Gigolo Aunts Start It Up Again by Bill Holmes (from the Fall 1999 issue POP CULTURE PRESS)



Despite suffering a lengthy break in momentum while they extricated themselves from a label deal, things are looking up for the Gigolo Aunts. With band and business transplanted from Boston to Los Angeles, and with fan and head Counting Crow Adam Duritz signing them to his E Pluribus Unum label, the Aunts delivered their strongest set to date, Minor Chords And Major Themes (sure to be on many year-end Best Of lists, mine included). Steve Hurley checked in during a Spring tour to say hello; here’s some pieces of that conversation…

BH: Let’s talk about the record. Many of the songs are very introspective without being wimpy, and the sound of the record is powerful without being loud. Like the last Jayhawks record, vocals way up front, great harmonies, very accessible but very different from the last album’s "wall of sound".
SH: Well, that’s very true, we definitely wanted to move into a new direction. I think really introspective songs are effective when they’re done well. You take a big chance when you do that, but I thought on this record Dave really sang great, and we were able to play a lot more subtly than we had in the past. We knew we wanted to do a record that was fairly sparse sounding and where the song was the most important thing. I think we were a little tired of the "wall of sound" that had been going on, and is still going on, and we felt like it wasn’t really expressing where we were coming from anymore. We made something that felt really good to us, and hopefully it will strike a resonant chord in other people as well. I mean it’s a lot like Flippin’ Out in that if one song goes, there’s a lot of other songs that could be singles, it’s just a matter of getting one heard.

BH: You guys have done a lot of covers in the past. One song that I loved, and I thought it was a hit all by itself, was the cover you did for the Van Halen tribute ("Why Cant This Be Love" from Everybody Wants Some) which was so, so great…
SH: (laughs) Oh, right! A lot of local bands did that and we were approached to do that really late in the game. And every Van Halen song that we mentioned, we heard "oh, somebody’s already doing that one"…so it turned out there weren’t too many left and we were going to have to be the ones to break the "Van Hagar" barrier (laughs)…which is some pretty bad territory. So we thought the only way we could do it would be to take some Van Hagar song and reinvent it in a way that we liked better.

BH: Phenomenal! And a nice little Beatles nod thrown in at the end of it as well.
SH: Yeah, that was the whole thing; to take the song and try to squish it into "She Loves You".

BH: You cover other bands too, BMX Bandits, Smiths…when you’re playing out live, what are some of the songs that you’re throwing in now?
SH: We’ve been playing "Kid" by The Pretenders pretty regularly…

BH: My favorite guitar solo ever!
SH: Yeah, it’s a great guitar solo! And…we’ve messed around with "Born To Run", although we usually don’t get all the way through that, it usually falls apart about two-thirds of the way (laughs)…and we did a lot of special shows out here opening up for Cracker, and Adam Duritz would show up at a lot of them and come out at the end and do "So You Want To Be A Rock And Roll Star" with us. We played "He’s A Whore" by Cheap Trick the other night.

BH: Great songs come out of desperation, and you guys were certainly in the vortex for a while, but now things are on the upswing for you. What do you think the new direction in songwriting will be like?
SH: I think Dave and I have both said that we’d like to write less mopey songs (laughs), but you also have to write what comes naturally. Personally I’ve been writing more upbeat, major key songs, but we just keep writing and kind of wait for it to take form.

BH: As a writer, who were the people who made you feel that you had to progress beyond three chord songs and take it to the next level?
SH: Well, Ray Davies is my favorite songwriter, my all time number one. He just blows me away. Lennon and McCartney, of course, classic…for newer people I really like Neil Finn. And I like Elliot Smith a lot…Pete Townshend….Paul Weller, I was a huge fan of The Jam. Then when we moved to Boston we started to get influenced by local bands like The Pixies, Big Dipper, Dumptruck.

BH: Great scene in Boston. Now LA will be a lot different for you. The whole band is moving out there?
SH: We’re interested in trying it out for a little while. There was a lot of good energy when we were out there earlier this year. Nothing against Boston, we could wind up coming back to Boston, but we’re looking for some new inspiration, a new flow in the air, and there’s definitely a lot of possibilities for us out there. I’ve never spent a whole lot of time out there except touring, so there’s a whole fresh set of things to observe.

BH: It will be really great to see this music get out in front of a really wide audience. I mean you’re getting some radio, but to have people come out and see how the band has changed, and frankly, improved since the last time will be special.
SH: Our thought has always been if we get a big tour, great; if not, we’ll just play clubs and win fans over one by one. We like to play a lot. As a matter of fact, the only time we really had any problems in the band is when we were inactive.

No cheesy teen dramas were hurt during the making of this article.