2009 / LIGHT TIME

CT INDIE: It is one thing to claim that a song is haunting, but quite another to be able to say a song literally features a haunted instrument. The Rhodes that appears on the song Dead and Gone, did the spectral character that it is suspected of ever reveal itself to you?

LOU: I received word that there was an estate sale happening in Buffalo, NY, and among some musical and recording gear was an early 70's Rhodes Piano at a price that would make the trip worthwhile. The plan was to make the 14-hour winter round-trip together, acquire the piano, and record with it. When we arrived, the estate manager said something like "yea, it's really crazy, I'm surprised there's no blood on it." Tim and I got spooked and he said "oh, you didn't hear about the murder?” Now out of respect for the situation, which is quite strange and grisly, I'll go into no other detail, but my neighbors have heard music coming out of my practice space when no one was in there, and when we listened back to some of my recorded tracks, there are notes that we did not play. I did all the typical steps, burning sage, lighting specific candles, leaving little tokens of respect inside the instrument, all of that. I think it's a friendly ghost, I mean, he's on our side. I just hope he doesn't get stage fright, because we are taking the piano out on the road for the first time this summer.

CT INDIE: Along with the friendly Rhodes ghost, you're also touring with Caroline Weeks, who you first met when Lewis & Clarke opened for Bat for Lashes. Can you tell us a little more about that first meeting and what it was that led you both to want to tour together?

LOU: Caroline is an amazing human being. She's a quiet and modest force, and quite magical. A good dancer, too. There is depth to what she is doing musically, conjuring images and placing antiquated lyrics in the now. It's natural for people to gravitate to one another's company and creations, so we kept in contact and did a short string of shows together last year, after the Bat For Lashes tour, all squeezed in the van. Much different from the Bat Bus, for sure. I think we really bonded when we stayed up all night after the show at the Gallery in Cambridge making free jazz with found objects and odd instruments. Her husband Peter was there, as well as Mary Hampton. It was raining, the evening was not well attended and we all just went into the sonic ether for hours. The owner actually came down and joined us, it was a moment. Caroline speaks that language.

CT INDIE: The language you’re referring to, could it be said that it is like an instinctual exchange in response to shared environments and moments, moods and impressions? Like a form of communication whose only vocabulary is a simple openness to discovery and a need to express the findings with others musically?

LOU: Yes, it's primitive and expansive, and really special when the lines touch. That connectivity of energy is something to acknowledge and tune in to. While contemporary communication and media is amazing, it also dulls our primal senses, too real to dismiss. I just had Koyaanisqatsi images flash in my mind for a moment...

CT INDIE: Exactly! We've become habituated to the intense bombardment of images and sounds that are all competing for our attention. Meanwhile, there's a child out there somewhere right now poking a stick into the mud at the edge of a pond. The idea of being that child, even if only for a brief moment, is within your music, but there's an equal sense of that same child running through an abandoned farmhouse, slightly afraid of its shadows and broken windows.

LOU: I agree, seeing the world through the eyes of my child makes me hyper-sensitive to influence. There's the innocence, and with that naiveté it's not so much a sense of fear, but anticipation of the unknown, and respect, or reverence of the spiritual undercurrent, as well as things that go bump in the night. There should be no fear. These are our own creations, of course. My son and I explore nature and really hone in on the minutia that is important. He's so psyched on little patches of lichen that grow together in different colors, and all the wildlife in the pond. These moments are all incorporated into music, or whatever outlet...dragging the rake through the sand. Interpreting what it means to be alive never gets old and always teaches us about ourselves.

CT INDIE: When you say "These are our creations, of course", this also rings true when thinking about your embracement of paradox. For instance, you have said elsewhere that the lyric in Cohen's Chelsea #2 "I need you, I don't need you" was what most compelled you to cover it. But is it true that what draws your interest to such an idea has more to do with what the contradictions share, or even what they make?

LOU: We are creatures of contradiction. Is it possible for something to be and to not be at the same time? Is it black and white? I think there's something more, the weird logical inconsistencies that cause us to be hot and cold in one breath, or simultaneously weak and powerful. It's more feel than rationale. There's an interdependence created by contradiction that I am attracted to. It's also a bit of a curse sometimes.

CT INDIE: I read that one of the references that the name Lewis & Clarke points to is Arthur C. Clarke and C. S. Lewis. What was it about their brief correspondence that interested you?

LOU: Ahh, back to the Koyaanisqatsi trip! Those guys were on it, there's an account of their correspondence in the mid-1940's called From Narnia to Space Odyssey. They were two revered minds who had concerns about technology and the future, and how it would affect mankind, as an asset or an enslavement. Not an uncommon theme, but I really like C.S. Lewis, and I like to think of him, Clarke, and Tolkien as contemporaries sharing ideas. Coonskin caps aside, I thought it made for an OK-enough name for a musical project when coupled with the obvious reference of exploration, and one that would not be out of style in a year's passing.

CT INDIE: So, for Lewis & Clarke, it's not only about new fronteirs, but also about continuous rediscovery?

LOU: That's hopefully the case, and it doesn't have to be on a grand scale, either. Whether it's reinterpreting older songs, writing new material, or fiddling about on a new instrument, there's always a new sound, idea, or contradiction to play with.

~end~

interview by Jason Devin, July, 2009

Indie-folk group Lewis & Clarke’s latest release is a slim EP called Light Time. Music doesn’t change much in this genre, but then it doesn’t have to for it to keep enthralling us with its gentle, wounded ache. Lou Rogai continues to impress as the band’s mastermind and singer, his plaintive and modest instrument a welcome addition to the ranks of underappreciated and talented musicians performing without much expectation of fame/fortune. Despite this, “Petrified Forest”, the lead track, should by rights get both — it’ll come close to taking your breath away. The song’s patience is its strength — it lets acoustic guitar strings, now plucked, ring for a half-second before moving to the next figure; it observes the devastation of an abandoned town, “the factory slow-dance”, “mothers on treadmills”; it is desolate and affecting. The other notable track here is a pretty cover of the Leonard Cohen classic “Chelsea Hotel #2”, still shocking lyrically after all these years, and treated with utmost respect by Rogai & co. Even if Lewis & Clarke can’t write albums-full of “Petrified Forest”s, this one’ll become a precious gift to those who hear it.

By Dan Raper / 16 June 2009

POP MATTERS

DONNYBROOK WRITING ACADEMY

In 2007, Lewis & Clarke delivered to the world a record entitled Blasts of Holy Birth (prompting the usual tastemakers to prick up their ears, with Pitchfork praising it as "Eight Tracks of delicate beauty). Those I know who've had the privilege of hearing this record have grafted it onto their minds like little else in recent memory, taking it into their bodies like a kind of nourishment. It's a record of creation, of birth.

Now, in 2009, Lewis & Clarke has resurfaced with an EP entitled "Light Time" and not a moment too soon for this writer, as I've been getting hungry again. But how does Light Time greet a palate so generously prepared by the group's past offerings? The answer is well, dear listener, quite well.  

You see, "Blasts..." was an epiphany in it's own right, but one spoken from lips attached to a face that tilted up towards the sky while gazing down into a terrible abyss. Light Time reveals that same face to us once again, after the self-fulfilling prophecy of it's own fall (Before It Breaks You), but now with head and eyes fixed sternly ahead.  In between these two points the body attached to that face, a body belonging to a man named Lou Rogai, has slept in what can only be described as one of the deeper circles of hell and come back to linger on simply because it is good to do so. We as an audience are better off for it. In fact, musiciansin general are better off for it, if for no other reason than to be reminded that strength is just as beautiful as weakness.

For all of the whispery-voiced, faux-bohemian, lilting cliches that overpopulate what we can loosely term "folk music", "Light Time" is a reminder that the heart, above all else, is a muscle. 

-Dr Lazarus T. Helm, Donnybrook Writing Academy

LEWIS & CLARKE SHINES A SOFT LIGHT
POP MATTERS

Over 20-plus years as a musician, Lou Rogai has learned that a whisper can be as powerful as a scream.

Since 2003, the Delaware Water Gap, Pa., singer, songwriter and guitarist has guided a collective known as Lewis & Clarke, quietly and steadily building a following in indie-folk circles with haunting, hushed vocals and introspective songs elegantly couched in understated arrangements.

But Rogai was not always so reserved. As a rural northeastern Pennsylvania teen weaned on KISS and his painter-art teacher dad’s jazz and classic-rock record collection, Rogai spent the early ‘90s playing guitar and singing in a hardcore punk band, First Things First. Next came New Trip, a stoner rock/grunge act, and in the mid-‘90s, he joined emo-hardcore groups Side Over and Roger That Houston.

“Before (Lewis & Clarke) it was screams and aggression and frustration and angst,” says Rogai. “Now the whisper is the philosophical equivalent to what a shout was then. Subtlety is powerful to me.”

Rogai was born in Brooklyn, but when he was 10, he moved to Beach Lake, Pa., about 40 miles northeast of Scranton. “Going from Brooklyn to being in the wilds and playing baseball on fields of grass instead of concrete, it was like being portaled into a Walt Disney movie,” says Rogai.

During this interview Rogai is hiking the terrain near his Monroe County home, where he has lived since 1999. He describes his rented abode as “a 100-year-old building within earshot of the (noted jazz venue) Deer Head Inn. It has a practice space and a porch, and the Appalachian Trail is outside the door.”

Rogai has just released a four-song 12-inch vinyl EP, “Light Time,” the first music from Lewis & Clarke since 2007’s highly regarded “Blasts of Holy Birth.” He will spotlight the disc on a brief tour as opening act for hot British indie-rock act Bats for Lashes.

Supporting Rogai will be brothers Ian and Shane O’Hara, on bass and drums, respectively; Tom Asselin, who will provide “guitar atmospherics,” and cellist Karen Codd. The show will be Shane O’Hara and Codd’s first time playing with L&C.

“Light Time” includes two new songs, a new version of “Dead & Gone” from his “Bare Bones and Branches” CD and a telling cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Chelsea Hotel #2.”

Although the recording capped a year of personal upheaval, Rogai stresses, “Be sure to emphasize the sense of triumph and hope, even if there are tragic events surrounding it.”

Artistically, “it’s a new kind of writing for me,” Rogai points out. “It’s less abstract. I’m weaving more of a story, with more absolute visuals.”

Arguably the best example is “Petrified Forest,” with images of abandoned children, dying factories and neglectful parents buttressed by evocative guitar picking and violins humming in back.

“It’s about lower middle-class broken families,” says Rogai. “I always felt for people who came from those families. ...

“There’s Northeast Pennsylvania and its industrial decay in that song,” he adds. “That’s what I felt like when I was writing it. But when the strings come in (near the end), hope comes in, and it picks up.”

In the title track, Rogai seems to be searching for a glimmer of hope in the inky darkness of a hastily ended relationship and a salve for the pain that ensues. “It’s like tearing a muscle and rebuilding it,” says Rogai of the healing process. “You have to accept /(the pain/) and make friends with it, rather than wallow.”

Reviewers from outlets as diverse as the Associated Press, Billboard, Magnet, No Depression and Pitchfork have been vociferous in their praise of Lewis & Clarke, which has performed with the likes of Isobel Campbell of Belle & Sebastian, Blur, Robyn Hitchcock, Joan of Arc, Okkervil River and Bat for Lashes. (The band name is a reference to two of Rogai’s favorite writers, C.S. Lewis and Arthur C. Clarke, not the 19th century explorers.)

L&C’s first release, 2003’s “Bright Light” EP brought comparisons to Mark Eitzel, Giant Sand, The Mojave 3 and Low. “I didn’t listen to any of them at the time,” says Rogai. “I only listened to them because of those comparisons. Yes, (‘Bright Light’) is dusty, and a little Americana, but it’s not kitschy.”

The sound shifted on L&C’s first full-length disc, “Bare Bones and Branches,” when Rogai began working with Russell Higbee (now of Man Man). “It started to become chamber folk, because (Higbee) played the harp and I started playing a nylon string guitar. People would say, ‘It’s like Pentangle, if Pentangle was more classically influenced.”

“Bare Bones and Branches,” released in Europe in 2003, didn’t come out in the U.S. until two years later, but the timing was good, because so-called “freak folk” artists were gathering momentum.

The level of admiration accorded L&C elevated significantly, and reached a crescendo with 2006’s concert recording “Live on WPRB” and 2007’s “Blasts of Holy Birth.” By then, cellist Eve Miller (of the Rachels and Tempesta di Mare) had become a collaborator, and Rogai had started his own label, La Societe Expeditionnaire.

“I started getting into yoga and Indian classical music, and that shows up on the live recording and on ‘Blasts Of Holy Birth,’” says Rogai. “I was slowly becoming interested in (psychologist) Carl Jung and (British philosopher) Alan Watts. And I was preparing for the birth of my son.”

Asked what comes next, Rogai replies, “Nothing about Lewis & Clarke is immediate. It’s a long-distance-runner thing. The trajectory is subtle growth over time.”

LOU ROGAI ON LEONARD COHEN:

It’s no accident that Lou Rogai does a version of Leonard Cohen’s “Chelsea Hotel #2” on Lewis & Clarke’s new 12-inch vinyl EP, “Light Time.” He is an unabashed fan of the Canadian singer-songwriter’s aching acidic work.

“Leonard Cohen freaked my world when I first listened with attentive ears,” says the indie-folk singer-songwriter. “I could not believe the power of his humanity. The melodies are certainly bittersweet, and the lyrics carefully crafted, yet so raw and unspoiled.”

Here are Rogai’s top five Cohen compositions:

1. “Famous Blue Raincoat” - The tale of a three-sided affair, the song is from the perspective of a man writing a letter to his woman’s lover. Cohen addresses the other man as “my brother, my killer.” Pretty heavy.

2. “Suzanne” - Two people so attracted to one another, physically and intellectually, that they don’t want to spoil the possibility by betraying their fantasies and allowing them to become actual occurrences.

3. “Hey, That’s No Way To Say Goodbye” - I’ll share my favorite line, with no need to explain: “Let’s not talk of love or chains and things we can’t untie.”

4. “So Long, Marianne” - “I’m standing on a ledge and your fine spider web is fastening my ankle to a stone.” What an image. Some say it’s about Marianne Faithfull, although the real Marianne is depicted on the back cover of “Songs from a Room.” She and Cohen lived together on the Greek island of Hydra in the 1960s.

5. “Chelsea Hotel #2” - This is a recollection of Cohen’s romance with a prominent female singer who rose (pun intended) to fame in the ‘60s and left our Earth too early. He later apologized for naming names, so out of respect, I won’t. The paradoxical reason I felt most compelled to cover this tune is contained between these quotation marks: “I need you, I don’t need you.”

-by Len Righi