blog Simbarashe.

“Did they have any good stuff over there?

“Yeah! I snagged this coat for forty-five dollars…”

I’m still reaching for my ink pen, barely making eye contact with bassist Chris Knight, who sports a dapper grayish-blue Nehru style jacket for the occasion.

“How much does it normally cost?” I ask.

“About two hundred and fifty dollars,” he replies with cool gratification.

This was in fact, my first exchange with three of the members of Lemon Sun, the indie rock outfit at the Mesa restaurant in Silverlake, near downtown Los Angeles. Knight had earlier been to a retail warehouse to check out a sale that apparently was closed to the public. As singer Robert Kolar and guitarist Melissa Dougherty listen on with great enthusiasm, I became jealous that I myself wasn’t there to scoop up the deals. He had a knack for making ordinary things sound incredibly titillating. And aside from the fact that Dougherty was valiantly fighting off a cold, it was the sort of relaxed atmosphere you’d expect from a band that had been together for a while, and after almost three years, they certainly fit the part. Enamoring fans with some of the catchiest concoctions of British and Southern Rock, it’s no wonder that they, along with guitarist/keyboardist Michael Shapiro and drummer Nick Rucker, are one of the best and brightest bands that Southern California has produced in recent years. With their upcoming debut LP, Tales of Uncertainty due out in June 2008, the band takes time out of their schedule to reflect on their career from simple musings to playing with The Killers.

Lemon Sun has been around for a few years now, but a few of you have known each other for quite a long time. How did you first meet?

Kolar: I met Chris first. It was geometry class; I was fifteen years old, and I remember this kid sitting in the corner by himself. I didn’t really know anybody at school, and I wanted to meet people.

Did the two of you hit it off right away?

Kolar: No, I thought he was an asshole.

Knight: [laughs] I was real standoffish back then. I’d bounce around from clique to clique and come and go as I pleased. Eventually I found a group of long-haired alternative kids who shared the same musical interests as me. I had a friend, Armen, who brought Rob by one day, and since we both realized that we had a mutual friend in common, the two of us were able to click.

What kind of music were you into back in those days?

Kolar: Growing up, my dad played Leonard Cohen records. My mom is from Jamaica, and she mostly played reggae; you know, Marley, The Wailers, stuff like that. Later on I fell in love with bands like Caroline and the Violent Femmes. I loved their self-titled album.

Knight: My parents listened to classical music all the time, but I was into punk mostly. Operation Ivy, Strung Out, Lagwagon… [pause] They were supportive.

Dougherty: I’d say that MTV in general had the big influence on me, but when I saw U2’s Live from Red Rocks, that did it for me. When they performed “Sunday Bloody Sunday”, I knew I wanted to be a guitarist.

How did the rest of the band come together?

Kolar: Well, with Mikey…when I was in high school I tutored him on guitar. He was maybe eleven or twelve at the time. Then his family moved away to Dallas, but we managed to keep in touch. About three years ago he moved back to California, so for us that was a natural fit. We met Melissa through Craigslist soon after that. Mikey and I went to her house in Koreatown to meet her and thought she was great.

Knight: And then we met Nick through a friend who was trying to play matchmaker for the band. He was like, “I’ve got the perfect drummer for you…”

You’ve played some notable shows in your career. How was it opening for The Killers?

Dougherty: I think that was one of the easiest shows we’ve ever played.

Kolar: Yeah, it’s definitely easier to play in a room full of thousands of people than an empty room. The crazy thing about The Killers’ gig was that, I think that was only our seventh show. I had strep throat; it could’ve really been bad. But when we came out to do our sound check, people rushed to the stage.

They thought you were The Killers?

Kolar: [grins] We got some new fans.

Dougherty: It’s really funny how those things work themselves out. I remember we played at a fair a few weeks before that and there were maybe eight people on the lawn. We go from that to opening for The Killers. Go figure.

You also played SXSW last year. How was that experience?

Dougherty: Oh, we have stories about that…

Kolar: We drove from LA all the way to Austin for twenty-five hours nonstop because couldn’t afford to lodge anywhere. So we’re in this huge van, and Chris is sleeping in this spot in the back that we called the crevice; we made it so that one of us at a time could lay out flat and sleep. Anyway, Chris had been sleeping for a while, and all of a sudden he jumps up and goes, “something’s wrong—why did the road get all bumpy?” We’re looking back at him, telling him to go to back to sleep. About a minute later, one of the tires blow out. It was nine in the morning and we’re in the middle of the desert just outside El Paso, so we hung out with the snakes until AAA arrived.

Knight: Yeah, the guy’s tow truck service was called “Camel Tow.” Hilarious.

Kolar: That was great! But all in all, I’d say that bands romanticize too much over the thought of playing there. In reality, it turns out to be quite stressful. There are literally thousands of bands, and you suddenly feel like a needle on a conveyer. It’s certainly beneficial for bands that already have a lot of hype, but because there are just so many bands, I think a lot of acts go out there thinking they’re going to get discovered and end up greatly disappointed.

What did you think of Austin as a whole?

Dougherty: I liked Austin, I’d go back. Very cool town.

You seem to have a lot of fun with everything that comes your way. For example, there was a negative show review in which the journalist seemed turned off by how you played to the crowd. You responded by posting it on your Myspace page.

Kolar: To be honest, I’m excited for more bad reviews! [grins] I’m looking for maybe five or six terrible quotes…

Knight: We just have a good time with it.

Kolar: It’s a performance. David Bowie, Queen…you know, we’re not like The Strokes—we’re not an anti-performance kind of band. With artists like Justin Timberlake or Britney, people assume it’s pop and suddenly you don’t have integrity.

Dougherty: We have a big sound. Hendrix, he was a real performer. We strive to be like that. We get on stage and do our best to put on a show for people in the audience.

Kolar: We understand that if we act a certain way on stage we risk losing ultra-hipsters, but there are a lot of people who really appreciate it. There used to be a place for real indie rock, but nowadays it seems like there’s not so much anymore.

Knight: I would say that musically, we like it when people have their own slant on their view of the band. We love it when people like you come at it with their own perspective.

Kolar: Within reason! [laughs]

Melissa, as the lone girl in the band, do you view yourself as a role model to other girls?

Dougherty: [long pause] I don’t know… [pause] I mean, I don’t think I feel pressure or anything like that but… [pause] I don’t know, I can’t say.

Kolar: I’ve noticed. Girls respond to her like she’s a hero, which is great.

Dougherty: I think that I can relate in being an outsider, female, interracial…I know what it does to people. In teaching guitar to younger girls, I try to empower them. I try to share that light with other people.

Knight: I think she does a great job.

Your new album, Tales of Uncertainty was produced by Dave Schiffman, whose past credits include engineering for Rick Rubin on the final Johnny Cash albums, as well as Janet Jackson, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and System of a Down. How did you guys hook up, and how was it working with him?

Dougherty: We met Schiffman through a mutual friend. Our friend’s label didn’t want to use him for their recording sessions, and during that time, he became a fan of our band and came out to our shows for a whole year. After a while he didn’t have time to wait on the other project and agreed to produce us.

Knight: It was probably the most painless recording process we’ve been a part of. He was really keen about the preparation of the band. He kept it real.

Kolar: He was definitely out to get us the sound we wanted.

How did that differ from the recording process of your previous two EPs?

Kolar: With the first EP, we had to record that in a practice space that was right next door to this other band. So there was a lot of competing going on, racing against time. We’d have to wait for them to finish playing a song and go, “All right, hurry up and record!” We had to get most of the takes right rather quickly. And then with the second EP, well that was just different…

Dougherty: Everything was weird about those sessions. We had this weird producer who would have people over all the time.

Knight: Yeah, random people would just come in and do weird shit; turn knobs and press buttons for the hell of it. That was pretty surreal.

Kolar: With Dave, it was definitely a welcomed change. We were in the studio from noon till midnight for eleven days.

So how does Tales of Uncertainty sound in comparison with those two EPs?

Kolar: There’s definitely more direction and continuity. This album is a lot more rootsy than those two EPs. It’s very American, organic, bluesy. It’s more Creedance Clearwater than it is British rock, as it was in the past.

Knight: Yes, and I think that has to do with our influences with other genres as well as our influences with each other. Since we arrange songs as a band, everybody puts their own ingredients into the mix. For me, these guys are my biggest influences. The album resembles the band as whole.

“Telephones” and “Stranger” are two popular Lemon Sun songs that are set to be on the new album. What are those songs about?

Kolar: “Stranger” is about a friend—a bizarre character, really, and I wrote the song after observing him for a while. It’s about the road to self-destruction, but sort of in a funny way. I hoped subconsciously that if he heard the song, he’d like it. Luckily he did. With “Telephone”, my sister was in London during the 2005 bombings. I remember trying to call her up and wondering if she was alive. So that became the chorus, though the song isn’t necessarily about that situation. The verses deal more with social commentary than anything else.

And the video for “Telephones”?

Kolar: Jason [Argyropoulos, the director] was great. I threw a lot of shit at him. Some of it stuck, some of it slid down the walls. He was great.

Beyond the new album, what’s next for Lemon Sun?

Knight: Keep playing, keep making more fans. Maybe for all of us, we couldn’t not do this, you know? Musicians are musicians; that’s all we know how to do. Doing this keeps me sane at the end of the day, so the goal is to take it as far as we can. If I was a member of another band, I wouldn’t be half the musician that I am. That’s how much they inspire and motivate me.

Dougherty: I agree with Chris. We want to take Lemon Sun as far as we possibly can; be successful, but not egomaniacs. [pause] A cooler U2.

Kolar: Yeah, it would be awesome if we could have cultural effect on music some day. I know this probably sounds cheesy and all, but I think it would be cool to be a soundtrack in someone’s life. It would be great for somebody one day to say, “that song reminds me of this one time in my life…” At the end of the day, we’re all gonna die. Might as well leave something behind.