A Liberator interview with Weaker Youth Ensemble

By James Norton

The Weaker Youth Ensemble is one of Madison's strongest bands, an original group with a some ska roots and a lot of local fan support; I got out on the coldest day this year and met Robert Trondson, their drummer, and Dave Lund, their bassist. Over the course of an hour, I managed to ask them about their band, their music, and their upcoming CD, which should be available at B-Side and the Mad City Music Exchange on February the 19th. They were great guys. Buy their music.

Jim: Okay, for starters, how'd the Weaker Youth Ensemble originally get started?

Dave: Well, me and Robert and Sean were in bands previous to this, obscure bands that didn't really go anywhere, and you don't need to worry about; we were giving up on the music thing, but we decided to get a Ska band together.

Robert: Because we were all into Ska music.

D: It wasn't like we just said "Hey, took, Ska's coming back!"; we just liked the sound. So we played for a couple of months and we decided we needed to get some more members, a keyboard, and some horns, so we put up some flyers... We got a call back from John, who's our singer now, and then we got Brian, the keyboard player, and the horns have kind of come and gone from there. This was all about two and a half years ago, by the way.

J: Okay, something I've always been curious about, because you guys have such an original name. How'd you come up with "Weaker Youth Ensemble"?

D: Well, we were up at Bob's house up in Minneapolis, playing basketball, and I'm not very athletically talented, and I couldn't hit any baskets basically, and they were all making fun of me...

R: That's what we do.

D: And I just said I was a member of the Weaker Youth, and it stuck from there. But what it really means is that we were all dorky kids in high school, except Bob.

R: I was a jock.

D: But he was still a dork. No, I mean we were all generally not really cool... It doesn't mean we're all physically puny, you know.

J: Sort of an underdog thing.

D: Yeah, exactly. We're not trying to be cool, and we're not trying to be like... [makes loud kind of grunge-rock noises]. It's not like we're trying to put up an image.

J: Allright. Not to sound cliché, but what bands have really influenced your sound... Where have you picked up a lot of your stuff?

R: I think The Police, I already mentioned as our favorite, especially from the rhythm section perspective...

D: You could say The Police, and Fishbone, and you could say The Specials and all these other Two-Tone kind of bands, but we're not really trying to emulate Two-Tone bands... And there's stuff Iike the Velvet Underground, and Primus. And there's jazz in there. But we don't want to sound like Les Claypool... There's a lot of stuff that makes us up, like Mr. Bungle, but we don't really want to be like them.

R: Even though we have all these influences, we try to keep the idea that we can do anything we want, we don't have to do a certain thing.

J: Okay, In your opinion, what was your band's best gig ever?

D: The Metro, in Chicago.

R: That was the American Skathic release party, and there were all these people there, and we played really well, for us, which is good. And it also introduced us to the Chicago ska scene.

J: Okay, what was your worst gig ever, or do you care not to comment?

R: Oh ... Man. One time we opened up for the Electric Hellfire Club ... They're an offshoot of Thrill Kill Cult. And we went there, and people just came to see Industrial. We played, and barely anyone clapped, and barely anyone was there. And then the members of the Electric Hellfire Club were just scary-weird, and their singer had these demon horns coming out of his head and he wore them all the time, and he looked like Satan, and he was really pasty... and they had this Conan the Barbarian percussionist... They were really scary.

D: Definitely a negative experience.

J: Hmm. Okay, react quickly to these words: The Mighty Mighty Bosstones.

R: Don't like 'em.

D: I personally don't like 'em.

R: I mean, I like 'em live, we played with them two years ago, at the Underground and that was a blast - they brought a great crowd.

D: I just don't like 'em. Some people in the band like 'em; Alex likes 'em.

R: Our saxophone player. He thinks they're "Rad." They're "Rad"!

J: How do you feel about playing for all-ages crowd?

R: All ages are great, because the people are crazy. When the crowd's younger, usually the shows are wilder. The high-school crowd will get up there, and they'll dance, and they'll skank, and they'll slam-dance; they'll get into it but in a much less violent way. As opposed to frat boys, who'll come to our shows and think that slam-dancing is just beating people up, kicking heads in. The younger crowd comes in, and they'll be there to have a good time, to skank. And for this show we'll be doing on the 29th, we really tried to get it all ages, but we couldn't, for insurance reasons. So we had to go 18 and up. And for all ages, we want to set up this thing at the Barrymore, this ska fest with like five bands, in April, and we're talking to the folks at the New Loft, we're going to try and get it accessible for everyone.

J: Ska's seen a real resurgence in the last few years; why's It coming back?

R: Funk's dead, thank god. Everyone wanted to be the Chill Peppers for so long.

D: Let's not get personal.

R: We're not getting personal, but you know, everyone was using the same sort of riffs, and the same sort of thing. Also, I think people, especially in Madison, are still into the live incredible, slammin', danceable shows.

D: That's one thing about ska: you can just dance to it. Some of our stuff is a little hard to grasp at first, it's like: RRRGH. But a lot of it you can just dance to.

R: And it's also that the ska scene is a very tight-knit group, and yet everyone's invited. You get there, and you're already welcome.

J: Are there any local up and coming ska bands around Madison?

D, We played with Stinkfish last October, and people seemed to be really into them, and that was cool. And I talked with John from the Pacers, and they played with Stinkfish in Milwaukee, and he said they just ruled, people were really into them.

J: Finally, where are you guys playing next?

R: The 29th of January is our CD release at the R&R Station.

J: And that's 18 and up?

R: Yep, 18 and up. Get your fake IDs. Actually, I can't say that, don't put that in. [laughter]

R: Anyway, the CDs will be sold for less expensive that night, $7 and it's $5 in advance. The bill for that night is us, the Pacers, Skapone, and a ska DJ out of Chicago called Chuck Wren, and he's going to do turntables between acts. One thing in the future, a little bit down the road, we're doing a Men Stopping Rape benefit at Tripp Commons. That should be a really good show.