Don’t worry – Low Cut Connie isn’t going anywhere if Adam Weiner has any say. (He has most of the say… the reality of being a musician and the disappearing club circuit seems to have a little bit of a say in it, though.)
Low Cut Connie arrives at Brooklyn Paramount on 12/11, followed by a show at Anchor Rock Club in Atlantic City on 12/14, and The Stone Pony in Asbury Park on 12/20.
To kick off this month with a bang, Low Cut Connie released CONNIE LIVE, the rock club legends’ first live album. Featuring all the best riffs, stories, and slammin’ keys, the record is an undeniable success for the cult fanbase and future listeners. Similarly, Art Dealers, is out now. The introspective and exhilarating documentary crosses into social and cultural territory for the starving artists, the reality of available creative spaces, and the working class bands. That is interspersed within the brightest and boldest of live shows that were filmed right here in the Big Apple (a core community for LCC). You are exposed to the authentic world of musicians and exposed to the party that they put on night-after-night. While Adam Weiner, one of the most dynamic frontmen of modern times, is gearing up for what’s next for him and the beloved, humble band, he’s also celebrating the most recent era of writing, recording, releasing, and rocking. Catching up with him was a joy, much like his interpersonal approach to being an artist.
CONNIE LIVE is Low Cut Connie’s first live album, which is it’s interesting to me because this is such a live band. People need to experience this live. The shows are so electric and there’s such a give and take between the audience and yourself, so having that in album form, I think, is a long time coming.
I agree. Because this has been such a wild ride and I’ve been sort of stumbling through the last decade, it never even occurred to me to do a live album. Because when you’re worried if the band is gonna exist, it’s not the thing to do, you know? But having made it through a bunch of years and a bunch of bumps in the road, it felt like the right time, and I feel like it’s kind of like a cap on a bunch of amazing years.
Absolutely. Especially in our area – the New Jersey, New York, Philadelphia area – these live shows are such a staple, so the fact that these live songs were pulled from New York shows will further resonate with this collective of fans that are quite local.
Yeah, and I hope the people like it. The shows that went into this film and the live album were very special. They were some of the first unmasked shows that we did. In fact, our drummer at the time was wearing a mask on stage. When we played the Blue Note, that was the framework. We hadn’t had live music for a year-and-a-half plus. Then we do these comeback shows with masks at the end of 2021 and the feeling in the room was just so explosive. I guess I would use the word cathartic ’cause it was very emotional. People in the audience were really emotional, and that was a new flavor for me, like seeing people teary… I just said, “We gotta do this film now and record this.” So it just worked out that it was like the first period of time where we could do shows without the audience wearing masks and where they could finally put their arms around each other and I could run out in the crowd for the first time and hug people. We kind of just caught that magic reentry moment, if you know what I mean.
For sure, Adam. I actually made note of that, writing, “Everything about this is like lightning in a bottle.” It is you and your element, but also the fans in their element, because as I said earlier, it’s such a collective experience. Low Cut Connie is the band and you and the audience.
I agree. One really special thing that I’ll point out is that when I put out the first Low Cut Connie album in the beginning of 2011 – I mean, we weren’t even really a band – there was a song on that album called “Big Thighs, NJ.” It wasn’t really noticed in the beginning. That song was not highlighted very much. I never played that song live on stage for like a decade. Then something happened over the years and during the pandemic, that song just took on a new life. When I came back to live shows – and you can see in the film and hear on CONNIE LIVE – we performed that song. You can hear that the audience is singing every single word of that song, and that was an amazing moment to capture because that was 11 years after I’d put that song out. I never thought that that was really an important one. I didn’t know that it was resonating with people, and, man, it does. That was such a special moment… when I started doing that song and everybody started singing every word. Wow.
Oh my goodness. I’m so glad that it was captured. Live music is such an energy exchange, such a tangible, evocative experience. Moments like those bring that rawness and that reality to a head.
That’s a big reason why when we made the Art Dealers film and the CONNIE LIVE companion. I was really obsessed with recording the audience and I like the audio. It adds so much. I love the way this record sounds, because you can really hear the way that the audience is reacting to what we’re doing. You can hear them screaming, you can hear them stinging along, you can hear them laughing at the end of dialogue, and I want to give that kind of immersive experience.
I think that that’s what the shows do. Listening to CONNIE LIVE, one of the things I thought of on my first listen is that it almost feels like a bootleg recording in a professional sense. It feels like someone is standing in the crowd with a microphone and they’re making the recording for their own personal CD and memory that show. Of course it’s done with obviously a much higher quality with much higher stakes, but it feels earnest in nature, and I commend you for being able to capture that in the film and on the album.
Thanks. I’m glad you dig it. There are a lot of live albums and live recordings out there, but there’s a certain type of live album that I was sort of aiming to make. I’ll give you an example, which is like the MC5 album, Kick Out The Jams. That is an example where it’s a live album that is also their best album. There is also James Brown Live At the Apollo and Aretha Live at Fillmore West. These are like legendary live albums that are very immersive. That’s the thing that I think is so important, it doesn’t necessarily matter if the audio quality is the highest level, it’s that the recording makes you feel like you’re there. So we just did this in a particular way so that we could make people feel like they’re at the show, and I’m very happy with how it turned out.
You should be, my friend. I’ve been in those rooms, been to your shows, felt that united force of storytelling and musicality that swirls throughout the space every time. This album transports me back to that, or for fans who haven’t seen it live, they can live vicariously through it.
I hope so. I mean, we’re a cult band. I’m a cult artist. First and foremost, I want to make my current fan base happy. When you put a record out or a film, it lasts forever, and I’m always growing and changing, but before I move on to the next chapter – I’m already working on a new album and I’ve got a lot of projects coming for next year and beyond – I wanted to do something that was sort of comprehensive, that was like, “Let’s document how far we’ve come and the magic that these shows can be before things change again.”
These 13 songs that are on CONNIE LIVE in particular were really well chosen. They feel signature to the sound and the feeling and the set that people get when they go to see you. People who obviously saw the film will further get that. I wanted to ask: how did you come to these 13 live performances, these certain songs, as opposed to maybe other numbers of yours that were performed over those nights?
Well, there was a lot of songs, and first of all, of all the things that we filmed, only a small fraction made it into the film. Then of the songs that made it into the film, only some made it onto this record. For instance, I think of the “All the Kids Are Way Too High” track, which is not in the film. I had to clear my head and just try to make a cohesive live album that can stand on its own, though. I’m very simple; things are either thumbs up or thumbs down, so I can hear a song or a performance and know if it’s got that thing, that little spark, that little extra something that makes it three dimensional. It’s kind of like not good enough if it’s just a great performance or a great recording or any other agenda. It’s gotta have something extra, and in making a live album, you have to think about whether it has something that the original version doesn’t have, right? That was a consideration. When you hear songs on this record like “Rio” and “Cheryse” and “If I Die,” you’re hearing what we’ve been doing with them on stage, which is very different from how the original records are.
I love that perspective and I love that you mentioned “If I Die,” because I think that was my favorite moment, if not second favorite moment to “Shake It Little Tina,” on the live album. It has a new level to it, if you will, that other songs maybe in that moment didn’t capture as well – and that’s totally fine. It’s special in that way, and I think that’s what furthers this live album as being kind of the pinnacle of Low Cut Connie’s career thus far. The film, too.
I’m glad that you feel that way about “If I Die.” That’s me playing guitar, which people can see in the film. I don’t get to do it that often, but, man, I love it when I do. That was at The Blue Note, which is still bizarre to me that we have done all these shows at the Blue Note considering that when I was a student in New York, I used to go see jazz there. It’s really weird to get on that stage and play “Shake It Little Tina” and “Whips and Chains” at the Blue Note, but it’s pretty cool.
With Art Dealers, the screenings that you had for them looked like so much fun and was such an exciting tour of sorts. Outside of what we’ve seen online and heard from fans about these documentary screenings, what was that experience like? Did you ever think that you’d be having screenings for a film and having fans attend and have such a great response to a movie that you made?
I surely didn’t [Laughs]. I didn’t even think I would be a full-time musician leading a band either, so all of this is interesting to me. It’s a really weird experience to sit and watch a movie about yourself, [Laughs], let alone watch people watch it! It was beautiful, though. I mean, I did this screening tour and it was just extremely heartwarming. All these people that came out, I got to spend time with them and talk to them and hear their stories. These are just amazing people that I don’t always get to connect with face-to-face. That was very special. The Q&A sessions were amazing. I’m so blown away by the response to this film. It’s a little bit of a concert doc, but people have really, really responded to it and we’ve gotten so many great reviews. A lot of artists shared that they see some of themselves in it. A lot of people related to the struggle [Laughs] of trying to be an artist in this day and age, which I thought was really important to show. The other side of the coin is that we have the show, which is fairly explosive. I wanted to show everything that goes into it, and that it’s not always easy, and that those of us doing this at this level are not doing it for fame and fortune. It’s an image that I don’t think we see very often. We’re in an era where we’re getting all of these huge concert films from a-listers – Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo, Beyoncé, [Bruce] Springsteen, and just like the tippy top of the industry. I really wanted people to see a different side. This is a working class band, and I wanted people to see what it’s like.
I think you did that so well, Adam. I made a note after I watched the film, and I said, “This is a film that humanizes the monstrous performers that we don’t always know.” I’m lucky to know Low Cut Connie and to know how amazing you guys are on stage and how exciting these performances can be, but they’re still relatively small rooms and there is a human behind all of that. It’s really just such a joyful watch, too, even in the less-than-joyful moments. It showcases the bringing of people together through art, as well, and how you – as the title states – deal art from fan to band to listener to artist. I couldn’t help but feel that way watching it the first time, and as my note says, it humanizes even the most ferocious performers on stage in a way that we don’t always see and know.
Thank you. I don’t know what the future holds, but I know that my career is at a club and theater level. And, by the way, I never thought I would get to this level. I don’t say that in a disparaging way, but I have no expectation that I’ll ever be at a higher level than this club and theater level that I’m at just because I know this industry so well that I may not be able to stay at that level long term. Who knows? You just never know what happens, so I’m happy with the documentary capturing this level now. We do pretty good at the club level.
I think that we’re in this weird place in live entertainment where these small venues are really struggling and a lot of them are closed, so that’s another feature of this is that I wanted people to see – how amazing shows in smaller venues are, and in my opinion, can in many ways be better. You know we’ve all had the experience of seeing massive ballroom or arena or stadium shows that were great, and also shows at that level that were not. You feel very disconnected, you know? It’s actually the rare performer that can make a huge arena feel small in a way. A lot of these venues that appear in the film, some of them don’t exist anymore. They didn’t make it through the pandemic. It’s another story that I wanted to tell about that circuit – the club circuit is disappearing. It’s making it really hard for young artists to do the climb. Why don’t we value these clubs? Why do we – our culture – glorify the biggest and having the most followers and the most fans and the most money and the most acclaim? There’s so much beautiful great art that’s happening on a smaller scale and that’s something that I wanted to show in this film.
I worry about these changes in our culture. I worry about the sort of up curve in everything where the things that make it to the absolute tippy top thrive on this massive scale, and things that are below that can’t be sustained. Somebody smarter than me can analyze that in terms of America and how things work in America, but in the music business, it’s really true. Things that blow up to a massive scale become triply massive now, and things that fall below that line – much more than in previous generations – are not sustaining. There are a lot of artists, businesses, venues, festivals that just go out of business unless they can be the biggest, and that’s not good. It’s actually affecting the music and the intention. Everything is so hyper-focused on being the biggest, the most massive, the most accumulation, and that as a mentality… I don’t think it produces the best art possible.
I hope it changes again for the better, but I’ve been doing this long enough to have seen that shift. I mean, my whole world in my twenties and early thirties with the beginning of Low Cut Connie was all in dive bars. Those dive bars, which I love playing in and I kind of miss playing in, weren’t just starting my career – that was my career. I liked being at that level, [Laughs] but there’s just so few dive bars now, and the ones that are around, they don’t really have music anymore. They can’t afford it. The circuit is gone and it’s challenging. I hope there’s another wave of change for the better that shifts the conversation more towards artists.
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