Lost as Quickly as I'm Found: An Interview With Sebadoh's Lou Barlow (Part I)
On the 30th anniversary of Bakesale and how success tore the band apart
Lou Barlow with Dinosaur Jr. in 2022 (Photo by Daniel Knighton via Getty Images)
Lou Barlow needs virtually no introduction if you grew up wishing you were cool in the ‘90s; He’s entrenched in every corner of what became known as alternative and now indie-rock. He’s the bassist of Dinosaur Jr., the anchor of one of the most anchored bands still going; despite a very public split at the outset of the ‘90s, in 2007, they famously picked up from virtually where they left off as psych-garage stoner-grunge heroes led by the squall of J. Mascis’ axe. The power trio’s reunion era has now outlived the original incarnation almost fourfold.
Between tenures, Barlow established himself as a pioneer of lo-fi, DIY “bedroom” music and an A-list songwriter in his own right in Sebadoh, a band that eventually became as tender, hooky, and propulsive as any of their ‘90s contemporaries. Pitchfork devotees champion the early Sebadoh III when Eric Gaffney shared frontman duties, while many slot 1994’s Bakesale between Dookie and Weezer as one of that year’s purely fun guitar onslaughts.
Somehow Barlow still had time for projects like Sentridoh and the Folk Implosion, the latter of whom hit the top 40 in 1995 with one of the all-time chance career flukes, the slinky “Natural One.” For a spell, the Folk Implosion embraced that cut-and-paste sound rife with samples, loops, and grab-bag instrumentation before, well, imploding after 1999’s considerably textured One Part Lullaby. The duo just returned with Walk Thru Me, their first new album since then, and you can read that portion of my phone conversation with Barlow on Rock and Roll Globe. Here’s the rest of our chat, about the flipside of feeling your band peaking, the vagaries of the ‘90s major-label boom, and being an outsider to emo and pop-punk.
So Sebadoh’s Bakesale is obviously a big one for you and it's turning 30. Did you feel yourself starting to edit songs more tightly or trying to challenge yourself to be catchier?
No, I think what happened was that I decided to streamline. I mean, talk about pop-punk. Eric Gaffney had quit the band. And our good friend Bob Fay, who kind of filled in for Eric, became the main drummer. Bob was an awesome person and he was amazing to hang out with, he could keep a beat, but he wasn't, like, a drummer. I took that opportunity to streamline the music with six-string, standard-tuning guitar, which I hadn't really done before. Before that, I had done a lot of four-strings. I mean, I'd done some things on six-string, but Bakesale became more like, this is my standard. I don't know how many songs I have on that record, but four of them are in four strings and then all the rest are in six strings, standard tuning dropped down half a step there in D sharp. Not to get too technical, but I just decided to streamline it because we were also starting to play bigger shows and fucking trying to do all these special tunings was disastrous. Our shows were terrible generally anyway.
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