Ska titan Less Than Jake, with its signature style of energetic rock, made its Baton Rouge debut Wednesday evening. The performance kicked off the Varsity Theatre’s segment of Gas, Food and Lodging Fest — a festival that hosts bands passing through Louisiana on the way to Austin’s South by Southwest.
Less Than Jake has been making the rounds on the music scene since the early ’90s, and 2013 marks the band’s 21st anniversary together.
Lead singer and guitarist Chris DeMakes joked the band has persevered through two decades with the aid of inebriating substances.
“We like to do drugs by state, like when we go to Nevada and New Mexico, we’ll just do a lot of peyote the whole time we’re there,” DeMakes chuckled. “Tonight, I think our trombone player actually got us a concoction of bleach and rat poison mixed together.”
On a more serious note, he said what’s gotten them through is that “people kept coming to see us and we never stopped being an active band.”
Less Than Jake is set to play SXSW on Friday, which is only the band’s second time since the late ’90s. DeMakes has a slighted opinion on the music festival.
“It’s just a big excuse for the people in the music industry to get together and blow their company’s credit card and get drunk for 10 days or however long the thing is, but it’s pretty cool. We’re doing a showcase for Fat Wreck Chords,” DeMakes remarked.
He said he’s looking forward to the festival being over. Even though the show itself is going to be great, the process of getting to Austin and setting up camp is “utter chaos,” he said.
DeMakes said he and his bandmates no longer feel the pressure to compete against other music acts at big festivals due to the group’s long-standing presence in the music industry.
“I’m not trying to say this isn’t a big deal or we’re not looking forward to it,” he clarified. “But, you know, we’ve been a band for 21 years. We don’t really have a lot to prove going in there. Either you like our band or you don’t.”
DeMakes said he’s noticed a dwindling of ska and punk bands in recent years because, like anything else , genres get played out.
The bands that follow the latest trend or “the flavor of the month” usually fall by the wayside because they don’t follow their heart, he said. He explained this fad isn’t exclusive to the ska/punk scene and happens across the board.
However, he believes like most styles or trends, things die out and then are resurrected years later.
“Everything pops up and comes in cycles,” he noted. “There are a lot of young kids I meet now that are starting ska bands in high school.”
Less Than Jake’s future plans consist of traveling to Europe to play shows and festivals, which DeMakes said he looks forward to because they’re “much better organized.”
The band is currently writing songs for a new album and will try to make it into the recording studio in either May or June. He said the album is set to release in the fall, most likely late September.
“I’m not trying to say this isn’t a big deal or we’re not looking forward to it…but, you know, we’ve been a band for 21 years, we don’t really have a lot to prove going in there. Either you like our band or you don’t.”
