The Tea Club________
It’s all in the family for The Tea Club, who went from making their music “as crazy as it could be” to becoming one of the spearheads of modern prog. Brothers Pat and Dan McGowan talk self-doubt, bravely blending styles, and winning over the prog haters.
US prog rockers make an intoxicating brew with their new album If/When.
If we’re being bravely candid, there’s a raft of progressive acts who remain entwined and chained to the sole drive of recreating past progressive glories, content at trying to blindly recreate the wistful, unsurpassable highs that 70s acts such as Genesis or Pink Floyd achieved. That may be their prerogative but there’s often a sense that they’re wasting their talent in a dubious and futile attempt at replication.
At the other end of the spectrum are those contemporary bands that determinedly avoid such temptations, and whose music is decent enough but who are never destined to perform in venues larger than pubs. It’s rare, then, that a band will stumble forcibly into the genre who possess an internal, innovative artistic desire that makes them stand out from the cluster of wannabes. The Tea Club are one of those few acts in recent years who have the musical audacity and potential to become major players.
The band have been releasing albums and EPs since 2003, and although they’d managed to build a steady fanbase, there was a sense that it wasn’t until they released their fourth album, 2015’s Grappling – an expansive and stimulating recording – that the prog fraternity really started to take notice.
“It seemed like all the reviews for that album were positive,” says vocalist and guitarist Dan McGowan, who helms the project with his brother Pat, also on guitar and vocals. “I really didn’t think anyone was going to get that album, and I was kind of surprised because we deliberately went out of our way to make something as crazy as it could be. We did get some momentum and I think it made some of the prog guys take us a little more seriously.”
A tour with Thank You Scientist and
Moon Tooth in 2016 followed, and the band have spent the last two years writing and recording their latest album, If/When. The delay in completing the album was due to a combination of what they describe as increasingly hectic private lives and a desire to ensure that this album was a further step in their natural development.
“My favourite art and music is when things just happen organically,” says Dan. “We’ve always wanted to be organic and have the songs write themselves and listen to what the creative process is trying to tell us. We’ve been very fortunate in that we have been able to make music that way. We try to be honest and come from a pure place artistically.”
The band have certainly achieved that aim, as the album contains a brave mixture of styles that still manage to retain a beguiling cohesion. There are moments of fragility, such as the infectious If I Mean When and the lilting The Way You Call, both of which have the tenderness of a Nick Drake or Neil Young ballad. That’s not to say they don’t possess originality, but they are a brave statement for The Tea Club. Were there any concerns about recording and releasing such acoustic guitar led tracks?
“Well, The Way You Call is quite a vulnerable song,” says Dan. “It was a scary thing but vulnerability is one of the most evocative things about music. I think the skill Pat and I have is that we have this intuition and we go for it. We’re not afraid to follow where it
“We have every intention of promoting this album to people who think that prog rock is absolutely the worst thing to ever happen to music.” Dan McGowan
takes us. I can’t believe it took us to the place it did. At the risk of sounding too ‘out there’, this is the most spiritually written album we’ve recorded. It’s kind of a cliché to think that the songs are coming from beyond you, but I really feel that the songs just fell into our laps. The best moments came from someplace else.”
“That was kind of a creed that we agreed on early on in the process, which was when things felt good, we should just leave them alone and not overcook it,” interjects Pat. “The producer that we were working with, Jeff Aderman, was a really big deal in helping guide us through that process. Not that we haven’t done that in the past, and I love all the albums we’ve made, but this one was just different. Dan wrote If I Mean When in like an hour. When I came home after Dan had written it, he showed it to me and I was like, ‘Dude, this has five chords.’ [laughs] ‘Can we have a song that has five chords?’ But it’s so good, and it just hit me right in the chest. We even wrote a few different versions of If I Mean When. There was even a seven-minute long prog version. But I lost a lot of sleep over the making of this album.”
Listening to the album, it’s tricky to conceive that anyone – including the bandmembers themselves – could fail to appreciate the well-balanced and lavish nature of the recording. Seemingly though, there were concerns that the minor change in direction had led them to become victims of narcissism, unable to appreciate that their perceived masterpiece was actually a dud.
“There were some moments when I had a lot of self-doubt,” continues Pat. “You know, is this one of those stories where the band tried to reinvent themselves and made something that was just awful? We take the band and our music really seriously and it’s like an extension of ourselves. I wrote a song about my son and it’s a very intimate song, and part of me was afraid that everyone was going to laugh at me. I had this feeling in my soul that we had really tapped into something with this album and I was nervous because I didn’t want to mess it up. At the other extreme was the worry that we were going to disappoint all of our fans. I was afraid that they would accuse us of pretending to be an indie band. We love the people who support us and I don’t want to disappoint them. But throughout the process I also felt that it was good and that we should hang in there.”
Those yearning for a longer progressive track will find it in the 27 minutes of Creature. So how did the band even start writing such a complex piece?
“I was looking back at some of the prog epics and really paying attention to what was going on and repeating themes, which we had never really done,” explains Dan. “When I was younger, I would listen to tracks when the melody would repeat and think that they only did it because they ran out of ideas. But then I realised that, when the themes came back, it was just so beautiful. It’s all about getting a strong melody and making the most of it. You know, try it in a different key or put it on top of something else and see if it works. So in this track, there were enough happy accidents to make me think that we stumbled on to some cool stuff. It certainly wasn’t us being clever and having everything planned out. We’re really not that smart.”
The band are set to tour the US alongside Bent Knee and Thank You Scientist, and are also to appear at Rosfest in 2020 in an attempt to introduce If/When to a fresh audience. Rightly, they’re also not short of confidence that this recording can assist them in appealing to audiences across genres.
“We have every intention of promoting this album to people who think that prog rock is absolutely the worst thing to ever happen to music,” states Dan. “I don’t care.
I’m going to be ruthless and say, ‘Just listen to it, man. Just check it out and tell me that you don’t like it…’”
If/When is out now and is self-released. Visit www.theteaclub.net for more information.
“At the risk of sounding too ‘out there’, this is the most spiritually written album we have recorded.”
Dan McGowan