The BoDeans: Older, Wiser, and Better Than Ever

By Jeannette Madden
Staff Writer

Fargo welcomes the Midwest’s own BoDeans to the Fargo Theatre Friday, May 21, in support of their newest release, “Mr. Sad Clown.” Musically, “Mr. Sad Clown” is a continuation of the perfect harmonies that BoDeans fans have come to expect; but lyrically, the album possesses a depth that member Kurt Neumann (vocals and electric guitar) considers a departure from previous albums.
High Plains Reader: I’ve been listening to your new album, “Mr. Sad Clown,” and listening to your last release, “Still.” Can you tell me about the differences between the two?

Kurt Neumann: Songwriting-wise, “Mr. Sad Clown” has different subject matter. With “Still,” we went to T-Bone [Burnett] with a lot of different songs and he picked the songs and we mixed them, with him as the executive producer. I think he picked just a variation of classic BoDeans songs. With “Mr. Sad Clown” we grouped the songs ourselves, Sam [Llanas – vocals and acoustic guitar] and I tended to group songs that were dealing more with subject matter that was different for us than was typical. Mr. Sad Clown is mellower and deals with subject matter like depression that we hadn’t much written about on our records and I don’t think people associate that with the BoDeans. So for us it was a nice thing, whereas “Still” was a typical BoDeans record of good, simple songs put together.

HPR: What made you write about this different subject matter?

KN: I don’t know. I think when you’re writing songs, stuff just comes out at certain times. Sam and I don’t live by each other and we don’t talk to each other about what we’re writing about, but when we did get together to do the record and the recordings, we found that we both had these types of songs. You can point to all kinds of reasons why we might have written about it. The bottom line is it came out when it came out and why not put it together and release it? I think “Mr. Sad Clown” also has more of a middle-aged perspective on it. For the first time, we’re not trying to write about the same stuff we had written about before in our career, more songs about girls or cars or something like that. We were talking more about life, and like the song “Stay” is written about my daughter’s growing up, growing up too fast, and me wanting it all to stop, and just stay in this place when your kids are two or four years old and everything seems perfect (some days at least). It’s new territory for us but I think because of it, because of where we were, we had a good passion about it, you know?

HPR: I listened to an interview after you recorded “Still,” where you were talking about the issues you had just come out of with your record company. You were moving in a certain direction with “Still,” which you said was a new space for you. Now, it sounds like you are again moving in a different direction with “Mr. Sad Clown.”

KN: I think “Still” was more about just getting our legs again because we had been in the legal stuff for so long, it was really hard to move forward from that era, the eighties and nineties, that time in our life. There was one song in particular called “Round Here Somewhere,” that was about that and questioning if we still had the same dreams, the same passions. I think maybe that was what I was talking about back then, about new territory and being able to sing about that and write about that.

HPR: After your legal battle, did you go back to your roots and say, “What are we doing, why are we here, why did we get into this in the first place?” Or, were you ready to put it all behind you and say, “Okay, where do we go from here?”

KN: Yeah, I think that second one would be more our decision. We were so burnt out on all of that. It was actually like five years of court legalities we went through and it was eight years before that of trying to deal with the manager we had to get records out of… and move forward…we were being held back for so long. It was about putting that down and being able to play again, doing what we do again. It was about getting a lot of material out and getting going again with our lives.

HPR: You released “Still” independently but now you’re with 429 Records. How did that come about?

KN: I think self-releasing is a good thing but you have to be financed. You still have to pay for all of your promotion and we were lucky enough to find someone to back the project and fund it so we were able to self-release it. Basically what we did with this record was we went and made it ourselves and the record company takes it from there and does all of the promotion. We thought “Let’s try this again with a small label.” It’s kind of that grass-roots approach so it’s not really out of our hands. We still have a fair amount of say in what we’re doing and how it’s being done. We don’t have to try and do everything, which if you’re a big band, Metallica or something, you can self-release…you can hire a bunch of people to do all that and that’s great. But for a band our size, we don’t have that kind of money to hire a whole office to do that kind of promotion. We thought we’d try and find a good label for it and mostly, the thing about 429 is they were really excited about the record and the music. That’s something I really like to find in a label. For years and years, Warners Bros., there’s so many people working there and so many bands that you have one or two people excited about your music but there was a lot of competition going on. When you find a little label that really loves the music and really believes in it, it’s the most you can hope for when you’re trying to release your stuff.

HPR: You produced “Mr. Sad Clown” yourself?

KN: Yeah…I kept working away and throwing stuff at it and then I would give CDs to Sam and he would say, “I like this song” or “I hate this.” We kind of approached it that way until it got to a point where I sent it out to some people around us and they liked it a lot so we went from there.

With summer fast approaching, the BoDeans are headed back out on the road, just like they’ve always done. Early on in their career, they saw making records as a means of doing more shows, which is opposite of most bands. They are also appearing at the Minnesota State Fair with Big Head Todd and the Monsters on August 26. 

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If You Go

What: BoDeans, Michael Pink Band
Where: Fargo Theatre
When: Fri, May 21, 8pm
Info: 701.239.8385