Friday Mile by Chris Burlingame

“Bands are weird things. They’re the most complicated relationship ever,” singer/guitarist Jace Krause said in an e-mail a few days before the final show of his band Friday Mile at Columbia City Theater on Friday. Of course no band has a perpetual life, not even The Rolling Stones, and their time must end at some point. It will still be a bittersweet feeling to watch a band I’ve thoroughly enjoyed and become close to play their farewell show.

Hannah Williams of Friday Mile

Friday Mile is a straight-forward, five-piece indie rock band from here in Seattle that excelled because their pop sensibilities are overt and there’s a genuine beauty in the way that the voices of lead singer/guitarist Jace Krause and keyboard player Hannah Williams play off of each other. Sometimes there’s a tension in their harmonies and other times they compliment and complement one another. It’s a decidedly power pop with the hooks out front. The boy-girl vocals gave them a favorable comparison point that some of the greatest power pop bands ever lacked (think Squeeze, Big Star and Fountains of Wayne); that’s only meant to illustrate one reason I found their sound so appealing, not to make any unfair comparisons.

When the band (self-)released what would be the final Friday Mile album, Good Luck Studio, in November of 2009, music journalist Paige Richmond wrote in the Seattle Weekly, “[Krause] mentioned to me that Friday Mile’s fanbase has grown organically. There hasn’t been much buzz about the band — a positive review on Three Imaginary Girls, a few write-ups here and there — but the band has been growing in popularity mostly by word of mouth and the musicians’ own motivations.”

The review in TIG she may have been referring to was this one, a review of their 2007 EP Love & Gasoline that I wrote, though it wasn’t the only time the band was mentioned on the site favorably. I may have the timeline off by a bit, but if I remember correctly, Love & Gasoline came across my radar around the same time I met Krause for the first time after learning we had a handful of mutual friends (unless you never leave the house, it’s an inevitability that you meet someone who knows someone in a band in Seattle). I don’t remember if my score of that (positive) review was lower because EPs are graded on a more difficult curve or because I was cautious of writing about a band whose lead singer and I share friends. Still, Friday Mile was recommended to me because people familiar with my taste in music knew a power pop band with boy/girl harmonies was likely to be a band that I would enjoy. They were, of course, correct.

Friday Mile in Mountain View, CA

Since then, I became friends with the band, and they played the one show I booked (it was on Inauguration Day, three days before I turned thirty). Another happenstance put the band and I in San Diego at the same time a few months later, quite randomly. As that happened, I wrote about them less and less, partially because of that and partially because I was confident that Good Luck Studio would cause the other Seattle music writers, my friends and peers, to reach the same conclusion I did. Aside from the Weekly’s Richmond (who has written about the band favorably several times), it didn’t happen that way but they did play bigger and bigger shows to bigger and bigger crowds, including building a sizable following up and down the west coast.
And now those shows will come to an end on Friday.

Guitarist Phil O’Sullivan was the last member of the band to join, establishing it as a quintet while making Good Luck Studio, but also ironically noted in an e-mail that “Jace and I are actually the only two remaining original members of Friday Mile. Friday Mile played its first show on campus at PLU circa 2002. I was on bass.” He said he joined when “Hannah and Jace asked me to consider joining FM one night after I sat in with them for a song at Jazzbones in Tacoma. I initially was pretty cool to the idea, but after a few more conversations and hearing some of the basic tracks for Good Luck Studio, I realized that I could make a good contribution to the band.” His guitar parts do give the band a fuller sound with a second guitarist to complement Krause’s guitar parts. Or as Williams noted, “I think our sound evolved and became more complete when we added Phil. Phil is a really good guitar player and I’m not just saying that because he’s my boyfriend.”

Krause said the band evolved as “we started off with a little more folky and jangly slant to our music. I think that’s still embedded in there, but we were starting to go for a more straightforward pop sound in the past couple years”

Williams joining the band, though, was the most crucial change as it gave a female voice to the band and led to a softer dynamic. She said it happened when:

I knew Jace a little in college at PLU. We had a jazz theory class together and he sat in front of me. I think we maybe said hi to each other and I remember commenting on his Jimmy Eat World t-shirt. When I moved to Seattle after graduating, I re-met him in a group of people at the Crocodile during a John Vanderslice show and invited the group back to my apartment where we passed around a guitar. After hearing me sing, I think I probably sung “A Case of You” by Joni Mitchell, he did the whole “we should get together and sing some songs” thing. He also handed me the first FM record, which I listened to and immediately liked. We got together the next Wednesday, learned 3 songs and walked to the nearest open mic and played them. A few weeks later, I was invited to the garage where I met Chad and Jake. The next rehearsal, I brought a keyboard. And that was it!

Friday Mile is a great local band whose sound and fanbase has grown substantially over its existence but one thing the band never has was a time to strike while the iron was hot, or there was never a scene that similar bands could play shows with and tour together the way there is for Americana/roots rock or hip hop. That’s not any one’s fault, it’s just the way things are in the music business; lots of great bands don’t “make it” as big as they hope. The Weekly wrote about some tension between Williams and Krause, not to mention Krause recently becoming a new father, so it made sense that the band would see this as a time to let go.

Drummer Chad Clibborn told me via e-mail that “I think everyone has a sense that we’ve accomplished a lot and want to go in our own directions for awhile. You put some pressure on yourself (at least we did) as a band and I think for me personally, I just think it’s time to see what the next chapter holds for each of us.” Williams noted more succinctly, “our muses weren’t musing.”

Friday Mile at Doe Bay Fest 2009

Krause explained “I think Good Luck Studio was so ambitious that it slowed us down in a way. We spent a lot of time on it; time not spent working on new stuff. By the time we were ready to put out the album, it felt like the songs were old already. Then the mechanisms we used for making new songs weren’t happening like before, and other ways felt too forced, which started to make things less fun.”

Each of the members of Friday Mile will continue to make music. Hannah Williams has another band with three of her brothers called Youth Rescue Mission and she said they plan to record their debut album next month at the Columbia City Theater with producer Gary Mula. Phil O’Sullivan said “I’ll be doing a run of solo dates with a big band of some of my favorite musicians in August. Paul Christensen of Wienland, Jay Beaman of Blood Cells, Andrew VanZandt and Ben Roth will join me. We’ll be trying out new songs and causing trouble between here and Idaho. Paul and I have an ever growing pile of songs that we’ll record at some point and I’ll continue to harvest songs and play out by myself from time to time”.

"Funny Thing" recorded live and filmed by Tyler Kalberg

The remaining members of Friday Mile, Chad Clibborn, Jace Krause and bassist Jake Rohr (who is also in the promising band Goldfinch) are working on a new project that’s an as-of-yet unnamed power trio. Clibborn said, “Jace, Jake and I are working on some new tunes.  The goal being to step back and work on stuff with no expectations and let them evolve organically.  They’re sounding really cool and there’s some booty shakers in there for sure…and that’s the goal.  We’re not sure yet what we’re going to call our new project, but we’re going to record in batches and release small pieces rather than go the full length route.  I’m pretty stoked to get some of these songs going in the studio.”

When Friday Mile takes the stage on Friday at Columbia City Theater, likely for the last time, their press release says “we plan on playing every song we know, until they kick us off the stage. We’ll have a few guests to join us. We’re going to do this right.”

Although Friday Mile is splitting up and they had issues in the band (as everyone does), they do seem to have a genuine fondness for one another. Clibborn said “I absolutely love everyone in this band and will be best friends with them forever and I really wanted to have a night to celebrate with them on stage.” O’Sullivan noted “we all love each other (really) too much to try to force anything. That would be lame.” And then he jokingly added “also, Jake was sleeping with everyone in the band, causing lots of unnecessary riffs. He’s pretty much the cause for all of this.”

Special thanks to contributing writer, Chris Burlingame. You can read more wonderful stories by Mr Burlingame at anotherrainysaturday.com