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Miche Jette reckons this is Werbo's fourth attempt at booking a CD release show for a long-overdue second album.
Sessions for Welcome to Japan began in March 2000; work was finally completed earlier this year.
"We're actually just as amazed as anyone else that it's actually coming out," Jette, one of Werbo's three guitarists, admits.
It has been three years since the ever-adventurous local band released the jaw-dropping double CD Lakehead Tragedies. And while the band's flair for melody and fondness for the esoteric are intact, much has changed within the Werbo camp since the last millennium. Two years ago, the band ballooned from a pop-flavoured trio into a quintet that flirted with synths, samplers and psychedelia. Around the same time, they decided to shed their merry-pranksters image and get serious about the music. Out went such onstage antics as badminton games, sandwich-eating and sets comprising one song. Out, too, went the synth and an excess of samples.
Nonetheless, vocalist and guitarist Jeff Kainz recalls, "For the next year and a half, everybody was like, 'Are you gonna play another one-song show?' 'No, we're gonna play 26 songs in a row.' You do that and people get all confused. But you just let it go and play your set.
"It was kind of extremes, taking it from the sandwich-eating/badminton sort of thing to let's see how serious, slow, sad and depressing we can make this and still have people listen. Let's have these songs that might sound serious but are actually about shoe polish or something."
Kainz pauses. "I'm gonna stop now before I sound like Bono or something."
No danger of that. For one thing, the U2 frontman is skilled at self-promotion. Kainz, the former Mystic Zealot frontman, has long been one of this town's most gifted songwriters, but will tell you with a shrug his songs are "about nothing." And that Werbo -- Kainz, Jette, fellow guitarist Scott Terry, bassist Michael Hanlan and drummer Tom Werbowetski -- are basically playing solely for their own enjoyment.
"We believe in what we do," Kainz insists. "We just don't necessarily promote it. It seems rather pompous to go out and promote your record, to listen to me talk about nothing. I don't think it's self-indulgent, but self-indulgence is part of it. You're basically trying to get people to listen to what you think you have to say."
You can catch Werbo with Fiftymen at the Black Sheep Inn this Saturday. The 'rock bus' leaves the Dominion Tavern bound for Wakefield at 8 p.m.; $15 buys admission and transportation. Call 762-2298 for tickets.