Bring on the L.U.V.

Want a surefire way to guarantee everyone's heard of your band? Try naming it after a word everyone knows. \n "We started out as The Hillbilly Cats, but that name is kind of limiting," says Eric Brown of the band L.U.V. "We wanted something that sounded sort of neutral and fit in country, blues and rock -- we play everything from Cash and Hank Williams to Muddy [Waters] to Van Halen. A name can pigeonhole an artist, but what's more universal than the idea of love? But the name is actually pronounced L.U.V. [as the individual letters]."\n The band started after Michael Schulbaum and Eric Brown, who have played together for years, took a trip to Europe that lasted several months. "We saved up enough money to backpack and play for about two months, but after awhile we started getting gigs in coffee shops or whatever, and we ended up making enough to stay for four months," Brown says. When they got back, they realized that they needed to put together a full band and rounded up a rhythm section that performs in a sort of "regional rotation" as Brown calls it. \n "We probably have at least six different drummers and bassists, so it's likely you'll see a different band every week." Brown says this ever changing line-up helps the band cover more ground. \n "We play a lot in places like Chicago since we're from there," Brown says. The other members [besides himself and Schulbaum] have other jobs, so this works out better for us and them since we play everywhere from Indianapolis to Wisconsin to Iowa."\n Brown says that Uncle Fester's has been his favorite place to play here in Bloomington. "I want the Bloomington music scene to thrive again," he says. "I want to make it a viable option for bars to have more live music. The good thing about the university is that it brings change every four or five years, and I think a lot of people are ready to get away from music with this lack of heart to it. There's always a larger contingent of people in high school, college or whatever, that if the music is good, they'll find it. But younger people -- 12 to 19 year olds -- are so marketed that it's harder to find places to play for them and to reach them."\n But the band thinks part of their appeal is that they can reach all audiences. Drummer Marty Kerr, who often plays with L.U.V. locally, has played in front of many different crowds and notices pretty much the same response whether playing for a group of bikers or more of a family crowd at the Navy Pier. "For the 30 and over crowd, they can straight identify with our music. When they hear 'Maybelline,' they can sing along. But the college crowd still knows the music, the style, so they usually like the originals too."\n Brown says the band has played somewhere around 100 gigs in the past 12 months in all sorts of places. He says L.U.V. is really appreciated in rural towns where people talk to the band after the shows and even invite them to parties or to crash overnight," he says. "We like to play out of urban areas. People are dying to hear live music out in the heartland." \n Brown even remembers a time when the band had finished a gig in the middle of nowhere and was invited to stay at a fan's house. "The guy let me borrow his kid's old race car bed, which was kind of funny. Well, the door locked from the outside and he had accidentally locked me in. I thought he was a serial killer at first! Now we laugh about that one a lot."\n The band says this approach has payed off. They think they can reach just about everyone by keeping one foot in roots music and the other in heavy rock with both their originals and covers. \n "In the suburbs it's like 'let's have fun, drink and sing along,' but the bigger cities are better for originals: St. Louis, Chicago and Indy, but you don't usually make as much money."\n L.U.V. wants to bring back the kind of raw, powerful music of the past by writing new songs with just those influences. Kerr says their stage presence has a lot to do with making sure everyone feels their music. "When you hear that old-school jump and jive rock you can't sit still," he says. "Mike likes to jump out with the people and just start dancing with them during vocal breaks. And while he's doing that, Eric will jump up on something and just start wailing right in front of everyone."\n "Who can you see now that just puts a Marshall stack in your face and wails? Now it's punk, but that's it. It used to be all styles. I was under the impression that most people didn't know what's real in music. But they know what's real and they know what's bullshit. That's why they should hear it live. It's less forgettable when you can actually feel the music... when you can feel the bass hit you." \n Brown claims that these are the main reasons L.U.V. wants to be in total command of their new release, Welcome to the Land of L.U.V. "We are control freaks when it comes to recording," he says. "It's inevitable that you'll need help with distribution and labels if you want to reach so many people. But we plan on having the negotiating power by selling, hopefully, up to 30,000 albums in the next few years."\n L.U.V. claims to have enough material for another five albums of originals and plans to keep playing everywhere they can over the next few years. Their affection for live, creative music continues to shape their sound into something they believe everyone can get into. \n"The album is a really broad pallette we can use to paint a musical picture with all influences in one." Brown says.\n L.U.V. will have a CD release party for their new album, Welcome to the land of L.U.V., at Uncle Fester's on August 17th.