Juke w/ A.M. Disasters, Pop Interstate
Sunset Tavern, 784-4880. Fri Dec 1.
“I JUST REMEMBER closing my eyes, trying to get my bearings,” says Juke frontman Darren Loucas. “And I was just untethered.”
We’re sitting across from each other at Cafe Septieme, drinking coffee from mismatched cups, and Loucas is describing for me the first gig he ever played, back when he was just 16. It was a show for hire at an outdoor restaurant across from the Fountainbleau Hotel on Miami Beach, and right before the set, Loucas dropped acid. (Um, whoops.) He recalls the particular way the air distorted before his eyes while he was playing, and how the normally inert neck of his guitar suddenly torked upward like putty, revealing the evidence of unaccountable fingers groping at wonked strings. And in an image worthy of a triptych by Hieronymus Bosch, Loucas explains how, directly in front of the stage, there was this huge, fleshy pig roasting over open flames on a revolving spit.
“It really was a nightmare,” Loucas says, shaking his head. “I had no idea how long we’d been playing.” The punch line: After the show, the hostess asked the band if they were free to play again next weekend.
Sitting on the paper tablecloth between us is a small stack of Juke’s debut CDs–one of which, oddly enough, has been playing quietly on the cafe’s sound system from the moment I walked in. It turns out that our waitress had asked Loucas if she could play it, and, being a nice guy, and perhaps also one never to pass up a little free promotion, he’d handed her a copy. But now he’s in the disconcerting position of discussing his own work as it’s played back to him as ambient cafe noise.
Over the din I hear the third track, “Florida,” kick in; on an album of very solid tunes, this is my favorite song, and in my humble opinion, one of the finest pure rock anthems in local music history. What gives the song that extra little oomph toward greatness are the solid, flowing beats of drummer Dan Weber, who joined the band about a year and a half ago. Coupled with bassist Scott Kaplan (who’s been with Loucas all of Juke’s four years), it is Weber’s rhythmic anchoring on the new album that grants a rollicking power to the often complex structure of Loucas’ songs.
“These songs have been a long time in coming,” says Loucas. “It’s great to have them realized, finished, and shot out.”
The eponymously titled album was recorded live last November, in a cabin on Lake Cushman; maybe it’s the combined remoteness and intimacy of this studio setting that accounts for the warm immediacy of the nine tracks. “June Apples,” for instance, is a beautifully elegiac pop song, elevated by lush guitar sounds and softly pleading harmonies, while songs such as “Widowmaker” and “Grease”–with their poeticized melancholy accented by swooping solos and a hypnotic 3/4 meter–may fall under Loucas’ own facetious description of “washed- out waltz rock.” Both an extraordinary guitarist and a gifted songwriter, Loucas’ work fits snugly, and unrepentantly, between the auspices of authentic blues and the anthemic posturings of ’70s mainstream. What this means, in terms of Juke’s live shows, is that the band’s not afraid to walk the chorus around the block once or twice for the sake of a good solo.
After doing his fair share of sweating and worrying over it, Loucas seems genuinely pleased with the way the album turned out. “I’m very, very happy,” he says. “I think it could have been different, but I don’t think it could have been better.”
“My dad loved it,” he adds.
At this point in our conversation, the waitress brings me a big, steaming bowl of thick-cut oatmeal, jauntily garnished with slices of melon and orange. Loucas inquires whether I’m going to eat my citrus wedge, and when I reply in the negative, he snaps it up and begins gnawing on it. I take this opportunity to steer the interview in a more personal direction, asking him what he really expects from a career in music. “I’d just like to be able to afford sushi every day for the rest of my life,” he says.
For the more immediate future, Juke have been gearing up for their record- release fest at Ballard’s Sunset Tavern. “Were excited, not nervous,” Loucas says about tomorrow’s big show. “We’re drinking, but not drunk. What we need to do right now is stay focused, go out there and play our kind of gig.”
Other than that? “I try to stay as free as possible,” Loucas, who also plays in local bands the Jelly Rollers and X-Ray, says slyly, “in case something comes up.”