The Slip: From Bonnaroo to Bar/None

By C.D. Di Guardia

Photos by Anthony Tieuli

The three members of The Slip are always in the middle of something. The trio moves around quickly from task to task, flitting from photo shoots to sound checks to guitar cases, but all three members seem eternally calm and self-assured. Maybe it‘s the schedule; this particular night was number seven out of a nine-show burn with My Morning Jacket, and running around the country can make a person tired. In any case, The Slip remain sharp.

The fans outside line up along the outside wall early, maintaining their cool with ratty concert t-shirts and artfully tattered hooded sweatshirts. One thing about the diverse crowd that shows up for My Morning Jacket, according to the group, is that the fans are there on time for the opening act. This is very good; The Slip is the opening act.

Inside, vocalist/guitarist Brad Barr sits on a couch between his brother, drummer Andrew Barr, and bassist Marc Friedman. The band is identified by two things — a hastily made Microsoft Word sign designating this corner as belonging to The Slip and, of course, the group’s stylistic signature — furry animal hats. Friedman holds up his hat, a brownish fox. “I’m a fox, Andrew’s a wolf, Brad’s a moose,” he explains, pointing down the row at the players and their hats. The trio claims to have picked up the hats in the adult section of a gas station somewhere in rural Pennsylvania. This is a Slip Moment — a point where the band gives an answer that sounds aggressively fabricated; but knowing these guys, it is probably the truth. They have the habit of doing this in both their conversation and music — veering off one direction or another, then going with it. Friedman says that the hats are a relatively recent addition: “It’s new, but it’s stickin’ like jelly on bread; it’s a nice experience for us,” he concludes, petting his own hat like a pet. The animal hats are perhaps the first hint that The Slip is not just here for our amusement; they are here for their own as well.

The fact that Friedman is able to wear his furry simulated fox hat and answer questions with a straight face says something. The entire group possesses this skill — the ability to pout like a Calvin Klein model from under these ridiculous plush animals; this is a hint as to how things are going to go with The Slip. The three deadpan serious sounding answers with hidden candor from concealed light hearts, but it takes a bit of intellectual investment to get the full message. This is one of the main things that the group appreciates about its large and fervent fan base.

“[The crowd] provides us with a nice little soundboard for what we enjoy doing, which is the nicest thing you could have as a musician,” says the soft-spoken Brad Barr. “We have a great audience that likes to go along for the ride.”

“People are pretty dedicated,” adds Friedman to the list of Things-The-Slip-Loves-About-The Crowd; “They are always kind of attentive, and kind of culty about it.”

Andrew Barr takes both of these statements in, then offers a summation: “It’s like the idea that the listener should have to work as hard as the artist when he was making the music to get it,” he begins. “It’s not always easily digestible,” he says of the band’s music, but he is confident in the audience. “I think our crowd is willing to go there with us and listen to everything. It’s a great, great crowd.”

“Good people,” says Brad. “Hairy people,” offers Andrew. “Breathing people,” affirms Friedman. When dealing with The Slip, it is best to just let them finish, because they usually go somewhere interesting.

While the Brothers Barr have known each other for younger brother Andrew’s entire life, the three musicians have known each other since high school, and have been “The Slip” for ten years. They started in high school, playing an early version of the Allston staple — the basement party for high school kids who can only really party in the basement. “We played together our last couple of years in high school,” says Andrew. The three musicians came to Boston together to attend Berklee College of Music. Friedman and the two Barrs ended up leaving the school with the same thing they had come with — a three-man band.

“Even at that time we were completely open to meeting other musicians,” explains Friedman. “That’s why we went there.” The group experimented with keyboardists and singers and even a horn section, but eventually found the best sound as a three-piece.

The Slip seems so fresh and new that it is hard to imagine that the band’s first record is 11 years old. They describe it as “kind of a home recording” that was recorded in an Allston basement. The group took its ten-song repertoire and laid it down with what they describe as “no production at all,” which gets upgraded to “maybe a little reverb” upon second thought. “I don’t even think we did overdubs,” says an almost-wistful Friedman.

Ten years has been kind to The Slip. What started as ADAT recording sessions with no production has blossomed into Eisenhower, their latest recording done at the locally esteemed Q Division, with rich layers of sound that whirl around a melodic center like Saturn with a furry animal hat on. The Slip’s original ten song library has blossomed into an archive of 60 songs — each of which the band would feel confident in playing to tonight’s largely passionate crowd at the Avalon. The band played some of its first Boston club shows at the Chopping Block, a small pub near Boston’s Brigham Circle. Even though it’s only a few subway stops away, the cramped and wooden railinged stage of the Block seems light years — or at least ten years — away.

“10 years is a long time, you have to account for that,” explains Friedman. “We were done with the Block a year later, selling out shows in the Middle East Downstairs.” The Slip has also progressed past the “small pond” idea as well, playing shows — big ones — all over the world. To Andrew Barr, the progress seems like a natural evolution. “It never feels like it went from here to here; it just feels like it’s always going like that,” hypothesizes the floppy haired lead singer. They still get enough of a balance in their shows to stay honest as performers, however. “We’ve been to Japan six times and received incredible receptions, playing these enormous size rooms, and then we come back and play to thirty people,” he explains. Each member of the group can still clearly see where the band’s roots lay, according to the older Barr. “There’s never this feeling that we made it or ‘We’re here now’.”

“There are plenty of rooms — there is plenty of room in America to humble yourself,” counsels the younger of the brothers.

The three musicians allow themselves humbling moments, but they only use them for insight, never allowing their spirits to be quelled by such experiences. They simply would not be The Slip if their live performances were anything less than musical spectacles, animal hats be damned. “The lesser the people there, the more I’m acting like Zakk Wylde up there,” affirms Friedman, adjusting his hat.

The Slip show in front of thousands is the same Slip show that occurs in front of thirty people, and they have the recordings to prove it. They have made common practice of releasing live recordings every few years, the most recent one coming in 2005. The band doesn’t aggressively push the live recordings, they exist more as a snapshot of a moment that they feel is worth preserving. “We just wanted to put it out there for people that are at our shows,” explains Andrew. The live experience seems ever changing for the band, according to Friedman. “We’re known as a live band and we approach each song differently, even though the lyrics are always the same and the structures mostly similar,” says the gregarious bassist.

Joining the worlds of jam and indie together isn’t an easy task, but The Slip makes it seem effortless, and the result is melodic songs that have longer sections of musical exploration. The band immediately brings the energy to its live show, pouring every bit of musical clout into each song, and the result is something of a genre-defying beast: aesthetics normally associated with indie rock fused with jam bandy musicianship.

A new record is an exciting thing for any band, and the November 2006 release was the first for the group under the Bar/None Records label — home to names such as Yo La Tengo and They Might Be Giants. Glenn Morrow of Bar/None found himself almost haunted by the band’s sound and felt compelled to work with The Slip. “He just kept stumbling into us, walking over to stages. He finally just told us ‘I found this sound and it was you guys again!’“ recalls the older Barr. “It was something we appreciated. It was a little bit of magic in the otherwise bleak world of soliciting yourself to labels.”

Eisenhower was produced by the band along with Matthew Ellard, whose credits include Elliott Smith, Wilco and Morphine. The record possesses a rich depth, where layers upon layers of sound have been constructed over the juicy center of the band’s strong pop sensibilities.

“There are a lot of overdubs, and we have been finding ways to incorporate these sounds into the show,” explains Friedman. “Andrew and I are always doing two things at once; we’re very into the idea of multitasking.” Vocalist Brad picks up where Friedman leaves off: “I think from our perspective, we’ve been working towards something like this for a while. A lot of our records have been us ‘stretching out,’ as in ‘How do we bring this expansive instrumental sound into these pop sounds?’“ It seems that to the band, the answer is Eisenhower, a venture that, compared to past releases, puts songwriting before jamming.

“We needed to make a record to focus on brevity and just try to capture a song,” says Brad. However, improvisation has always been an integral part of The Slip’s sound: “We’ve always been trying to find a way to write good songs that have this very experimental stuff ... We wanted to make some songs that were fun to write and fun to perform.”

www.theslip.com