“It’s weird. We don’t even have to talk,” says guitarist/singer Ernie Senecal of his partnership with multi-instrumentalist and recording wiz Jim Weeks. “We’ve got it down, how we work with each other, so we just come in and get to it.”
Senecal and Weeks recently celebrated their 30th year of collaboration with the release of Golden Years, their second CD as rock “band” I.B. Sometimes.
The late ’70s found Senecal rocking along with Dave Leclair and Tom Schieding in the band Delex. When Schieding took off for Brown University, Weeks auditioned for the drum throne.
“He was like 18, into progressive rock and all that stuff,” says Senecal. “Dave and I quickly corrupted him.”
Delex ended shortly thereafter, but Weeks wanted to keep things going. “Jim liked my songs, so he approached me about recording,” Senecal says. The two started recording along with assistance from Pete Keppler, who is now doing sound for the likes of David Bowie and Nine Inch Nails. They wrote a slew of songs and recorded for about eight months, during a time when “you put vinyl out or nothing.”
The duo put out nothing, but managed to start up a new project, R Complex, with Leclair and Craig Nieske. All the while, they kept recording material. “Endless recording,” recalls Senecal. “I can’t believe we never put any of it out, because we probably have over 100 songs in the can.”
Senecal took a hiatus for law school, then formed Big Bang Theory post-graduation with Weeks and The Elevators’ old rhythm section: bassist Jerry Ellis and drummer Bill Benjamin. The band played for a few years, committing yet more tunes to tape before Senecal “lost interest” in the early ’90s. Due to Weeks’ continual support and encouragement, however, I.B. Sometimes formed for 2002’s Your Paradise, and again for this year’s Golden Years. The band’s name is derived from Senecal’s sporadic activity.
Over the years, the creative process has remained the same.
“I give him a framework, skeleton, and see what he does with it,” says Senecal. “”I’ll go in and just lay down the rhythm parts to a click or basic drum machine. The fun part is, I leave it with him and see what he’s done with it, and it blows my mind. I’m like, ‘Holy shit.'”
Senecal is awed by the enormous amount of work Weeks puts into the recordings at his Cloud Cuckooland Studio in Northampton: “He’s essentially the band, doing all those parts. It was pretty funny— during the recording of this one, at one point he said he almost had to be a schizophrenic because when he plays a particular instrument, he’s trying to have a certain identity and not sound like the same person playing all the instruments. He’s like, ‘At some points, I didn’t even know my name.'”
Senecal’s “primitive” guitar stylings and Weeks’ proficiency are a key dynamic in the partnership.
“In a weird way, my limitations help my songwriting,” Senecal says. “I just kind of make up chords. I know the basics, but I get bored with that, so I kind of make up chord variations and string ’em together. Then it’s a challenge to write melodies to that set of chords. Sometimes I’ll take the same three chords and write 20 songs. Jim, thankfully, is able to do the rest.””
For songs and information, visit: www.myspace.com/ibsometimesmusic.
