Limbeck 'Let Me Come Home' album

It’s no wonder that the Limbecks – Robb, Patrick, Justin and Matt – decided to call their new album Let Me Come Home. For the band, the past year has been marked by a list of cities – Tulsa, Vegas, Minneapolis, Dallas, Tucson – snapshots on the journey through a non-stop touring schedule. “Looking back on it,” says guitarist Patrick, “it seems like we may have had a week or two off in between all of the touring. We wanted to stay busy and keep on the road as much as we could.” Add to that writing, rehearsing and recording their fourth record, whenever they could find time to get into a studio somewhere, and it’s not surprising that the Limbeck band have been longing for their hometowns in Orange County, California.

Limbeck have fashioned themselves as the Kerouac of rock and roll, inheriting the hard work ethic of our best touring bands: Neil Young and Crazy Horse, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Fugazi. Anyhow rock and roll is about dust and grit and gasoline, and the people you meet along the way, and maybe that’s why Limbeck’s songs seem like a hello from someplace else, a postcard from an old friend. “Our fans are really cool,” says Robb. “I’ve found myself taking mostly pictures of people now and less of the scenery which used to be the majority of my photos. I’ve also started writing more songs about people that are close to me.”

The Limbeck boys are no longer the punk rock progeny of their debut, This Chapter Is Called Titles. They built a foundation of Big Star and Tom Petty-inflected power pop for Hi, Everything’s Great that has evolved into their own take on classic rock – a hat tip to the Southern California sound of the early 70s combined with loose, laid back and rollicking blasts of Gram Parsons, the Beach Boys on Sunflower and Friends, the Faces, the Stones and, most of all, the Replacements.

After recording a good vibes, live-at-home version of Hi, Everything’s Great based on the Beach Boys party album – called Hey, Everything’s Fine – Limbeck lit out for Minneapolis – home of the greatest bar-rocking, country kicking, garage punk pop folk band of all time – the Replacements. As a band, Limbeck has followed a similar trajectory to the Westerberg and company of the early 80s, venturing from punk to a more idiosyncratic take on the history of rock and roll – mixing the entirety of the 60s and 70s into hard rocking, catchy-as-hell tunes.

Let Me Come Home was recorded at Ed Ackerson’s Flowers Studio in Minneapolis with Ed and the Jayhawks’ Gary Louris. Though the record is inflected with country rock – the twang of “People Don’t Change,” the shambling guitars of “Everyone’s In the Parking Lot” – Patrick says, “I know Gary wasn’t out to make us the next Jayhawks or anything.” Instead Ed and Gary had the band record live, and do overdubs later, to capture the boundless energy that fans know from the Limbeck live show. “It was a scary thing to sit there and do everything live to tape,” explains Patrick, “but you think about things from your favorite records – the moments that you’re like ‘whoa, that thing that happens with the guitar is crazy.’ You can’t plan those things. And they seem to happen a lot more when you’re sittin’ in a room, the whole band altogether and just going for it.”

The result is the band’s best work yet. A powerful and fierce collection of good-feeling, unstoppable rock and roll. “Television” is the culmination of all of their previous songwriting – a gritty, mid-tempo rock tune that levels Limbeck’s contemporaries with momentum, fury and humor. And what Limbeck have discovered with Let Me Come Home – and it’s the revelation that fans will have too – is that home is where you find it. “We come through the same places pretty often,” says Patrick, “and we stay with the same people. It gives us a whole handful of homes away from home – whether it’s staying over with people and staying up late and then sleeping on couches, or touring with some real good friends where every night it’s kinda like family. It’s nice.”

Charles Spano

THE LIMBECK BAND is:
Robb MacLean - vocals, guitar
Patrick Carrie - guitar, vocals
Justin Entsminger - bass
Matt Stephens - drums & percussion

Questions

How did you get the name "Limbeck"?
1978 world series. milwaukee brewers vs. the montreal expos. don limbeck of the brewers hits 5 home runs to win game three of the world series. the next, as he is flying to las vegas to celebrate the win of the game, he dies in a plane crash. the Limbeck name lives on, through the band.

Where is Limbeck from?
We consider our home to be the city of Orange, California. It would be rather easy to just say we're from Orange County, but it's got a bit of a reputation for some bad music, and a tv show that throws people off, so we stay away from that. But sometimes we say we're from "the OC" to make people laugh. That's it.

I'm on instant messenger, how come you're not talking to me?
We get a little jammed with a lot of IM's, but we'll get around to you. Just be patient. We love you.

How come Matt is barely in the video for 'Julia'?
Funny story. The first day of making the video, we shot everything fine (we were a little unprepared for the lip-synching scene). That night, all of the video we had shot was stolen from our director, Zach Merck's, car. Crazy, right? So we had to re-do the live desert scenes for the video. It proved to be a blessing and a curse. The Blessing: instead of using the Seabring Convertible that we used on Shoot Day 1, we were able to co-purchase (along with Robb's brother Brian) an old red VW bus. We got the roof off to allow light inside, and hauled it out to the desert. It was amazing for the video. The Curse: Day Two of the desert shoot brought us temperatures just around 110 degrees. So somewhere around 4pm or so, while we started to shoot Matt's close-ups, all of the cameras decided to DIE. Yeah, it was terrible. Now you know. But at least Matt got to buy a record, ride his bike, and then throw the bike against a wall in the video.

Is that the real Julia in the video?
Yep, that's her. The real deal. JCR.

Do you play parties?
You bet we do. We love 'em. Give us an email. If it's in any way possible, we're there. And we're playin.

Is the split with Motion City Soundtrack ever going to come out?
Yes, it is. And damn are we ever excited about it. Justin Pierre of MCS fame is busy putting together some video footage of the both of us in the UK, which will be included with the 7". If this is all news to you, we each covered the others song. We did "Perfect Teeth", and they did a version of our "The Sun Woke The Whole State".

What do you guys tour in?
Right now, our trusty ol' silver Ford E-350 Van. We've got a trailer as well, so we can stretch out and sleep all day. BUT, before too long, we plan on gettin one of those big silver tour buses (like in the movie Almost Famous), where you can put the name of the tour you're on in the marquis. At that point, we're going to abandon our cell phones, and only release music on vinyl. Just wait. It's gonna be amazing.

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Limbeck - Let Me Come Home