- Photo by Jonny Leather
CHECK-IN TIME
Motel Motel requires no reservations
Motel Motel
Oct. 4 at Union Hall, 702 Union St. (at 5th Ave.), Brooklyn, 718-599-1000; 7:30, $10. Buy Tickets.
Motel Motel is not a statement band. It might be playing at a benefit concert—thrown by the Press’ own Jonny Leather— this weekend for the Jiamini Scholarship Fund (which provides educational scholarships to Tanzanian children), but the quintet isn’t out to change the face of music or throw an agenda at you. Though it will occasionally talk politics. At a show last Thursday, guitarist Mickey Theis said the band had the pending presidential debate in mind and had worked out a dialogue with John McCain, who still had yet to confirm his appearance. “We were joking around and saying, ‘We won’t play until John McCain debates!’ And then John McCain comes back and says, ‘I won’t debate until Motel Motel plays!’” Luckily, the band was willing to concede first.
Motel Motel formed as a trio in 2006 with Theis, vocalist Eric Engel and bassist Timothy Sullivan. Theis explains that the trio played few live shows and was meant more as a “songwriting project” among the three New School students. Engel majored in psychology, while Theis, 21, and the band’s youngest member, is still in school and studies fiction writing. Drummer Jeremy Duvall came into the picture as a friend of Sullivan’s, the two having met in Boston during a stint at the Berklee College of Music. All of the band’s members have some sort of music-study background, except for Engel, whom Theis jokes only wanted to form a serious band because he “just didn’t want to go to grad school.” The group’s most recent addition, Erik Gumbel on pedal steel, banjo and piano, joined within the last couple of months.
The band resides predominantly in Brooklyn and Queens, but during a tour in the summer of 2007, the guys planted some roots in Colorado, Theis’ home state. Motel Motel finished up some tour dates, rented out the basement of an apartment in Boulder and spent the rest of the summer writing and recording songs in spaces that included a spacious music hall at the University of Denver. “The security guards asked us to leave a couple times,” Theis says. “We felt dangerous.” The songwriting process at that time involved Engel coming to the table with an idea and the rest of the group toying with it, but now Theis says every member offers up original ideas and opinions. “It’s an annoyingly democratic band.”
Motel Motel released an EP titled Old York in June 2007 and came out with a debut LP, New Denver, this past summer after a year’s worth of work. The songs reveal a band that respects the elements of alt-country—plenty of twang, chugging guitars, a habit of setting scenes with the lyrics and a vocalist who tips his hat to Ryan Adams—without bowing to the genre altogether. “We all have an appreciation for roots music of America,” Theis says, explaining that it’s something every member of the band can agree on, unlike the story of how the group got its name. Theis tells of several stories behind the name Motel Motel; but the most plausible one involves a friend who worked as a night janitor at a hotel in Denver. The friend, Theis says, was complaining about his job and pondered why the fancy hotel he cleaned was not just called something like “Hotel Hotel.” The group considered this name for a while but eventually settled on Motel Motel since another band already had snagged the other name. “But [Motel Motel] works better for us anyway,” Theis says. “The name is a little sleazier.