by Max Miller
Photo by Luke Tedaldi
Underwhelming as the so-called blizzard that hit the Northeast in late January may have been, the snowstorm still managed to disrupt plans for the Ludlow Thieves, a New York-based six-piece known for their grand, cinematic sound. A Boston gig scheduled for January 29 fell through after winter weather precautions stranded drummer Bruno Esrubilsky out in Los Angeles.
“It came as a big surprise because it wasn’t much of a blizzard,” says Dan Teicher, the band’s guitarist and primary songwriter. “But I guess in anticipation of it being crazy, they cancelled a bunch of flights, and our drummer was out in L.A. His flight was cancelled, and the soonest it could be rescheduled for had him landing in New York too late to get to the show.”
The cancellation might have been a bummer, but it already seems like a minor defeat compared to the Ludlow Thieves’ plans for what might turn out to be landmark year ahead. Riding high on a string of accomplishments in 2014, the group is looking forward to more shows ahead (including a February 4th gig at the MilkBoy, their first appearance in Philly), as well as the release of new music in the spring. Teicher says the group has somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty songs they have been working on over the past few months.
“I usually bring a lot of the ideas to the band, and it’s kind of ever-evolving,” Teicher says. “We just welcomed two new members to the band recently, so with all of this stuff, it’s been kind of feeling out how the creative landscape is going to play out.”
The new members — Esrubilsky on drums and Amanda Lo on violin — rounded out the Ludlow Thieves’ lineup in July. Lo and bassist/keyboardist Isamu McGregor both have music degrees from NYU, and Esrubilsky has a degree from Berkeley.
“It’s been really important in terms of songwriting and composition in general, but it also means Isamu, Bruno and Amanda are just monster players,” Teicher says. “It brings such life to the sound to have players that have been training on their instruments for so long.”
The band has been working on the new material at Teicher’s home studio, which he has had for about a year.
“We’re open to the possibilities of working with other producers,” Teicher says, “but, for now, having a home studio we can work from gives us a lot of freedom to do some experimentation and to get everyone together without watching the clock or watching the budget.”
Teicher has a degree in composition from Brown University and a master’s degree from NYU. In addition to writing and producing for the Ludlow Thieves, he pays the bills by composing music for films and commercials, an endeavor that helps explain some of the more cinematic aspects that have crept into the band’s music.
“As that career took off, I started picking up different skills that apply to different types of music that I can then bring back to the band. All the stuff we’re working on now kind of incorporates stuff I would have no idea how to produce a few years ago,” Teicher says. “I always grew up with visual and musical elements in tandem, so I definitely have film composers who have influenced what our sound is.”
Fittingly enough, the group’s music was featured in an Adidas commercial that aired during the World Cup and the in the season finale of the Hulu original series Deadbeat. The Boston Red Sox even used the band’s song “Sing Me Back Home” in a tribute video to the victims of the 2013 bombings of the Boston Marathon.
“We saw that and we were like, ‘Man, it almost feels like that song was written to be part of that film.’ Which, obviously, it wasn’t; it was written long before that had happened. But it’s so powerful to feel a part of that,” Teicher says. “We didn’t know it was going to happen until it aired. We had licensed the song for a totally different piece, and we were out in L.A. getting ready to go to a show when all of our phones started ringing at once.”
The Ludlow Thieves will continue to pair music with film as they work on two music videos to be released in the near future, hopefully not far from when the new music surfaces. Teicher says the band doesn’t know whether they will release all the music as one huge album or if it will come out more gradually, but something new should be out this spring.
“We all grew up with albums and love albums, but right now we’re doing everything independently and we want to figure out the most effective way to get people the music and keep everybody engaged,” Teicher says. “It seems like a lot of people have success releasing one song at a time, or an EP here and there. We want to navigate what would be a unique fan experience while making sure that everybody we’d love to hear it gets to hear it.”
Photo by Luke Tedaldi
Be sure to visit the band at www.TheLudlowThieves.com.
