Veruca Salt: Back and Better Than Ever
By Ken Payne
feedback@buzznews.net
It seems like yesterday when Veruca Salt’s “Volcano Girls” video flooded TV airwaves with sexy images of singer/guitarists Louise Post and Nina Gordon rocking out while bouncing all over the place on bungee cords. Chicago-based Veruca Salt had just followed up their full-length debut American Thighs with their successful 1997 release, Eight Arms to Hold You With. Though American Thighs caught the band a fair share of attention, Eight Arms demanded it. Louise and Nina’s distinctive harmonies became synonymous with the band’s catchy, hard-edged sound placing them in a category of their own only to be imitated, but never duplicated, by many bands to follow. Songs like “Don’t Make Me Prove It”, “One Last Time”, “Shutterbug” and “Benjamin” proved that Veruca Salt was more than two women who could carry a tune and look good; they were also serious songwriters.
However, just as the band appeared to be on top of their game, Nina Gordon left, much to the surprise of Veruca Salt fans, forcing Louise to continue on without her. While Nina was busy preparing her solo release of Tonight and the Rest of my Life, Louise recruited new band members Stephen Fitzpatrick (guitar), Jimmy Madla (drums) and Suzanne Sokol (bass) and released Veruca Salt’s third album Resolver in 2000, one of the year’s hidden musical gems.
Now, six years and a new label (Sympathy for the Record Industry) later, Louise and Stephen, along with a revamped rhythm section consisting of bassist Nicole Fiorentino and drummer Kellii Scott, have put the pedal to the metal once again by releasing the long-awaited IV, the band’s fourth full-length effort. IV does not disappoint and that becomes apparent from the get go after listening to the album’s first track “So Weird”. Post delivers once again, staying true to the sound that Veruca Salt made famous in the mid-late ‘90’s yet adding a new maturity to the rock quartet’s songwriting and musicianship, showing fans and critics that this is a band that is still growing and blossoming. With memorable songs like “Sick As Your Secrets”, “Perfect Love” and “Blissful Queen”, Veruca Salt is poised for another breakthrough. Currently the band is supporting their new release with a rigorous nation-wide tour, which included a jam-packed date at Chicago’s Double Door last month – a show that Veruca fans are still buzzing about.
Another interesting thing I ran across was their “Making of VS IV” video, which can be seen by going to verucasalt.com. The 15-minute video gives fans an inside look at the band’s studio sessions as well as a fun glimpse of the personalities that comprise Veruca Salt. And, if you missed Veruca’s acoustic performance of “Perfect Love” on WGN, that, too, can be seen by going to their site.
I caught up with Louise just before the band was to take the stage in New Orleans at the House of Blues.
Buzz S&E - How’s your day going so far? I know you just finished a sound check.
Louise Post – We totally wrote a song just now while doing our sound check. Today we’re just like…inspired. We’re just writing, doing stuff on the spur of the moment. It’s really fun.
Buzz – How did that transpire?
Louise – Stephen was playing this riff that was really cool and I just started singing along with it. I was just sitting by myself while they were checking the drums, writing on clean guitar. I then started playing it and the band joined in one by one. It was very organic. It was really nice.
Buzz – The creative juices are always flowing?
Louise – Yeah. As a creative person I really feel dead in side if I’m not writing or creating. Performing is one element of doing what we do, but writing is such a critical part of feeling satisfied, or gratified, with my day.
Buzz – So, are you going to test out the new tune tonight? Spring it on the crowd?
Louise – The new one? No, I don’t think so. We did do a song in sound check that we haven’t played yet on this tour yet, a song from “American Thighs” called All Hail Me, so we’ll probably play that one tonight.
Buzz – How does it feel to be touring your first full-length album in six years?
Louise – It’s been great but we actually released an EP last fall and toured on that in the US for six weeks. We just self released it; we wanted to get something out since we weren’t on a label yet. I just wanted to, just needed to, get something out there. The EP was called “Lords of the sounds and Lesser Things” a title I took from Zora Neale Hurston’s ‘Their Eyes were watching God”. But yeah, we toured on the EP last fall and on the heel of that we hooked up with Long Gone John from Sympathy for the Record Industry and, the current EP, he put it out. I told him that we were really interested in doing a full-length and so it morphed into that. I haven’t really paused in the last couple years. I’ve been working really hard – really good, gratifying work, and doing what I love to do, but working relentlessly on this record and getting it out. So we recorded it in the spring and we’re on tour now. It came out September 12th and it’s awesome – it’s so great to be on tour.
Buzz – How was it coming back and play in Chicago last month?
Louise – It was a really magnificent homecoming show – there was so much love in that room. It just felt great to be home and play Double Door. I love that venue; it holds a lot of really good memories for me.
Buzz – Is there anything you would have done differently in your years with Veruca Salt?
Louise – There are certainly some things I would have done differently, but I see now that where I am now is the sum of all my parts and decisions, and I’m really happy to be where I am now. I’ve certainly grown up a lot in the past decade, as everyone does in the course of that many years. I’ve pretty much made peace with anything that has gone awry or with people that I’ve had partings with. I’ve adjusted to where I am now, which is a much more serene and separate place.
Buzz – When Nina Gordon left Veruca Salt, was there a point where the band may not have continued?
Louise – I had to make a big decision at that juncture, because obviously it would be a different entity without her in the band. I had some ethical qualms about it; I didn’t know how it would sit with me to continue on with out her, and Steve for that matter. We hadn’t had the same drummer for a couple years, so… The band has since changed obviously and morphed and those guys are still a huge part in the way that I write and a big part of me, the successful part of me even though we’re not close any more. They’re still sort of in my music, and in a way I’m staying true to what we created together. When I made the decision to continue, I already had about 15 songs for the next Veruca Salt record, and I felt like whatever I put out right now is going to sound like Veruca Salt. It wasn’t my decision to break up or leave the band. I would have preferred to keep going as we were, although in hindsight I think it was better for everyone that we parted ways. So I felt that the natural progression was to make the next Veruca Salt record. And I wasn’t ready to put it to rest either. I felt like it still had a lot more life left in it. And, you know, it was my baby that I shared with other people, but I felt like it had to still yet go to high school and college, for lack of a better metaphor.
Buzz – Have you ever re-established a relationship with Nina?
Louise – To some degree. We certainly talk on the phone and email extensively, and we wish each other well. We’ve just gone on very different paths, aesthetically, musically and in our lives.
Buzz – Very different musically…and to think you’ve both just recently come out with new albums.
Louise – Yeah, which is a very strange phenomenon. It certainly wasn’t planned.
Buzz – As far as your new album IV; you begin the record with a bang with “So Weird”. It’s sexy-cool with attitude and it rocks. Apparently someone weirded you out. Is the song about anyone in particular?
Louise – Well, it’s about a couple individuals that I toured with, who just really freaked me out. (Laughs then coughs) Excuse me, I’m sick. Let me shut my window.
~returns~
Louise – It’s so weird – we’re in New Orleans and I haven’t been here since Katrina. We’re in the French Quarter and everything just seems kind of the same…anyway…you’re question?
Buzz – If the song “So Weird” is about any one specific.
Louise – Oh, right. Well, when you tour…have you ever toured before in a band?
Buzz – Actually, yes…on a much smaller level.
Louise – Ok, well you probably know, from being in a band, you have to deal with everyone’s idiosyncrasies and you really get to know people on an intimate level. Some people…like in my case, might sort of get stuck with a crew that I don’t necessarily know before I get on the road with them. So you might run across behavior that is totally inappropriate or offensive, or bizarre. So I was just reeling from the last tour. I had a couple people that I toured with and a couple of people we just met on the road…And it also applies to people that I may have worked with intermittently, where I walked away from the project because I knew it wasn’t right, it was totally bizarre. So Stephen and I, like I said, were just reeling from the last tour, last fall when we wrote that song. I started speaking for both of us because that last tour was kind of weird. (Laughs) It’s just a way of processing it, I guess, writing a song about it.
Buzz – Some people don’t realize others need respect and space.
Louise – Yeah, beyond that it’s just acknowledging that this is a very small chapter and that just because you had a little window into my private world, don’t get the impression that you are an intimate friend of mine.
Buzz – What do you guys do on the road before and after or in between shows?
Louise – I try to sleep and take care of myself because there isn’t a lot of time for play. But like, the guys, this morning, went to a casino.
Buzz – Did they win?
Louise – Kellii, our drummer, won a hundred bucks and Stephen won, like forty. Right now they’re out shopping and Nicole’s getting a dress at Urban Outfitters. If we’re in the city we like to hang out. But if comes down to; I can either go to a museum or sit around and watch Oprah, I’ll sit around and watch Oprah. (Laughs) I heard Tom Petty once say, and it was such a relief to hear it coming from someone like him, that it’s all about the show. It’s all about the hour and a half, two hours that you’re on stage. Everything is geared for that. You travel, and all the manpower that goes into loading all the equipment, getting into a certain city, getting all the equipment on the stage, the sound checks – then you have to eat at some point – then back to the preparation for the show, the warming up, the psyching up, and all of that stuff. Then you have your time on stage and then you’re wide awake for the next four hours. Then once you go to sleep it’s all about recovering from the night before. Even if it’s not totally crazy, there’s this recovery period. Like I feel like I’m conserving energy all the time for the next show. So I’m kind of operating at half-mast all the time. I feel like I’m a little bit subhuman until it’s time for the show and then I turn it on again.
Buzz – Yeah, watching Oprah is totally rock‘n roll.
Louise – (Laughs). Actually I try to get in as much Law and Order as I can. Law and Order is like a drug. I can just sit there and phase out. It’s so formulaic, that you know exactly what’s going to happen. It’s some weird intravenous TV drug.
Buzz – Yeah, my brother’s girlfriend is addicted to that show.
Louise – It’s easy! It’s easy to be addicted to that show. I don’t know what happened but I never used to have any tolerance for any blood, guts or violence in movies or television. But somewhere along the line it just shot through the roof and now it can’t be gross enough for me. So I totally watch C.S.I. and the Forensic Files and all that stuff.
Buzz – You’re like first in line for Saw II…
Louise – No I didn’t see that. Why? Is it gross?
Buzz – It’s sick and twisted with a lot of blood. You probably don’t want to see it…or actually, maybe you do.
Louise – No, I don’t think so. I probably don’t. It doesn’t sound appealing to me. I like the ones where there’s an obvious crime and you’re in and out in an hour. I don’t need to go deep into the psychological levels of it. Anything that’s super challenging and really gnarly – I’ll probably skip it. But I do like some psychological dramas like Jacob’s Ladder. It’s a cool movie. I don’t know why it popped into my head. It’s really old.
Buzz – So the road leads you to many TV detective series…
Louise – I’m pretty boring on the road. There’s no like, hookers and blow.
Buzz – So back to IV. How has Kellii’s drumming change the sound since Resolver?
Buzz – That had to be quite a change for you and the band.
Louise - It’s a new experience before, but I never played with someone of his caliber and his taste. Kellii sets the bar really high for the rest of us, which means we really had to bring our A-game to everything we did, and that’s a great place to be because the drum tracks were so fucking solid, and so heavy, and so beautiful. It inspired me to new heights, I think. I can’t really say enough about our experience making this record – it was just really positive. The drums have always been very heavy in our band and Kellii stayed true to the aesthetic that Jim Shapiro started on American Thighs.
Buzz – Nicole was also a great addition.
Louise – Nicole is similar in keeping with the sensibility and musical style that I grew to love playing with Steve Lack on American Thighs. She’s really melodic and lyrical in her bass lines and she really holds it down also. I really dig her ideas. She’s instinctively musical and she also has great harmony ideas – she sings like an angel. It was a total joy to begin writing with her and it has been to play with her. This is the first time she’s been in a band and sung so much and it’s really cool to watch her blossom on tour.
Buzz – When did you first know that Veruca Salt was something special?
Louise – The first day that I sang with Nina Gordon. We didn’t have a band name yet but I knew that whatever we were going to do was going to be really special.
Buzz – How did you hook up with Nina in the first place?
Louise – We were introduced by Lilly Taylor, the actor, who was a high school friend of Nina’s. She heard my music independently at a party I was having. She called Nina and held out the phone and said, “Can you hear this – you have to meet this woman”, and we met the next week, kind of on a blind date.
Buzz – What song do you really get off on when you play it live?
Louise – Right now I really love playing Sick as Your Secrets, it’s one of our songs from VS IV. In part, because I really enjoy singing it and I can hear myself. (Laughs) It’s really that simple. So I can really get into the vocal because on so much of the stuff we play it’s full on, heavy rock – and I love playing it but I struggle a lot to hear myself on stage.
Buzz – It’s time to crank up the monitors.
Louise – Yeah, even good monitors, like tonight at The House of Blues, these are decent monitors, but we have to turn our stage volume down pretty low for me to get a pretty good monitor sound. But we’re so much about energy and the feeling we have on stage that we don’t want to turn down because well lose that energy, you know. We really feed off our sound and we’re all swept up in this wall of rock. But yeah, to get back to your question, right now it’s Sick as Your Secrets, but also because it’s a very passionate song. It’s about loving someone and wanting them to come back after they’re far gone, and receded, and isolated – just wanting them to come back to the fold and feeling that they’re deserving of life and love again.
Buzz – How did Chicago tie in to Veruca Salt’s success?
Louise – Chicago was the perfect place to start up as a band and to grow up as a band. We made our demo for only $300 in Hyde Park with a friend of ours. Then I took it all around to clubs like Phyllis’s Musical Inn, The Elbo Room, the Avalon when it was the Avalon…I just took our four-song demo to all these places, I called ahead, I met with the booking agents, I followed up and booked us some shows. It just happened that we met this guy Jim Powers, who was the head of Minty Fresh Records and still is. He really liked us and booked us with this little three-band show at, I think the Czar Bar, and he really liked us so he signed us to a three-record deal. We had been practicing about a year and a half before we even had a show. We just didn’t want to play out until we thought we were ready and we knew how we wanted to sound. We certainly didn’t, in terms of the Chicago mindset, quote “pay our dues”, unquote the way bands are expected to.
Buzz – Like playing for five-ten years?
Louise – Yeah. We had done our own things for years before we hooked up and started our band. But, we were a still a relatively new, young band when we got signed and started making our record. Still, I felt like we were right where we were supposed to be. The only negative on Chicago is that people hated us really quickly because we made it big very fast in the terms that they thought – the being much-publicized backlash. I kind of understood that because I remember when Liz Phair came out; I remember being kind of inundated with her, chatter, images and articles about her and about how great she was – so I really didn’t want to like her. Then I heard Exile in Guyville and it just blew me away – it totally knocked me over and really touched me. I think it’s just human nature to want to resist something that’s shoved down your throat.
Buzz – Your timing was good too with Chicago getting notice from The Smashing Pumpkin’s prior success.
Louise – The Pumpkin’s came out before we even started our band, maybe in ’91? I remember I used to go to this café on School Street and D’arcy [Wretzky] was a waitress there and there was this big, elaborate painting in the bathroom, she had painted the walls. But she and James Iha used to play checkers in the café and I just remember thinking they must be artists of some sort, and some time after that I saw them on the cover of the Illinois Entertainer when “Gish” came out, so I was like, “Oh. Ok, they’re in a band”. Then I heard “Gish” and my head exploded. I thought it was fucking amazing. It totally inspired me and influenced my musical taste and approach. I just thought it was incredible.
Buzz – What’s on the horizon for Veruca Salt?
Louise – Just touring for this album and maybe Europe in the summer for European festivals. We’ll see how this record does. I really love this album. There was so much passion, skill and love that went into this record so I just want as many people as possible to hear it. Beyond that, we’ll make another one. We always joke that VS V will come out in 2012 but it won’t be that long. (Laughs)