From Dusk till Dawn

It’s just after 8:00 p.m. on the final day of summer, and

Seattle duo Kimberly Morrison and Jesse Lortz show up to
the
beach at Golden Gardens to catch the last glimpse of a dwindling
sunset. The sun has already disappeared behind the mountains, and a
thin strip of reddish pink sunlight is slowly fading above the
horizon’s jagged, jutting silhouettes. As the sky dims to a dark blue
embellished with twinkling stars, a handful of campfires begin to glow
big and bright along the beach. But Morrison and Lortz, collectively
and respectively known as the Dutchess and the Duke, sit in the dark,
on a large cluster of rocks, a couple hundred feet away from the
nearest flames.

“I’d like to sit by that fire,” Morrison halfheartedly suggests. “We
should crash it.”

Instead, the duo huddle against the light breeze, gaze at the stars,
and wonder whether the late summer moon is waxing or waning. “It’s
waxing,” says Lortz. “It’s getting bigger.”

The Dutchess and the Duke—and their sound—are in a
waxing phase as well. For most of this year, they have juggled a hectic
tour schedule, jumping between one-off festival gigs and opening slots
for Fleet Foxes, the Vaselines, and Modest Mouse, while taking time to
record their new sophomore album, Sunset/Sunrise, in Oakland. At
home, they’re just as busy—Morrison is pulling double duty
playing bass for Unnatural Helpers (who just finished recording and
mixing their forthcoming Hardly Art full-length); Lortz has been in
school and is the proud new father of a baby boy. They look a little
bit beat.

Morrison and Lortz are old friends who played in various bands and
shared many stages before forming the Dutchess and the Duke just under
two years ago. (They’re not a couple and not married to each other,
contrary to the popular belief of some lazy journalists.) They released
some of the first songs they ever recorded as the “Reservoir Park”
single on Lortz’s Boom Boom Castle label in October of 2007; the
recordings so impressed Sub Pop sister label Hardly Art that the label
signed the band (they were one of its first signings) without ever
having seen the band perform live. At the time, the duo still hadn’t
played beyond the basements where they recorded (their first show
happened months later at the Wildrose).

Their Hardly Art debut, She’s the Dutchess, He’s the Duke,
established the band’s basic sound: lightly strummed dual acoustic
guitars, warm vocal harmonies and sing-along melodies, catchy
hand-clapping and simple tom-tom and tambourine backbeats. When another
one of the band’s singles, “Never Had a Chance,” was released last year
on Chicago indie label HoZac Records, label owner Todd Killings coined
a term to describe the Dutchess and the Duke’s sound that has stuck
with them: “campfire punk.”

“It’s what people use to describe us,” says Lortz. “Which I guess is
better than something like ‘the groovy retro folk-rock stylings of
Leonard Cohen doing the Stones.’ I like it. I think it’s kind of
endearing.”

That sound really came to life during last December’s heavy snows,
when Seattle was paralyzed by frozen roads and slippery sidewalks, and
the duo played a special acoustic set for a friend’s birthday in the
frigid bowels of a gutted former restaurant/­nightclub that lacked
proper heat. Those who braved the weather and trekked down to a dimly
lit room barely warmer than it was outside stuck it out by huddling
close around the band, drinking, and singing along. After seeing the
band play around town on numerous occasions in 2008, including their
first sold-out show at the Tractor Tavern, it was exhilarating to catch
them in such an intimate setting, with no need for amplifiers and
microphones. There was no campfire to provide heat, but there was a
warm communal spirit in the air, everyone singing together in
harmony.

“Campfire songs are universal folk real-person songs,” says Lortz.
“The whole reason we wanted to start this band was so we could go to
Europe and just carry two guitars—just show up to play. That’s my
favorite way to do the band, because it’s just me and Kimberly, on the
road, having our adventures.”

As Morrison and Lortz sit on the rocks, two trains heading in
opposite directions pass by in the dark blaring their horns, halting
our conversation. The train whistles recall not only the band’s
adventurous spirit—as though the pair might just hop on and hit
the road that night—but also the faint sounds of fire-truck
sirens accidentally captured at the beginning of
Sunset/Sunrise‘s title track. Lortz explains that the Creamery,
a punk warehouse in Oakland where Sunset/Sunrise was recorded,
was in a dangerous part of town, and he describes the huge space they
recorded in as “a natural reverb tank,” though not one impervious to
picking up some outside ambience.

Sunset/Sunrise also picked up the fine-tuned ear of former
Gris Gris leader Greg Ashley, a gifted and versatile musician, who
produced the album and played various instruments on most of the
tracks, alongside regular D&D percussionist Donnie Hilstad,
friend/former Gris Gris bassist Oscar Michel (the namesake of Lortz’s
4-month-old), and a Bay Area–based session string player named
Carey Lamprecht. The additional players and the large, looming space in
which the music was recorded give the album a richer, more symphonic
quality that’s as emotionally moving as it is a departure from the
band’s earlier, stripped-down sound.

“It’s really funny,” says Lortz. “When ‘Hands’ [the lead single off
Sunset/Sunrise] came out, people were like, ‘Oh, I like their
older “campfire punk” stuff.'”

“Hands” is a profound album opener and a good indication of what’s
to come. Soft acoustic strums weave through faint organ notes over a
throbbing floor tom, while Lortz and Morrison sing, “Sometimes, girl,
I’m already gone/I’ve been ready for so long/in your heart there’s a
different man/and I just ain’t that strong,” before Ashley’s electric
fret-work blows over it all like a southerly wind. Morrison’s voice
takes front and center amid giant cymbal splashes and washes of
delicate strings on “When You Leave My Arms,” and the vulnerability and
loss in her lyrics make it one of the most emotionally intense songs
the band have ever recorded. “The River” closes the album on a slight
up-note, as though the last 29 minutes was an autumnal darkness and now
the sun was rising again.

Although conceived over just a few late nights in Lortz’s garage and
recorded over the course of a weeklong spring break, the results are
brilliant—Sunset/Sunrise stands to be one of the best
records put out by a Seattle band this year, hands down.

I had hoped to make it all the way to daybreak on that beach, but
it’s still a long ways off when the Dutchess and the Duke have to head
back to their busy personal lives. The sun is long gone, the moon is
waxing over us, and the campfires are still burning on the shore. The
sunrise can wait.