd soon be going smoothly into the production of my next record," Easter says via email. "But this has a way of not happening, usually.

"I kept writing songs and recording demos, but as the '90s arrived, I think I was slightly daunted by the certain knowledge that I would be perceived as an annoying hyper-super-weenie-pop '80s guy...no matter what I did. But I sure wasn't going to cater to the era by trying to reconfigure my image as some kind of tough guy. I could not imagine 'pitching' myself to a record company."

Eventually, Easter says, he "just sort of forgot about putting out a record, basically." Staying busy with studio work and occasional tours, playing guitar for bands such as Velvet Crush and Shalini further stalled the idea of working on his own material. Still, the notion never really went away.

"I reckoned I'd get some kind of band going again eventually," Easter says. "I owe it mostly to Shalini, though, since I started playing guitar in her band a few years back."

In discussing the transition to the Crackpots (essentially the same band with different songs), Easter's assessment is typically self-effacing. "I had thought she should only have sleek, young people in her band, but her experience with the young folks was that they wouldn't show up for practice."

"My motivation is just: Playing music is the best thing you can do, and it's best done in front of others," he adds.

After years as a sideman, producer, engineer and studio musician, does the Crackpots feel like starting over? "Being onstage is like riding a bicycle or whatever," Easter says, noting, though, that the times have changed since Let's Active's heyday in the '80s.

"The the scene is different, and now we get paid amounts of money that my junior-high band would have scoffed at. The, er, new realities are pretty harsh."

Asked if he gets requests for Let's Active hits such as "Every Word Means Know" (recently covered by Smashmouth), "Room with a View" or "Waters Part" at Crackpots shows, Easter seems surprised by his own answer. "No, they don't," he says.

"I assume those familiar with the Let's Active catalog are now retired and staying in nights. And the ones who brave the clubs are too polite to make such demands," he adds.

The 48-year-old Easter has spent most of his life in and around his hometown, Winston-Salem, where he grew up with future dB's Chris Stamey, Peter Holsapple, Gene Holder and Will Rigby, playing in bands such as Sacred Irony, Rittenhouse Square, the H-Bombs and indie rock pioneers Sneakers. These days, Easter and Chatterjee live in nearby Kernersville, where they operate the Fidelitorium, an opulent, yet comfortable, 24-track studio.

According to Easter, the Fidelitorium—which replaced the old Drive-In studio located in his parents' suburban carport—is hopping these days with a range of musical acts.

"This is an exciting studio week because I'm working on a beach music record," Easter says of his first foray into a style that is seemingly light years removed from the modern psychedelia with which he is so often associated. "To have gone this long in this state without doing a beach session is astounding. Anyway, it has been big fun because the guys are such good players, and I really dig that early '60s soul music, which is what this band does. I don't often get to record really topnotch horn sections, belting soul-man vocalists, etc.

"Then on Thursday, we commence with Little Miss Messy, who are sort of a punk band from Durham. They're making their first full-length disk. So a fair bit of ground is being covered."

Working around his already busy studio schedule, Easter says the Crackpots are "recording some attempted 'real' tracks." You can almost see him nudge you and wink when he adds, "so you can see the studio is working in the 'stadium' genre, too."