The unorthodox aspects of the group went beyond its musical style, dubbed ‘live progressive breakbeat house’, and its touring procedures. At the turn of the century, more so than now, a live band with no vocalist could be a tough sell. Trusting their belief in the creation of pure spontaneity, and seeking to capitalize on the unexpected magic they had happily stumbled upon, The New Deal stuck with what they knew.
JS: There was a never discussion like – “We should get a singer.” It was never even brought up. It was kind of talked about (later) and we did get some people to sing on certain tracks in the same way that we might get a guest guitar player or a guest horn player. As far as having someone come in and front the band, we found any time a fourth person – forget even a singer, when just a fourth musician came on for an extended period of time – the quality of our performance would decline.
We have an actual language that we use between the three of us to determine certain things and to make changes, when to go quiet, etc. But there’s also this sort of innate communication that goes on between us. The minute that you throw an interloper into that mix, when you throw a fourth person in who doesn’t know that language, then everybody is devoting a portion of their energy to making sure that person is in line with us and not going off the cliff, not playing the wrong thing. So you start losing focus on what you’re trying to do when you’re making sure that no one gets left at the side of the road. We always found it best to just limit it to the three of us because that’s how we worked and sounded best.
Their spartan instincts turned out to be spot on, as the emergence of ‘livetronica’ picked up steam in the US throughout the early 2000’s. Audiences in tune to the fundamental intent of improvised music responded ecstatically to live performances, and the sizes of venues and crowds showed consistent growth. As was the case in birthing the band, simplicity remained paramount. Armed with intuition and little else beyond their instruments, the band attacked each show with unassuming clarity.
JS: As far as we’re concerned, we’re trying to do the best we can every night. That’s kind of an unsaid communication. The minute we start thinking about being conscious about something when we play, we lose it, which is why we’ve never rehearsed. And which is why we never discuss our set before we go on stage. We never write a setlist and we just step on stage and start playing. We kind of see – wherever it takes us is where it takes us.
We try not to discuss the music because it’s like they say – “It’s like dancing about architecture.” We don’t want to put any thoughts into our heads that weren’t there before, as new age as it sounds, that clutter up what we’re trying to think about when we play music. When we’re on the side of the stage we’re talking about what we had for dinner or whatever, but we don’t even know what we’re starting with. We try to clear our minds, and just step up there and see what happens. It doesn’t matter where we are. We just try to give it the best possible show we can with minimum distractions for us.
Generally speaking, the biggest contributor to a great show is a crowd that doesn’t have to know us, but is into what we do. That’s about it. We’ve played on the worst sound systems in the world and had the best shows. We’ve played on the best sound systems in the world and had terrible shows. It’s about being able to rope the crowd in, to have them be part of what we’re trying to present.
Such a big part of what The New Deal does and did was to have this emotional attachment, this emotional reaction between the band and the crowd. That, to me, is what the x-factor of music is. People like a song and most of the time they can’t tell you why. They just know that they like it and that it hits them hard. That happens a lot at our shows as well. That’s why the live show is considered so strong for us versus our released output. If they’re on board, if the audience is willing to listen and willing to be part of the event then almost always – we’ve got ‘em. That’s an inherent, strong facet of a New Deal show.
As tours stretched farther and crowds grew larger, the emotional responses garnered from New Deal sets began to influence an increasing number of fledgling acts. Jambands stylistically rooted in dance music became as common as those steeped in classic rock, blues, funk, and jazz. The reality of being an inspiration to younger bands was not lost on Shields.
JS: A lot of people have told us that we’ve been influential, but that sometimes means that you’ve become irrelevant – “Oh yeah man, I used to listen to you when I was 12.” I think it’s the sense of having a bunch of keyboards on stage and playing dance music and not worrying about where the verse or chorus is. We didn’t invent that, that’s just something we brought to the table at the right time. I wouldn’t call it a gamble but I’d say that our sort of lazy anti-decision actually was right. We didn’t know much about it at the time. We weren’t like – “Okay, now we’re gonna go conquer the jamband scene.” We didn’t know anything about that. We were just thinking – “There’s gotta be people that dig this music. We’re not Mozart, we’re just kinda playing something that we like so it’s coming from somewhere that other people probably have been as well.”
I think that hit a nerve with a lot of the bands that came up after us. These guys may not be able to do specifically what we were doing, so they have moved it around to be something else but the basic influence seems to have come from us for a number of bands. I’m not tooting my own horn, that’s just kind of what I’ve been told. We’ve managed to morph over the years to maintain this relevancy within the band. There was this groundswell about 3 years ago where there was this completely different facet of dance music that popped up. House-related stuff, as great as it is, took a back seat to the new thing – dubstep and that kind of style. We’re not musical chameleons but there became a whole new shift of music and a bunch of guys who were really into The New Deal as well that are doing that kind of music.
As for us, we were able to embrace a lot of technology and sounds that had come out over the past, say, seven years. Things that weren’t available to us when we started or, at least weren’t known by us. Those are the kinds of things that helped us to morph and helped us to update what we were doing. Because we were so open to whatever it was we did, like Dan starting to play synth bass. He always just played bass guitar but about 7 years ago he brought out a little synth controller and a little module and he’s been working with that and tweaking that. Now, to me, the highlight of when we play is when he plays synth bass. The sounds are just amazing.
That kind of thing has helped to bring us into that newer style, the musical spectrum that’s out there. I got a bunch of new keyboards and Darren got a set of e-drums. There wasn’t a conscious decision to add that stuff to our rig, just another one of those “Hey, you know what might sound cool?” things.
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