Though countless musicians recorded and released excellent albums during the pandemic, for rockers Deer Tick, it was, instead, a rare opportunity to slow things down.
Now on the other side of 2020, most of the band’s members are deep into fatherhood and approaching their forties. The big question that follows them these days is how rockers this notoriously wild are supposed to grow up.
“We definitely went through a period of youthful, very reckless, destructive rock ‘n’ roll music and aesthetic and everything like that,” says guitarist Ian O’Neil, “but I think that as we get older, we’re just more considerate with how we approach rock music.”
This weekend, the Providence, R.I. quartet comes to Stanford’s Frost Amphitheatre in support of alt-country breakout star Jason Isbell. The tour comes at a time when the band are feeling more contemplative than ever.
By the time the pandemic hit, they had already reined in their antics—which previously had ranged from smashing guitars with bowling balls and wine bottles, to leaping into drum kits, to exposing themselves onstage—but 2020 put an abrupt end to what was left of the party.
The members who had left Rhode Island wound up moving back, with their growing families and home lives quickly becoming the focus. However, there was another focus, as well: Emotional Contracts, their first album since 2017, released this June.
“We feel like this record is a good representation of that time period,” O’Neil says.
The album’s six-year incubation was also the band’s longest period off the road, allowing them time to flesh out the emotional core of their new material. In the upbeat single “If I Try To Leave,” for example, McCauley sings, “If I try to leave / I won’t know where I’m going.”
Early in their career, Deer Tick faced criticism for leaning into a predictable brand of blue-collar masculinity and debauchery. Marriage and self-reflection began for the boys around 2013’s Negativity, when McCauley stared his drug habit in the eye and tied the knot with singer Vanessa Carlton in a ceremony officiated by her friend and mentor Stevie Nicks. A different existential state became the new threat: domesticity so blissful that the music could cease to be rock ‘n’ roll.
While working on Emotional Contracts, stand-out albums made by roots rock musicians in their thirties and beyond—including Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and Nick Cave—served as models for Deer Tick.
“In my experience, everybody keeps getting better with age—unless you’re still trying to do the exact same thing you did when you were 21,” O’Neil says. “There’s just an attitude you embody, some kind of spirit of danger or unknowingness or excitement. I think that’s what rock ‘n’ roll is, and I actually think you can cultivate that better as time goes on if you know what you’re doing.”
In songs like “Forgiving Ties,” the band sounds happier and clearer than ever. Meanwhile, a new edge has emerged from the awareness of all they have to lose these days.
“I think welcoming people into our inner life is our goal,” O’Neil says. “It’s just less frivolous, you know what I mean? The stakes are higher.”
The recording process was characterized by some classic Deer Tick misadventures. The album was produced by Flaming Lips and Sleater-Kinney producer Dave Fridmann. But first the band spent a year practicing in “a perpetually flooded warehouse space” with “a busted heating system and massive holes in the roof,” according to the album’s promo.
“It was literally raining in the studio,” O’Neil says, laughing. “We had some fun late nights in there together kind of lamenting the rain and jamming.”
The band is closing its set this summer with “The Real Thing,” a nine-minute masterpiece born during those nights. Also closing the album, the song captures the miraculous feeling of having made it to a relatively stable time.
“It’s a special tune,” O’Neil says. “I remember just like feeling like we were doing something significant in the lifespan of our band, like we were taking a leap forward.”
For now, Deer Tick has traded youthful angst for bemused humility. It seems the ethos is working—maybe even meant to be. As McCauley sings, “This couldn’t be real / It feels like the real thing.”
Deer Tick
In support of Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit
Thu, 6:30pm, $59.95+
Frost Amphitheatre, Stanford
