Poetry in Motion: The Child Ballads

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PITY THE POOR GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY STUDENT who had to read after Stuart Lupton.

A few years back — having returned to the university in order to study poetry — the former frontman for garage-surf-rock agitators Jonathan Fire*Eater would show up at the odd student coffeehouse and stand behind a microphone reading florid verse about Nicholas Ray films while guys in athletic shorts nervously crumpled the pages of their freeform emo-rants.

Lately, however, Lupton has been seeking a broader audience.

After 10-years of relative silence — and seeing his former Jonathan Fire*Eater bandmates go on to form the acclaimed group The Walkmen — the singer-songwriter and St. Albans School grad has formed a new band, released an EP of older recordings, "Cheekbone Hollows," coming out on Gypsy Eyes records April 15, and set plans to embark on his first major tour in forever under the name The Child Ballads.

Recently, Lupton spoke with Express about his trip back to the stage, the return of once-estranged Child Ballads keyboard player Betsy Wright, how Royal Trux's art-damaged blues sound helped him to open up a wormhole in the recording studio and the music he'll be performing with guitarist Luke Wyatt on Wednesday at the Velvet Lounge.

» EXPRESS: So, you've been playing most of the songs on the "Cheekbone Hollows" EP for around four years now. Do you have any plans to write new material?
» LUPTON: I'm so glad you asked that. People don't realize that because it originally only came out in England. I've been playing those songs in different permutations and with different musicians for quite a while. I'm really looking forward to recording the new record. We have an album's worth of material that we have yet to record, but we haven't gone on the road properly yet.

» EXPRESS: How do you feel about going on tour again? Are you excited?
» LUPTON: Oh yes. When I stepped out on stage in London [Child Ballads supported Cat Power last May], there was a huge sweeping balcony almost coming up to kiss me on the cheek. I hadn't felt that comfortable in my own body in a very long time.

It was amazing.

I remember playing at a theater in Paris with Jonathan Fire*Eater and it was the most wonderful evening in all of my brief, confusing stay here on this cold rock hurdling through space. It was a great night but this one outdid it. I never thought I would outdo my memories.

I didn't think that I could inhabit that [Jonathan Fire*Eater] character anymore. I had been reading a lot of poetry and was back at school studying poetry. I thought, "How am I going to pull this off? Are people going to be bored if I'm not swinging from the rafters like a bat?" But it just came naturally. I just can't describe the comfort that I felt walking out on that stage.

I was watching this documentary about The Clash — "Westway to the World" — and there's one point where Joe [Strummer] is talking about how if you have a chemistry, you do what you can do to preserve it. He tears up at the end. It's so moving. What really excites me is that I have this chemistry again and I never thought that I would. With Jonathan Fire*Eater behind me, they roared. They were fierce musicians and I felt like we were indestructible. It's just not supposed to happen again.

To be standing 10 years later with some of my best friends where I was once playing with Jonathan Fire*Eater — it feels like Charlie Brown finally kicked the football a little bit. Maybe he hasn't kicked it yet but he has a read on Lucy. He knows her weaknesses.

» EXPRESS: So why are you finally doing this now? What made it possible to come back to performing?
» LUPTON: Well, I played shows in the interim but I just wasn't there yet. I wasn't there until Betsy and I cracked the code. We spent a series of nights in a little wooden room, a little wooden box — something Tom Waits would sleep in and you literally can't stand up. We made some great sounds in there and cracked the code musically.

I didn't want to sound like Jonathan Fire*Eater or The Walkmen; I wanted to sound like [Louisiana swamp-popper] Bobby Charles and that just hadn't been actualized. But we cracked the code during those nights in Mount Pleasant. Specifically, what I'm talking about is the song "Laughter From the Rafters." About three minutes into it there's a peak right before we start singing "Laughter coming from the rafters." We did tons of overlapping vocals, weaving and phrasing.

That's playing to my strengths — arranging imagery — I have a field day with that.

There's a part where [Child Ballads] drink deep from the well of Royal Trux — but not the decadence. Not the mythology [conjured by] Vice magazine. I cringe when I think about that. One time that magazine called me and said they wanted to do an eight-page interview. They said, "We want it to be about heroin and New York. Is it true that you got high with Perry Farrell?" [Lupton has battled substance abuse.]

I wrote them back a 20-page e-mail — the most venomous piece of bile I've ever written. If you're over 30 and you take the Basquiat bait you have to grow up a little bit. I guess I just figured out that I'm not special enough to peruse my downfall with such vengeance and momentum.

The Royal Trux thing was just the sound. [Child Ballads] were in the basement; playing all this stuff and all of the sudden we did it. There was peak — sort of like an opera or something. It's not that we figured out how to sound like Royal Trux; we just reached a wormhole in the studio that I didn't think we could. I think that probably helped put the shoes by bed so that when I wake up in the morning I can step into them and be me — to do this again and do it right.

» EXPRESS: You mentioned that [guitarist] Betsy Wright is back in the band. Where did she go?
» LUPTON: Betsy and I disappeared from each other — and from ourselves perhaps, if you want to be all melodramatic and purple — but it only made the reunion all the sweeter. I saw her on the street and the next thing I know we're in the band together again.

» EXPRESS: What are you guys going to play at the Velvet Lounge show?
» LUPTON: This show will not have our drummer [or Betsy]. It will just be Luke and I. We're doing a 16-minute "Crenelated Battlements/Red Geraniums." It's based on a traditional rock 'n' roll template and then Luke pisses all over. It's fantastic. Like oxidations art — you know, piss painting. Anyway, that's probably what it will be.

» Velvet Lounge , 915 U St. NW; Wed., 9 p.m., $10; 202 462-3213. (U St.-Cardozo)

Written by Express contributor Aaron Leitko

Theater photo by Piper Ferguson; live photo courtesy Romo PR