Condescending Liberals To Play Ditmas Park Saturday Night

Sachin Shenolikar, guitarist for the Brooklyn-based Condescending Liberals, admits that the band’s name is tongue-in-cheek. “It comes from an incident at a dinner party the day after the 2008 vice presidential debate,” he told Emily Tan of the Asian American Journalists Association. “Let’s just say that after a few glasses of wine, the one Republican at the party didn’t take too kindly to the Sarah Palin jokes that were being tossed around.”

But if you think of liberalism in the sense of an enthusiasm for diversity, the last part of the name is a good fit. The Condescending Liberals treat the last 50 or 60 years of popular music as their personal sandbox, ready to play with anything within reach and put their own spin on it.

While the results are delivered without condescension, there is a distinct sense that there’s no justification necessary for the plunder of disparate source material beyond the music itself. On that score, the Condescending Liberals deliver; their return to Bar Chord on Saturday (3/26) should bear witness to the power of the band’s idiosyncratic imagination.

Guitarist Shenolikar talked to the Ditmas Park Corner about the band’s history and philosophy in a recent interview.

Call it the Spotification of music—now there’s an insane variety of material, from virtually any era or genre, available immediately to anyone who wants to listen to it. Are the Condescending Liberals part of that, the way you bring different styles together and feature covers by widely disparate artists in your shows?

Yeah, there’s so much music available today, yet it’s still not easy to find new stuff to listen to. It can be a crapshoot to sift through thousands of songs or find the blog or Twitter feed that lines up perfectly with your tastes. And the algorithms in apps are still hit or miss.

Condescending Liberals sets are basically curated Spotify playlists. We do obscure covers from well-known artists, mostly from the 60s and 70s, so there’s a discovery or rediscovery aspect – songs you don’t know from artists you love or deep cuts that you haven’t heard in years. The styles range from classic rock/blues to soul/funk to alt-country/Americana.

That’s really a throwback to an earlier spirit in rock and roll—Paul Simon actually requested the Doors as the opening act for Simon & Garfunkel’s 1967 appearance at Forest Hills. And Dion went on the road with Frank Zappa and the Mothers in 1974. Would you mix it up that much—can you see the Condescending Liberals playing something off of “Weasels Ripped My Flesh” and following it up with “Abraham, Martin and John”?

Now that’s a scary thought. Ha. But Zappa followed by Dion would kinda fall into our wheelhouse.

At our first Bar Chord show we started a set with a Funkadelic tune followed by Bonnie Raitt followed by Bob Dylan and then Cake. And then the second set was funky instrumental jams by The Meters, John Scofield and Cannonball Adderley. But it depends on the venue. For shorter shows, we’ve found it works better to have a tighter stylistic thread with tunes — we’ve been keeping it bluesy of late.

Who are the others in the band, and how did The Condescending Liberals come together?

I met the other guitar player, Joe Charupakorn, at a Mike Stern concert a few years ago. At the time I was playing in another band, The Shabby Dolls, which did obscure country/Americana covers. Joe had been jamming with drummer Yoshiaki Makino and bassist Hiro Odaira for years – every week they would play through a homemade songbook of 70s funk/fusion tunes.

The Shabby Dolls broke up, but we were offered a gig at the Branded Saloon in Prospect Heights. I got in touch with Joe to see if we could fill the spot with Yoshi and Hiro. We clicked right away and ended up doing a monthly residency at the Saloon. George Farmer joined us on keyboards after a few months.

The band started off with an instrumental focus, but I liked the idea of having vocals in the middle of the set to break things up. We had a number of singers sit in, plus a breakdancer at one show. Ren Hsieh, who has a terrific old-school soul/blues voice, has been our main vocalist for a year now.

And Michelle Neuringer and Lizzie Olson from the Shabby Dolls also join us from time to time – they do close harmony singing that gives a sweet twist to covers, especially on gritty songs that were originally sung by men.

The video clips of the band available online show you guys playing covers of all sorts of different music, but I don’t think I’ve seen any original material. Is there a composer in the band, and will we see any of that work at Bar Chord?

We’ve only done covers so far, but we’re working on originals that should be ready to debut soon. What’s been cool is that the covers often become originals in a way. For example, when Michelle and Lizzie sing close harmony on Bob Dylan’s “I’ll Be Your Baby” or Tom Waits’s “Jesus Gonna Be Here,” it’s quite a departure from how Dylan and Waits sound – both in terms of tone and phrasing.

Add in electric guitar and keyboard solos and there’s another twist. In the end, other than the overlying chords and the lyrics, they don’t sound anything like the original version.

Is it ever intimidating to play a cover version of a song just because you’ve got so much love for the original artists? Are there any songs you absolutely wouldn’t dare attempt?

Yeah, that came up once when we trying a difficult tune. But then we realized that every artist we cover is a legend, so what’s the big deal? It’s interesting how sometimes you can try a song and it’s a mess in the beginning. The panic sets in – oh man, there’s no way we can do this – but by the end of the rehearsal there’s relief and joy when it comes together.

That being said, we’ve practiced some songs that didn’t work at all, so we ended up tossing them. For example, the instrumental version of Pantera’s “Cowboys From Hell” hasn’t left the rehearsal studio, and I promise that it never will. Well, unless we can find a way to work it into a “Weasels Ripped My Flesh” and “Abraham, Martin, and John” medley. Ha.

One constant, no matter what style you guys are playing at any given time, even when you’re doing a country tune, the band seems to find a way to keep it funky. How do you think you manage that?

I think that comes from the fact that most of the instrumentalists’ musical background is in 70s funk/fusion – that’s in the blood. So when we do, say, a country tune that’s not really familiar to us, those early influences naturally seep in.

In addition to playing guitar in the band, you’re also a journalist, a visual artist, and a blogger. Are all these creative pursuits the fruit of a unified artistic vision, or does wearing different hats give you the opportunity to explore disparate ideas?

It’s a mix but more of the latter. The unified artistic vision is always having multiple outlets to collaborate with others, and the thrill is in the human connections that transform raw ideas into real polished things. That’s the case whether it’s working with a writer on an article, rehearsing with a band, or getting feedback from family to revise a collage that I’m working on. I love that process.