—David Menconi, Down on Copperline
As you’d expect of an ensemble named after a Leonard Cohen album title (and led by a frontman named after jazz guitar legend Django Reinhardt), Chapel Hill’s The Old Ceremony has always been one of the most elegant bands in town. They typically perform dressed for show, with pop-noir music as sophisticated as the trappings. It’s a sound that wears well, which is a big reason why they’ve lasted 20 years.
“We’ve always loved playing together and it’s still the case,” says Django Haskins of the band reaching the two-decade milestone. “The easy part is the music, getting together to play is always energizing. The hardest part is the business stuff, which is not motivating for anybody. There’s a Tom Petty quote about how touring can feel like being punished for making a record, and the promo stuff feels like that for me. If we could do it old-style – make a record and give it to some cigar-chewing promoter guy to flog it – that would be ideal. But it’s not the world we live in.”
A few projects are in the works to mark The Old Ceremony’s 20th year of existence, including a documentary made by local filmmaker Wil Weldon, which should start showing in public later this year. And there’s a new Old Ceremony album out, “Earthbound” (Robust Records), produced by their longtime studio collaborator Thom Canova.
“Earthbound” brings the group’s discography to seven albums going back to their self-titled 2005 debut. It’s another stylish effort, ranging from upbeat rock to breezy pop with a few moody cabaret interludes. It also has a song that feels like the perfect anthem for this particular moment in American history, “Picking My Battles,” an ode to the PTSD-tinged exhaustion brought on by the torrent of the modern news cycle:
I’m picking my battles
I’m taking my time
And using it as I see fit
You waste yours and I’ll waste mine…
“Picking My Battles” was one of 115 songs that Haskins wrote during the dark days of the Coronavirus shutdown. The songwriting binge was his pandemic project, and it yielded up a cache of material that makes up the bulk of “Earthbound.”
“There was a time long ago when I was about that prolific, living in New York with nothing else to do,” says Haskins. “But this was pretty unusual for me. I had a group of friends that would meet on Zoom every Monday and bring in a new song. Some of them are actually still doing it years later, which is incredible – they’ve probably written 300 songs by now. I got off the wheel once I realized I had to do something with these songs before I forgot them.”
Originally from Florida, Haskins was living in New York City before moving to the Triangle 23 years ago in search of a good arts scene with a lower cost of living. He’s lived in Orange County just outside Chapel Hill the past eight years, and his day job is teaching music at Calvander Sound.
The trio of Haskins, keyboardist Mark Simonsen and multi-instrumentalist Gabriel Pelli have been constants throughout The Old Ceremony’s 20-year history, with different rhythm sections. All three are active in numerous side projects including Chris Stamey’s Big Star tribute shows, the political protest group NC Music Love Army and Stuart McLamb’s Americana group Fancy Gap.
“Since we’re in this big round-number retrospective year, there’s been a lot of looking back as well as forward,” says Haskins. “We hadn’t really done much of that before and it’s been interesting to remember a lot of stuff we did but kind of forgot about – ‘Wow, we really did that, huh? Interesting, we should try it again.’ It’s been a period of sifting through these 20 years as a band and feeling energized about doing it some more. I don’t want to jinx it, but the reasons we’ve been together for so long without any discernible financial reasons are still there.”
