La Strada: Hollow Instruments, Solid Sound

The word “acoustic” is essentially synonymous with mellow, soft, easy music. Although by no means consistently sedate, the music of Robert Johnson, Andrés Segovia, James Taylor and Joanna Newsom tends to operate on a similarly laid-back, low energy level. Party music, this is not. For a band like La Strada, whose instrumentation consists predominately of acoustic instruments, breaking boundaries and genre stereotypes is a conscious challenge. “The thing that’s exciting for me is pushing it,” says James Craft, La Strada’s lead singer and main songwriter. “It’s a challenge how to write and get the point across in an age of electronics and distortion – how to make it intense and more exciting.”

Sleepy songsters, La Strada is not. Although La Strada is typically described as having a particular sound, they don’t feel locked in to any specific categorization. The band’s bio reads: “La Strada has managed to create an impressive fanbase for themselves very early on, due to their uncanny ability to funnel the romance of old-world instrumentation through new world amplification. With soaring vocal harmonies, accordion, and string-driven melodies revved up on rock and roll, La Strada transports you to the hills of the Balkans, a street corner in Paris, and back home beneath a Brooklyn skyline.” Seeing himself as an innovator, Craft is constantly experimenting and promises his band’s forthcoming LP will sound unlike anything La Strada has done before.

Through “mutual friends, chance meetings, and most of all Craig’s List,” La Strada was born. The group’s central lineup is James Craft on accordion, guitar and lead vocals, Devon Press on bass, guitar and accordion, Ted Lattis on guitar (Press and Lattis are childhood friends from Westchester, NY and have been playing music together since they were kids), Brady Miller on drums, and Daniel Baer on violin.

Craft was born in France, where he would later spend summers and attend college, but grew up in Sacramento, CA. He cites the natural beauty of the city’s valley and two rivers as early influences. Loving to travel, Craft served in the Peace Corps in Romania where he spent literally thousands of hours devoted to songcraft, recording songs on a miniature computer. Although he says Romania did not influence him musically while he was there, upon his return nostalgia influenced Craft to take up the accordion. Craft says “I just really like to write songs,” and he does so at every opportunity, no matter where he is, with or without an instrument in hand. “Songs usually come from an experience — come through life,” says Craft. “Generally there’s an event, and the song is how I feel about the event, or a deeper meaning, or the event itself… comes from life breaking through. When I try to get songs through ideas or principles it doesn’t work out as well as by necessity, a reaction to something.”

Although Craft is the leader of band, a tightly knit collaborative atmosphere fuels La Strada. “The songwriting process has been constantly changing since we started playing together,” Press says. Songwriting is done mostly by Craft, but it’s often left open ended. Craft comes to the group with a clear vision, and people jump in and create and build upon the original idea, which can be very simple in the beginning. “James writes the majority of the music, and Devon handles most of the arranging, especially the strings,” explains Miller. “After James, or whoever, writes a song, we workshop it as a group, adding and subtracting until we’re happy with the overall structure. Devon and Daniel then create the string parts, and we continue to work on the structure from there.”

A handful of La Strada songs have been crafted without any input from Craft. “The band has nice boundaries,” comments Craft. “If the other guys have strong desire, there’s nothing I would do to get in the way. It’s not about control. If someone wants to sing, give it a shot.” The band fully recognizes the importance of focusing on the individual strengths of their members. “People do what they do best in La Strada.”

La Strada draws inspiration from many sources. “It’s very easy for us to get excited and inspired by a lot of stuff,” Lattis says. “We see a lot of shows together and listen to music on the road together. Our influences, despite their diversity, gel with ease. Our car ride could be anything from Joanna Newsom to My Bloody Valentine to Steely Dan to Claude Debussy.” Craft cites influences from classical to hard rock to world music, with Bach as his first musical crush. Vocalists like Jeff Buckley, Robert Plant and PJ Harvey also inspired him. “She’s a worker,” Craft says of Harvey. “Her albums are artistic visions. No bullshit.” Press names The Beatles, France Gall, Deerhoof, Ennio Morricone, Caetano Veloso, Ponytail, Nino Rota, Randy Newman and Jens Lekman, to name a few. “I listen to a lot of modern and free jazz, and my favorite singers/songwriters/bands include Tom Waits, Paul Simon, Tom Petty, Peter Gabriel, The Beatles, and lots more,” says Miller. “Since joining La Strada, I’ve been getting into a lot of bands currently on the New York (and elsewhere) Indie scene and it’s been pretty exciting to hear all this new music. I love listening to everything except crunk and reggaeton, I think.”

In the two short years of their existence, La Strada has been given a residency at the Living Room (after their very first show as a band), and played multiple performances at Sound Fix Lounge, Union Hall, Mercury Lounge and the Music Hall of Williamsburg. The band’s self-titled EP was released in February 2009 on the Ernest Jenning label, and recorded by the group and producer Alan Zapata at various locations including apartments, the band’s practice space, and an amphitheater at City College in Harlem. La Strada is preparing to record their first full length early this summer.

Having hit the ground running, La Strada is making all the right moves to turn their passion into a profession. With the music business in constant flux, “success” is a loose term.

Press: “Success for any band should hopefully be finding a way to make music that is fulfilling and enjoyable. Whether that’s playing to thousands of people or just ten people or just for yourselves. I write for fun. I’m not trying to accomplish anything other than having fun making music… I think the music industry is crumbling, but I have a theory that when musicians are struggling to make enough money just with music they turn out better art. So maybe it’s a good thing.”

Lattis: “Keeping your goals ambitious but close is a good way to stay motivated. We’re constantly setting new goals for ourselves and the next one is a kickass full length. In a way, we’re already successful because we’re making music that we love, performing and recording it. Of course, making rent money would be pretty great, too… The industry may never return to its glory and perhaps shouldn’t. We were fooled into thinking for a long time that $20 was a reasonable price for a CD. As long as music has an audience, there will always be a little money somewhere.”

Miller: “Success would be gaining a national and international audience, selling albums, and making a good living playing the music we love to people who enjoy listening to it. It’s hard to say where the band will be ten years from now – hopefully still going strong and evolving creatively… The music industry isn’t crumbling – there will always be changes in media, and the smart businesses will adapt. I love that we have more and more easy access to great new music, and that it’s so much easier for musicians to make good sounding recordings and get their stuff out there.”

In the meantime, La Strada is excited to travel and bring their music to as many live crowds and new ears as possible, particularly as they embark on a tour of Canada with the Bowerbirds in May. La Strada has played all over the U.S., with memories of late night drives through the rain, sketchy fast food and southern hospitality. “On the final night of our recent Midwest tour, in Lexington, KY, we were invited to stay in a plantation style house on this beautiful horse farm in the middle of nowhere,” Miller recalls. “It was quite surreal after cramming seven band members into single hotel rooms for a week.”

If La Strada stays the course, they’ll soon see the walls of those hotel rooms begin to expand.

by Dan D’Ippolito