Ravinia 2021 - Issue 3

With each Lake Street Dive member contributing their voices, as onstage at their Ravinia debut in 2019, the Obviously songs include writing from all five for the first (and only) time. RAVINIA/RUSSELL JENKINS “We’re trying to write good songs that people want to dance to, or at least feel strongly about. That’s what you want music to do: to take you somewhere.” tunes, including “Faith” by George Michael and “Rich Girl” by Daryl Hall and John Oates. The strategy proved to be their tipping point into much broader success, thanks in particular to their acoustic, bluesy cover of “I Want You Back.” Reinventing the irre- sistible Jackson 5 hit, Lake Street Dive introduced themselves to the masses via a simple video: Just the four of them performing on the sidewalk in Boston, bathed in sunlight, their tight-as-a-tick harmonies accompa- nied by upright bass and a mournful trumpet. (To date, it’s notched 6.7 mil- lion YouTube views.) That sudden surge in popularity fueled a tour, not to mention a brief legal bind—Price was under contract elsewhere, so the group’s original label fronted them the money to buy her out. “That was the beginning of the modern-day Lake Street Dive,” Ca- labrese says. “A little bit of internet notoriety, coupled with a sold-out tour across the country. We haven’t stopped since!” He pauses, then adds: “Well, it took a pandemic to stop us.” A few years ago, the group added a fifth musician, keyboardist and singer Bermiss. That makes Obviously a par- ticularly precious time capsule in the group’s history, as it’s the only release featuring all five members in the line- up. Bermiss had performed on Free Yourself Up , Lake Street Dive’s sixth studio album, in 2018, but Obviously hits new marks, with Bermiss scoring songwriting credits on more than half the tracks. He also duets with Price on “Same Old News,” which delivers the same style of groove as classic ’70s Ro- berta Flack–Donny Hathaway tracks. The fun footnote is that Chicago hosted the pivotal moment in the band’s history when the original four asked Bermiss to officially join them. Calabrese chuckles when he recalls the story. “Yes! We made it super awkward,” he says. “We got rings; we got a card; we took him out to dinner. He’s very gracious, but it was clear, at the time, that he wanted to leap out of his skin. But he accepted, nonetheless. That’s when you know it’s true love: when you embarrass someone and they still want to be with you.” The new dimensions heard on Ob- viously come not just from Bermiss, but also thanks to producer Mike Elizondo, a Grammy winner who’s worked with everyone from Dr. Dre to Eminem, Fiona Apple to Carrie Underwood. These new layers to Lake Street Dive’s sound don’t make them any easier to pigeonhole; recent reviews tag the new album as “genre transcending,” “era hopping,” and “jazz-pop-whatever.” But that lack of easy labels doesn’t bother Calabrese at all. “You know, genres,” he sighs. “I feel like there weren’t genres before pop music; there was just where a style of music was from. All music was folk music! You could even say that classical music was aristocratic European folk music. What happened in the United States was something completely different. You needed to genre-fy these different kinds of mu- sic, to identify it and follow its growth through many different forms.” So Calabrese’s developed his own lines when describing the sound: “When I talk about the band’s genre, I sometimes say, ‘We’re a pop band from earlier decades.’ More often, I say, ‘We’re a song band.’ We’re trying to write good songs that people want to dance to, or at least feel strongly about. “That’s what you want music to do: to take you somewhere. Right? All we’ve been doing our entire career is to try to write the songs we want to listen to. We want to write songs that would make our musical ancestors proud. That’s the idea!” Native Chicagoan Web Behrens has spent most of his journalism career covering arts and culture. His work has appeared in the pages of the Chicago Tribune , Time Out Chicago , Time Out New York , Crain’s Chicago Business , Advocate magazine, and Mobil Travel Guides. RAVINIA MAGAZINE • AUGUST 18 – SEPTEMBER 6, 2021 16