Monday , November 16, 2009
Crush of the Week: Ira from Yeasayer (Or: I Love a Man in a Uniform)
I have a big fat crush on the bassist from Yeasayer. (Do you hear that, Bassist From Yeasayer? I have a big fat crush on you!!) His name is Ira Wolf Tuton, and this is why I love him:
1. His name is Ira WOLF Tuton. The only other person I know of with "Wolf" in his name is Wolf Blitzer*, who I definitely do not have a crush on. And while having "Wolf" in your band name (a la Wolf Parade, Wolf Eyes, Wolfmother, Peanut Butter Wolf, AIDS Wolf, Sea Wolf, and BlahBaDeeWolfBlah) is so old and played out, having "Wolf" in your actual name is all kinds of awesome. Because, even though just the other morning I had a terrible nightmare in which a rabidly angry wolf was trying to break into my house by unscrewing the screen door with a screwdriver, my heart is filled with nothing but wolf love. (Note: "BlahBaDeeWolfBlah" is not actually a band name. I made that one up.)
2. He is so totally charming in this little Stereogum interview (in which it's revealed that Ira moonlights as a carpenter!). First off, he addresses the interviewer as "loverboy," which is something I wish more of the 8 million people I interview everyday would start doing. And then there's this adorable excerpt:
STEREOGUM: How long have you been involved in carpentry? What's your background in it?
IRA WOLF TUTON: My pop is a lot of things but two of the things he passed on to me are carpentry and the bass. I started working when I was 12. I will never send my kid to camp. In that world it's either be a bully or be bullied. I grew up seeing the most skilled Yankee craftsmen build some of the most sublime structures without wasting a motion. Those guys are some of the best musicians I've ever seen.
Eeeeeek! I give him 500 cuteness points for calling his dad "pop," and 2,000 more for preemptively shielding his offspring against hypothetical summer-camp bullying. And another 1,000 for the moment later in the interview when he says, "My duties are to pay my rent, write my music, and be good to people, except assholes." (Mine too! Except swap out "music" for "nogoodforme.com/other things.")
3 (and most important). I really dig that he always wears the same thing onstage, that thing being wifebeater + jeans + boots. It's a rare boy who can make the wifebeater + jeans + boots combo really truly work - so if you happen to be one of them, why not just stick to that formula day in and day out? That's so what I'd do if I were a scraggly-long-haired six-foot-something dude (which, FYI, I think I might be in some parallel universe).
4. I like his band! It took me a while, but they finally won me over when I saw them at the Ukrainian Cultural Center last month. (That's where I snapped the above shot - it's blurry cuz it's ARTY.) Now I listen to the song "2080" all the time and always marvel at how brilliantly they play off that age-old little-kids-singing-creepy-lyrics-in-chorus gimmick at the end. Yeasayer's website has a free mp3; go listen right now. And if you see Ira around, tell him I heart him.
*Oh, and Peter Wolf. I actually do kinda have a crush on him.
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Posted by Liz in Music |
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