Nov. 05--Yakuza's Bruce Lamont and Neurosis' Scott Kelly are two of the more respected voices in underground rock-metal-punk-aggro-experimental music, so what's this business about them launching their latest project, Corrections House, because of a Neil Young record?
"Scott and I are both crazy music nerds, and we both love Neil Young," explains Lamont, who has worked in countless bands and side projects in Chicago since the '90s. In the winter of 2012, he had been listening obsessively to Young's 1991 live album, "Weld," particularly its 10-minute version of "Cortez the Killer."
"Somebody left that CD in the player in my sister's car, which I was using at the time, and I thought that song was awesome," Lamont says. "I would play it over and over."
Lamont and Kelly, who lives in Oregon, had been playing shows together off and on for about a decade and talking about doing a recording project. When Neurosis came to Chicago to play a show, they spent a few hours working out some ideas with Kelly on acoustic guitar and Lamont on saxophone. Their preferred jam? A haunting version of "Cortez the Killer."
The project expanded with the addition of Louisiana-based Eyehategod singer Mike IX Williams, with whom Lamont and Kelly had both collaborated previously, and then Sanford Parker (of Chicago metal band Minsk, among others), who was initially enlisted to record some music with the three before they went on the road. The idea behind the tour was for Lamont, Kelly and Williams to perform separately in solo and duo configurations, then join together for a few songs to cap the evening. But Parker had greater ambitions.
"Sanford calls back a half hour after I ask him to produce and he says he doesn't want to just record this band, he says, 'I want to be in this band, and what do you think about me jumping in the car with you?' " Lamont says. "I thought, 'Oh, so we're a band now?' "
The quartet found its collective voice by playing night after night in front of an audience. At first, the shows followed a rather rigid format that included solo performances, but the four musicians found they were having the most fun when they played together.
"It morphed into this thing," Lamont says. "We became a band on the road."
During a couple off days they recorded tracks for an album at Williams' home studio, and the debut by the newly minted Corrections House, "Last City Zero," was released on Kelly's Neurot label in 2013.
It came complete with an aesthetic that paints a disturbing picture of a futuristic police state, including black-and-white videos of masked figures in bleak, post-Apocalyptic settings. A follow-up album, "Know How to Carry a Whip" (Neurot), was released in late October, and it puts all that anxiety and oppression in an even bleaker framework, with Lamont's saxophone providing brief glimpses of melodic light in the sonic dungeon.
The vibe in part stems from the band's collective affection for the late author William Burroughs, particularly his dystopian 1964 novel "Nova Express." Parker would start some of the band's shows by cutting up Burroughs' famously cut-up prose, and Lamont would create lyrics for the band by folding over pages of "Nova Express."
Adding to the chaos is the band's mysterious "minister of propaganda," Seward Fairbury -- Corrections House's answer to the Sex Pistols' Malcolm McClaren or Public Enemy's Professor Griff.
"He's real but I don't know where he's from or much about him, other than Scott knows him from his old hard-core days," in the '80s and '90s, Lamont says. "As soon as he (Fairbury) saw something about the band on the Internet he was sending messages. 'You guys are the conduit to a revolution.' At first we all just thought it was funny, and then it was, 'Why not run with this?' Scott was telling him to keep sending stuff we could use (in press material), and we even had him doing interviews. He's a nut case, though, and he's disappeared for this record."
Last year, the band put out a statement saying that Fairbury was in a mental institution after being "involved in some sort of as-yet-to-be-determined violence in his Northern California home."
"Another creepy thing about our friend is his name," Lamont adds. "One day Scott texts me: 'Seward!' ... The same as William Burroughs' middle name: William Seward Burroughs. It's a weird correlation with one of our favorite authors. It kind of blew our minds. Burroughs in 'Nova Express' was talking about a futuristic police state, and it was already in there in the way we were thinking and writing. So in some weird way, is Seward Fairbury an example of Burroughs folding time back? Did he tap into the band without us knowing it?"
Greg Kot cohosts "Sound Opinions" at 8 p.m. Friday and 11 a.m. Saturday on WBEZ-FM 91.5.
greg@gregkot.com
Scott Kelly and Bruce Lamont
When: 8 p.m. Wednesday
Where: Drawing Room in the Chicago Athletic Association, 12 S. Michigan Ave.,
Tickets: Free; www.chicagoathletichotel.com
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