SUPER 400 CELEBRATE 25 YEARS WITH TWO SHOWS
Trio’s lead singer looks over band’s career highs, lows
Alot of life happens over the course of 25 years. For bassist/vocalist Lori Friday, her band Super 400 has been there for every step of the way.
On Nov. 12 and 13, the local rock band is celebrating its 25th anniversary with a pair of shows at the Hangar on the Hudson and Putnam Place, respectively. Friday expects quite the emotional experience.
“The 25th anniversary is so joyous, so precious, but it’s also bittersweet because some of the people we want to share it with are no longer here,” Friday said. “It just makes us hold onto moments like these ever more tightly.
“Every time the three of us get together, there’s an enormous emotional component,” she continued. “We have these portfolio of memories, and I get wistful onstage. I enjoy them, I enjoy that we still have these moments.”
In 1996, Friday was a recent Ualbany grad, “just living moment to moment,” gigging at various open mic nights around the Capital Region. She was unsure where these performances would take her, but she knew one thing.
“I was looking at grad school, but I really wanted a reason not to go,” she said. “I knew I wanted to spend my life making music.”
Her future began to take shape after an open mic night at Pauly’s Hotel when she saw longtime friends, guitarist Kenny Hohman and drummer Joe Daley, playing a set.
“I heard this unbelievable music,” Friday recalled. “They had a real aura about them and I just gravitated toward them. During a set break, I gave Kenny my phone number and said we should get together and play. He thought I was hitting on him.”
Hohman didn’t call and had no plans to, but eventually invited Friday over to the River Street loft he shared with Daley
at the urging of a mutual friend to see if there was something there musically. The rest, as they say, was history. “We plugged in and the music happened that happened then is the same as the music now,” she said.
From there, things moved fast for Super 400. The group worked with local label Cacophone on a debut LP and gigged heavily across the Capital Region and New York City. By 1997, Super 400 was signed to a deal by Island Records, who was betting that straightforward rock ‘n’ roll was on the comeback, and issued its eponymous debut LP soon after.
The record deal fell apart in 1998 after Island was bought out. In theory, that should have been a setback. It turned out to be the best possible outcome.
“We were back to being a hometown band, but that didn’t feel bad; we still had each other,” Friday said. “We saw a side of the industry we didn’t like, the pressure of vying for the attention of a label and basing your music and image to please them.
“For us, the give was to have music as
our vocation, we realized that wasn’t what we wanted,” she continued. "We could carve out whatever life we wanted.” And they did.
Connections forged on the New York City club circuit in the early 2000s provided an entrée into a European tour. The group was able to spend most of the aughts touring the United States. But in 2011, the tour-heavy schedule came to a halt after Friday suffered a car crash.
The resultant injuries required years of rehab. It marked the end of that phase of Super 400, but a new one slowly came together.
Friday, Hohman and local guitarist Graham Tichy founded Troy Music Academy, a music school for all age and skill levels. There was also was a change in Friday and Hohman’s domestic situation, which is funny considering their initial
meeting.
“It’s provided a livelihood for the past 11 years. We had to pay the bills, but it’s been a gift and become so much more than income,” she enthused. “If you had told Kenny and I that we’d be running our own business, a music school, we would have thought you were nuts.
“Kenny and I also decided it was time to get married in September 2011, we had been together 10 years at that point,” Friday added. “Joe became ordained and married us.”
Friday and Hohman had a daughter in 2013, which led to Super 400 only really coming together for special events for several years. But in recent years, live activity has picked up. In addition to more regular Super 400 performances, Friday and Hohman have a series of recurring acoustic shows and all three members of the band play together in a weekly improvisational jam session at Putnam Place with other area musicians.
For Friday, the 25th anniversary shows are about more than just the songs and musical continuity. It’s about celebrating family and the relationships made possible by being a part of Super 400.
“When we started, it was like an instant family connection,” she said. “Our daughter sits in with us (live) from time to time on the drums. She had the best drummer in the world to look up to, seeing Joe play and rehearse.
“When you’re 22, just thinking of being 29 is like ‘whoa,’” Friday continued. “If you had told me when I was 22 I’d be in a band with the same people for 25 years, you may as well have told me I’d grow up to have a long beard and carry a staff.”
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Every time the three of us get together, there’s an enormous emotional component. We have these portfolio of memories, and I get wistful onstage. I enjoy them, I enjoy that we still have these moments.”
— Lori Friday