Jeanine O’Toole is happy to be calling from New York, where her band, the 1900’s, is playing a series of concerts. “I’m shocked that we’re all still alive and no one’s in jail,” she says with only a hint of a laugh. “This whole thing nearly fell apart” before it began.
A few days before the octet’s first extended tour outside of Chicago was to begin, keyboardist Mike Jasinski stumbled home to the Logan Square apartment he shares with guitarist Edward Anderson. He was shoeless and sporting a right elbow that resembled a black and blue grapefruit. A half-day was spent in the waiting room of Cook County Hospital, where it was determined he’d suffered a broken arm.
Details are vague, but band members say an Andersonville bar, an aggressive bouncer, some kind of altercation and a door were involved. Jasinski took one for the team, though. He’s not only on the road with his bandmates, he drove the band’s van all the way to the East Coast and is hauling his own equipment at gigs.
“What a trooper,” O’Toole marvels. Such is life in a band where everything, from the music to the relationships, is somewhat complicated.
The 1900’s have a terrific EP to their credit, “Plume Delivery” (Parasol), and a boatload of buzz built on live gigs. Their gorgeous multipart harmonies, swooning strings, indelible melodies and multipart psychedelic folk-rock songs suggest a cool, clear-headed update of the Zombies and Love. Yes, the future looks bright–if the band can keep its volatile chemistry in balance.
Groundwork for the band was laid years ago by Anderson, Jasinski and drummer Tim Minnick, who began playing together at south suburban Amos Alonzo Stagg High School. They began assembling their dream band two years ago when they asked bassist Charlie Ransford to join, then recruited vocalists O’Toole and Caroline Donovan.
“I was so sure they would work, even though I didn’t actually know if they could sing when I asked them to stop by,” Anderson confesses. “Then, when they actually did sing over some of the songs we were writing it was a great relief. `Whoah! They really can sing.'”
O’Toole and Donovan had been best friends since their high school days at Mother McCauley on the South Side, and they had an innate sense of harmony from their extensive training in theater.
Within weeks, Donovan began dating Anderson, and O’Toole paired off with Ransford. The latter couple eventually broke up, and tension was high within the band for a few weeks, but the notion of quitting never arose. “We’re in this band together for better or worse, and now we’re friends again,” O’Toole says.
When it’s suggested that this sounds more than a little like the mid-’70s soap opera that surrounded Fleetwood Mac circa Lindsay Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, and Christine and John McVie, O’Toole responds: “Oh, yeah, except without as much coke.”
Anderson laughs when told of O’Toole’s response. “Actually, I’d say with more coke.” Jokes aside, he says, the notion of band members sharing more than just music left him a little uneasy at first, “but the relationships are all pretty solid now. We had our best soundcheck ever the other night. We were just having a great time being together. Usually someone storms off, and people are screaming at each other.”
That passion cuts through the music, which makes all the internal drama worthwhile, Anderson and O’Toole concur. “It’s worked out freakishly well,” O’Toole says. “In a way, we’re still getting to know each other.”
The band, which now includes violinist Audra Kulan and violist Whitney Johnson, was together for a year before playing its first concert, last September in downstate Champaign. By then, they’d already recorded “Plume Delivery,” with the idea that they would distribute it themselves. Instead, Geoff Merritt, owner of the respected indie label Parasol, offered the fledgling band a record deal after the show.
“He came to the show as a friend, and I don’t think he had any intention of signing us,” O’Toole says. “Then he saw us play, and said he wanted to put the record out. It happened so fast, we didn’t think he was being serious. But he e-mailed the next Monday and said he absolutely was.”
Anderson is serious about his band, too. “We have bigger plans for how the next record will sound,” the guitarist says. “It’ll be more grand. String arrangements, horns . . . we jokingly call it `psychedelic Motown.'”
The 1900’s with Office, Public Four, Bumpus
When: 9 p.m. Saturday Where: Double Door, 1572 N. Milwaukee Ave.
Price: $5; 773-489-3160
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gregkot@aol.com
Greg Kot co-hosts “Sound Opinions” at 7 p.m. Saturdays on WBEZ-FM 91.5.
