Lithia Spring and the Beatniks of Destruction
BIOGRAPHY
Project started as a "between bands" thing, and has since taken on a life of its own.
I've been playing in a number of great bands off and on for years and writing for a long time (you've probably heard my work at Storyland). Nowadays I do occasional solo acoustic things... or in this case, electronic things.
BAND MEMBERS
Randy Leclair plays the role of Lithia. Lithia plays keyboards, drums, parlour guitar, bass, upright, and warbles.
YEARS COMPLETED
2006,2007,2009,2010,2012
GENRES
Rock,Electronic - Ambient,New Wave
OTHER BAND SITES
http://www.myspace.com/lithiaspringmusic
http://www.alonetone.com/randyleclair
Completed Albums
Recently(2006)
The first go-round - gut-bucket production values. All done on a StarMax Mac clone running system 8 or 9 or some god-forsaken thing. Scarily enough, it all seemed to work pretty well. At least the technology did...
No tracks have been uploaded for this album yet.
Deranged Lunaticks(2007)
Title conceived when I heard George Bush talking about "putting food on your family" - and thought "just what the world needs - more deranged lunatics." The K was added to lunaticks afterwards.
Unfinished Business(2009)
Part of the allure and the pain of the RPM Challenge is the time frame for completion. One month is not a lot of time to gather one's thoughts in a musical way, if you like decent production values.
Of course, I love production values. And a challenge.
That gives me great pause. I'm sure I will approach RPM 2010 with an acoustic guitar and well-rehearsed songs, with all the arrangements dealt with ahead of time (like key choice, etcetera already picked). That's not how things happened here.
The prep work on this collection started about two years ago - I had a flurry of creativity that yielded about ten songs more than I had time to finish for the 2007 challenge. So these are songs from the proverbial back of the drawer; really, my "unfinished business" - thus the title.
Normally, two years would be a great amount of time for gestating things in musical terms. You can go back and rethink things, poke at them, rearrange choruses, play them out and get audience reaction, etcetera. Except that in this case, I realized (in January) that I hadn't thought about them at all. Panic ensued. At some point in time, I'd love to go back and rework several of these as there's some real potential in there.
Consider this, then, unfinished business of a second sort - these were unfinished back in 2007, and I suppose they're unfinished now. But then again, that's the allure and pain of RPM....
What Comes After....(2010)
I set out to do a full acoustic album, since more often than not, that's how I do gigs. Again that didn't happen (see liner notes from 2009). Well, there's some acoustic stuff on side 2. Give a listen.
Cover art is by award-winning Maddy Bunker, whom also contributed fingerpicking. ;)
Ambient/Electronica - six tracks.
Ukulele/parlour guitar with vocals - one track.
Fingerpicking complaint about winter - one track.
Old-school epic rocker - two tracks.
Steam Pug Chronicles(2012)
A rethink of older cuts I'd written years ago. A re-imagining of heavier material.