By Peter Lindblad
Shabby chic has its place, but Garage Glamour is where it’s at for The Claudettes.
That’s the name of the Chicago-based band’s new album, slated for release on Friday, June 5, and it’s emblematic of The Claudettes’ mix of glittery and grimy elements, a sort of cabaret crossroads where the devil is rebuffed in brokering a deal for their darkly audacious swirl of deep-diving soul and blues, boogie bust outs, cinematic noir and theatrical punk.
Even with all those genres swimming around their DNA, band leader Johnny Iguana feels they do coalesce in a cohesive statement of purpose.
“The songs really, really vary, but so does life, and so do we,” said Iguana, co-composer of the score for the hit TV series “The Bear” and a jack-of-all-trades as a keyboardist. “I think we have a unified sound, even if the sort of genre that you might pin on it maybe shifts from song to song.”
Just as restless on the road, The Claudettes are caravaning to Wisconsin, as they hit up Stevens Point June 4 before going to Appleton Friday, June 5, for a show at the Gibson Community Music Hall and another date Saturday, June 6, in Madison at the North Street Cabaret. Then, it’s off to Michigan and Indiana, but they’re circling back in August to appear at The Sh*tty Barn in Spring Green Aug. 5 and at Madison’s Eken Park Fest on Aug. 15.
“We have played both the venues at Appleton and Madison many times each, and the Madison place is actually kind of one of the home bases for us,” said Iguana. “The place in Appleton is really great, too.”
Hauling around the songs of Garage Glamour, their sixth LP, The Claudettes will be treating audiences to their own strange brew of American roots music, letting it rip with the rhythm section of bassist/guitarist and vocalist Zach Verdoon and drummer Liz Ele. Out front, singer Rachel Williams is a towering presence, standing over 6-feet tall with a powerful, expressive voice that shakes the rafters.
“There’s really great musicianship in the band, but I always say lead with your heart to my bandmates before we play, because mistakes don’t matter, I say, too,” said Iguana. “You know, mistakes are one thing, but some people play with perfection, and I find that very boring. I think we really go for it as musicians, but the songs that have humor and heart in them … if the band is really, really feeling what they’re doing, so are the viewers going to really feel it. And if that’s not really the case, and if it’s just a display of technique or something, people will probably find themselves tempted to look at the time and stuff. I really think that we have that, the combination of heart and chops.”
Williams is relatively new, replacing former lead vocalist Berit Ulseth. Garage Glamour is her recording debut with the band. Being from Texas, she is formidable.
“She’s 6-foot in bare feet, so she comes out in heels and it’s quite a sight,” said Iguana. “She’s like Annie Lennox in the band, and she’s like a soulful singer, and she comes from theater, as well as music, so she really trumpets the songs, like the meaning of the song. The intention of the songs really comes through, and that’s why I think it’s more than a toe-tapping experience.”
Williams was already intimately familiar with The Claudettes before jumping aboard. Iguana talked about how Williams enlisted.
“Well, we needed a singer,” said Iguana. “Berit, who sang with us for about seven years, just didn’t really want to travel around playing music anymore – moving on to a new chapter in life. And right away, a guy in Chicago actually called me. I’d never spoken to him on the phone. But he runs kind of a well-known cover band here in the city. And she had kind of passed through his ranks a little bit a while ago. But he said, not only is she really special and really great on stage and as a singer, but he said she’s an avowed Claudettes fan.”
Prompted by his friend to visit her social media and see her post about the Claudettes and their last show, Iguana’s interest was piqued.
“And indeed, she had written several paragraphs, kind of raved about the band and the songs,” said Iguana. “And I thought, ‘Well, That’s pretty good. That’s a good start.’ It’s one thing to say, ‘Well, yes, I’m available. What does it pay?’ Instead, she did say, ‘No, don’t judge my voice because I do have COVID right now,’ which was the case when I first called her. But then she started coming over around the piano, and … it was clearly going to be a thing.”
On Garage Glamour, Williams takes the bull by the horns immediately, with a passionate performance on the soulful opener “(You Are My) Whole World,” where she duets with blues legend John Primer. Iguana said it made three wives of band members cry when they heard it.
“It really hits,” said Iguana. “Because it’s one thing to write something good. It’s another to have somebody… really mean what they’re saying and really, really feel it and almost kind of close their eyes and give themselves to it. And it just was a precious thing that if we had rehearsed it to death, it wouldn’t be the same as having recorded it right when John kind of really latched on to it emotionally.”
Writing “(You Are My) Whole World” stemmed from hearing a soul classic on the radio: The Chi-Lites’ “Oh Girl.”
“I thought I wanted to have a song with just a simple phrase that gets repeated like that rather than verse and chorus and verse and chorus,” said Iguana. “I just wanted to have everybody anxious for the one like short phrase to melt along with, but then I changed some things about it and kind of made it more minor key. And then I decided I really wanted it to be like a full duet, so I asked my friend John Primer, who I tour with a lot, who’s one of the greatest blues artists and most revered ones, but also a really great devotee of ‘60s and ‘70s soul music. And so, I had him come in and sing on it, and he just kind of discovered the song in his heart while the tapes were rolling, and it’s a really special thing.”
“Winter Came While You Were Gone” is another piece of prime soul artistry, but The Claudettes never get into a rut on Garage Glamour, as the wildly original “Mr. Pecker’s Apoplexy” feels like a Broadway showstopper with a crazy story to match. It retells the real-life feud between bickering business tycoons.
“‘Winter Came While You Were Gone’ was a song that I had written, and then Rachel actually kind of turned in on some melodic points, and we really got the song going somewhere really good,” said Iguana. “And then I had kind of an alchemy beat in mind for it, like a ‘Let’s Stay Together’ kind of a gallop to it, and so there’s that, but then there’s also like a rock opera based on a real life war of war of letters between Jeff Bezos and David Pecker’s attorney that I thought was prime for a rock opera.”
It’s a bit of an outlier on Garage Glamour, although “No Matter How Much” is cut from the same cloth, while the pounding “That Could Be Arranged” is dark and stormy, a strutting “Whirlpool” tastes of vintage soul – as does “The Aftermath” – and the funky romp “Don’t Give it Up to the Thieves” teams with the yearning “There is No Other Side” to close things out in inspiring fashion.
All of it whips around the foundational piano playing of Iguana, whose résumé is loaded with collaborations with musical luminaries, such as Johnny Winter, the Rolling Stones’ Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, Derek Trucks and Buddy Guy.
The Claudettes came to life in 2010, with Iguana in charge. The lineup has changed since then.
“I mean, when I was 15, my greatest music heroes were kind of from the punk and post-punk world, but also from blues and jazz and R&B,” said Iguana. “I kind of discovered all of that at the same time when I was 15, 16, you know, moving past the classic rock and pop music that everyone was listening to … some friends, older brothers, they shared the music with us, and my uncle sent me these great records. And yet I had taken classical piano lessons when I was 8 years old until I was 13, so the sort of classical beginnings, and then the punk and blues discovery, if you swirl that all around, shake it all up in a fishbowl, you get The Claudettes.”
Iguana grew up in Philadelphia and lived in New York City, “before Junior Wells brought me to Chicago, but I have lived here (Chicago) longer than I’ve ever lived anywhere else.”
In explaining how his musical tastes developed, Iguana said, “Well, Philly, I grew up down the street from where all these jazz legends used to play. And I was a little too young to have seen that heyday of Lee Morgan and John Coltrane and Jimmy Smith and Jimmy McGriff and ‘Groove’ Holmes and all these people I discovered later. But certainly, that’s what kept me indoors at age 15. I got obsessed with just working out left-hand blues piano parts and old walking organ bass parts. And that’s why I had a lot of bands [where it was] on me to play the bass player … I spent seasons just drilling that stuff because I got so obsessed with it, you know?”
With The Claudettes, however, Iguana writes songs in a myriad of styles. Working on “The Bear” allowed him to bring a little of that old Claudettes’ magic to television with the help of friend Jeffrey “JQ” Qaiyum.
“The Claudettes stuff is always sort of cinematic in my mind,” said Iguana. “The way we produce the songs to me makes them ideal for TV and film, and they should hopefully conjure images as you’re hearing it. And so, I think that kind of work is a natural for me and my friend JQ and I, who do the score for ‘The Bear.’ We had a band in previous years, and he got asked to do some music for the first season.”
It turned out JQ knew one of the producers, it being a small world, even in a big city like Chicago.
“So, he got asked to do that, but then he brought me in for sort of more expansive harmonic and melodic skills,” said Iguana. “So, he’s more of like a producer and beats guy and kind of a rapper and lyricist, and I’m more of like a notes and chords [guy], and we both [work] together quite eclectically.”
“Eclectic” is a good word to describe The Claudettes, who are undergoing a fertile creative stretch currently. Iguana, who noted that he’s writing songs more with Williams’ skills and personality in mind now, said the band recorded more songs than it needed for Garage Glamour, and they are striking while the iron is hot. Or, at least, Iguana hopes they do.
“So, the album comes out this Friday, June 5, and we’re playing shows around mostly the Midwest in June, July, August, and then we’re going to go further afield in the fall,” said Iguana. “We’re going to go as far out west as South Dakota, as far east as you can get without falling into the Atlantic Ocean. We’ll be in Boston, New York and Philly and stuff. But my hope is to record again around August, September, before we have such a busy fall. And then I would like to see us put out another record in about a year’s time after this one.”
That’s if everyone is up for it.
“We’ll see. I’m trying to urge my bandmates. After we do all the busy touring, I’m sure everyone’s going to want a breather. And I’m going to say, ‘Can we not have a breather?’” said Iguana, with a laugh. “’Can we just practice like crazy and then go into the studio and record?’ We’ll see if they take a deep breath and then say, ‘Okay,’ or if they just take a deep breath. We’ll see.”
