_Washington, D.C., band The Dismemberment Plan is among indie rock royalty and has been credited for paving away for the dance-punk movement of the early 2000s.
Though the band officially broke up in 2003, it is currently making a few reunion stops — including one in Carrboro’s Cat’s Cradle this Sunday. Bassist Eric Axelson spoke with Diversions editor Allison Hussey about the latest shows and the band’s future plans._
Diversions: What made you want to do this handful of reunion dates?
Eric Axelson: We were kind of laying low — we were working around in the basement for a while. At this point, only two guys were in D.C. I’m in Richmond, and Travis is in Brooklyn. So about once a month, we get together and just kind of mess around in Joe’s basement, and we started just writing songs and not really telling anybody about it.
I guess in spring this year, we started to talk about maybe trying to bring some of those songs live and see how they felt and what we wanted to do next. So we booked those two small shows, we did an art gallery in Baltimore and we played that music shop in Fredericksburg.
Dive: How have the shows been so far?
EA: It was great. It’s been ten years since we’ve played a new song live, so it was nice to do that again. And it’s fun playing those kinds of clubs — the small clubs like that were the kinds of clubs that we grew up playing, so it’s fun to be in kind of a small, packed, sweaty, hot room in the middle of the summer.
Mainly, it was just fun to try those new songs out and see how they felt playing with each other live.
Dive: What made you want to come down to Carrboro?
EA: When we were a full-time band, we used to tour through Chapel Hill all the time. Or Carrboro, technically, but we’ve played Cat’s Cradle probably twice a year between ‘99 and 2003.
I think once we played at Duke Coffeehouse, and once we played at Kings over in Raleigh, but more times than that, we’d be at Cat’s Cradle.
Even before that, in our early days — like ‘94, ‘95 — we’d play over at the Lizard and Snake. I don’t know if that’s still around.
It was a burrito shop.
Dive: What plans do you have for the new songs you’ve been playing?
EA: We’re discussing that right now. We’re still trying to figure out what we’re going to do with it. We have about eight songs right now, and then there’s four or five in the mix that we’re still working on. We’re not quite releasing it. I think we just want to kind of get to the point where we’re happy with the songs and then figure out what to do next with it, whether that would be recording in the studio for a little bit.
Because in some ways, recording and making time to do that is kind of like making time to do shows. It’s hard to find time to get together to do shows, and it’s also a little hard to find time to get in the studio.
But yeah, we’re hoping to record these at some point in the future.
To get the day's news and headlines in your inbox each morning, sign up for our email newsletters.
