The band Local H, which dropped from four members to two in the early 1990s, is now down to its last founding member. Drummer Joe Daniels, who co-founded the group with frontman Scott Lucas, has left the group. He's been replaced by Brian Saint Claire, the former drummer of Triple Fast Action. "It feels fine," Lucas said in a phone interview when asked about the departure of Daniels, who he's known since high school. "He wasn't digging it anymore. That's pretty much it." He said Local H will carry on as a two-person band, with Lucas on bass and guitars and St. Claire on drums. "Brian is a great drummer," he said. "It's not like anything's missing. He was always one of my favorite drummers, right up there with John Bonham."

Will the group sound different with Daniels gone?

"Absolutely not," Lucas said. "That's the reason it is still Local H. If it was something different, I would have started a new band. I'm not going to change the way I play guitar. Brian is a great drummer. It's not like anything's missing."

In 1998, the group released Pack Up the Cats (which was originally going to be titled "That Fucking Cat"), a follow-up to their gold-selling 1996 release, As Good As Dead. The band is still working on putting out an album, but first it needs to find a label, having parted ways with Island Records. "We're not on a label right now," Lucas said. "We're fishing."

The group has also been touring and writing songs. Lucas is looking forward to playing Winter X Games 2000, a gig he's familiar with. "I've been there a couple times before," he said. Although not an X Games addict like some musicians associated with the event, he's always enjoyed playing the events. "For me it's just the kind of thing where I get to play and get to ski for free," he said.
- Erik Espe (thanks to Lovey Dovey-A Local H Site for the info, and congrats on your site's one year anniversary)

January

Guitar Magazine, Dec. 98, Written by Philip Zonkel

Local Anesthesia

Bass-Deficient Homeboys Local H Kick Up a Happy Racket

"A Remark you'd hear an awful lot about music in the '90's was 'Oh no not another band with four white guys with guitars,' so here was a good way to get around that," says guitarist-vocalist Scott Lucas, half of the powerhouse duo Local H, who landed on the modern rock scene with their near-gold-selling 1996 disc, "As Good As Dead" and the fierce tracks "Bound For the Floor (Keep It Copacetic)" and "Fritzs Corner." "I feel good doing this, but at the same time, it wasn't like we got together to do it," Lucas says. Creating a heavy riff-and-drum-drenched track is first and foremost for the Chicago-based Lucas and drummer Joe Daniels (the 28-year olds hail from Zion, a small suburb north of the Windy City). That goal, howeverm sometimes challenges the two-some. "You can't rely on someone to play solo. When we're writing songs, we try to get ourselves away from verse-chorus-verse," Lucas says. "Anything that makes you look at (songwriting) in a different way is good." Playing live also means a new approach for Lucas and Daniels. Their unorthodox lineup is bass-player deficient, but Lucas is a two-for-one musician. His guitars have been configured with bass pickups, which, along with the guitar pickups, are wired to independant jacks and run into separate amps. Pedals isolate either signal while another pedal emphasizes the bass. Those setups and a healthy dose of melodic rock are heard on Local H's latest assault, Pack up the Cats, and the first single, "All the Kids Are Right." This time, the duo went to the past to find their future, recruiting producer Roy Thomas Baker, whose credits include Queen, The Cars, and Journey. "We wanted to make a record tha would last, so in 20 years you could still play it on the radio. A lot of stuff he did made intresting-sounding records, but wasn't bogged down in any of the technology," says Lucas, who used such unconventional effects as wrapping piano wire and guitar strings with tin foil on "Fine and Good" and ripping tape for "500,000 Scovilles." "I'm really happy the way the record sounds, (but) I kind of wanted to make the record sound different. Halfway through it was really weird. No matter what we did, what distortion pedals I used, it sounded like us. It was surprising to me to discover that your music has a lot more to do with you than it does with gear, who you work with, or what approach you take." "The main thing with this record was that I was sick of hearing a lot of bands that sound like Alice in Chains, bands that aren't much fun to listen to," Lucas says. "I don't mind angry music, I just don't like music that's boring and sort of depresses you because it's boring. We may actually be angry or whining, but the songs all kind of sound like party songs."

Local H

"Makin' Sure Rock's All Right"

By Paul Gargano
There was something mildly addictive about Local H's first two albums. When they were loud, they were very, very loud, and when they were melodic they were very, very melodic, the two elements teasing each other, but never crashing together to fully realize their raucious potential. But when the Zion, IL power-rock-pop-duo made the leap from rural suburbia to the big city lights of Chicago, something changed. Call it a coming of age, call it a musical revelation, or call it one of the best rock records of 1998, but the end result is still the same-- Pack Up The Cats, a sucker punch that slams like Cheap Trick on steroids, charging forward with vocals laced with equal parts cynicism, sarcasm, and wit, music as heavy as it is hooky, and meddlesome as it is melodic. For frontman Scott Lewis (note:that's how the magazine has it...how about that journalistic integrity?-Chris) who's rigged his five string (note: Scott plays a regular six string...hello?-Chris) to simultaneously play both guitar and bass-and drummer Joe Daniels- a pummeling source of power and energy behind the kit- it's all about the music, the artistry, and the satisfaction they get from playing live. And it finally appears to be paying off. With the breakthrough success of Cats' first single, "All The Kids Are Right," the pair's Windy City maelstrom has found it's way across America, hopelessly addicting everyone in its path. After years of paying dues while overnight success passed through the fingers of their peers, Local H have survived with their integrity intact, their most successful album to date, and as Lewis (?) indicated in a recent interview before embarking on their current co-headlining tour with Fuel, an acute ability to successfully tread the fine line between art and commerce.

Paul Gargano (P): This album isn't reall a musical diversion from your past two, but it's a lot more cohesive. It's an easier listen.
Scott (S): There may be a lot of people who thing it is a diversion, and then there are some, like me-especially when we were making it- that really didn't think it was. Whatever, I do think it is the logical progression to where we keep going. We don't really try to do anything different, but I think if you chart what we do form the first album, to the second one, to this one, then you can see it. We went for that cohesiveness. We tried to make a record where all the float into each other like a Pink Floyd record, so if you're listening to it you won't want to stop after a few songs, and it would feel kind of weird going into it in the middle. We've always tried to do that, but if you would compare it to the other two, it's definitely the most cohesive record we've ever done. That has to do with a lot of things-the way it was conceived, the way we completely prepared ourselves.

P: Were you looking for a change after the last two records?
S:No, but after living with each record for a year or so, there may be a little thing on each one that you kind of like and you want to expand on. On the last record, there were a couple of things that we did, like the bookend way it would begin and end with the same song. There was a little that was psychedelic, we messed around with that a little bit. So we really wanted to get into that on this record.
P:Through it all though, you never sacrifice melody. I like to think of it as Cheap Trick on steroids.
S:We were listening to the first Cheap Trick record non-stop while we were recording this. We knew there was something along those lines that we wanted to go with. We wanted to make sure that no matter what we were talking about dramatically on the record, it was still fun to listen to, and intresting for us. Playing a record like this a year or two down the road, you don't want to get bored with it after awhile. Anytime we started to get bored with a song, we'd cut it or we'd go on to something else. I love Cheap Trick and to be able to make a record where every song was that catchy, but I also wanted to make sure it rocked and that it had some of that spaceyness of a Pick Floyd record.
P: You've always got something intresting going on lyrically, and that makes the sound very multi-dimensional.
S:We wanted the record to be a rag to riches sort of thing...Like a movie. I don't know if the record's completely about fame, but it's about happiness and just kind of getting lost in all the bullshit. I moved to Chicago after the last record cam out, and this record is a lot more influenced by the big city. Our last record was definitely a small-town record.
P: Why'd you move to Chicago?
S:There was nothing to do in Zion, and I could afford it!
P:Does it feel like there is a healthy evolution within the band?
S:It kind of does. It's cool, because we've worked hard to make sure it's honest and earned. We don't want to be one of those bands where they have one song on the radio and they're walking around looking like everybody else. When you get a huge song all over the radio and MTV, it get's burned out, then it's over and that's it. I'd rather have what we have. I feel like people want to hear our record.
It's got to be encouraging to reach a third record and still have label support, a lot of bands can't get that far.
S: Yeah. I've got a lot of empathy for bands who get the short end of the deal. And a lot of times it's not because these bands made a bad record, it's because of the crappy politics that might be going on at their label. They'll have a new head of the label. They'll have a new head of the label and he doesn't like the bands' A&R guy, so he decides he's not gonna spend a lot of money on that record. Whatever. There are tons of reasons why someone can have a record stiff and subsequently get dropped, and that very well could happen to us. I'm still surprised it didn't happen to us on our first record. For Ham Fisted, nothing really did happen. We put the record out, and we toured, and nothing really happened. You get the feeling that on any other label we would have been dropped, but I don't necessarily think it's the album's fault. I know it's pretty noisy, and it's a garage rock record, but I think there are some catchy songs on there. It could have done something, but it didn't happen, so instead of bitching about it we went in and made another record. Luckly, we were able to do that.
P:You had to be pleased with the response to As Good As Dead.
S:I really was. I stopped counting because I knew that if we sold 100, 000 records we'd be all right. I remember, we were on tour with Stone Temple Pilots when we sold 100, 000, and I said, "Well, that's all I care about. We've done it, so fuck it, now I really don't care what we do sales wise.
P:It was just the assurance of knowing that you'd get to put another record?
S:That's all it is. That's all I care about. As long as we're able to keep making records, that's fine. The sales don't really matter because I don't really feel that they validate the band. If that were true, there'd be a lot of shit that I'd have to consider great. I'm not going to consider Everclear a great band just because they sold a lot of records. If that was where it's at, then Matchbox 20 would be the greatest band going. They're not. I look at Everclear and I want to smash Art (the lead singer) in the face. He just seems like such a dumb, stupid fuck to me. He just seems like the type of guy who really is intrested in record-speak and how his band charts. It seems to me hat he should change his name to "Business." I just think Art has no business having his name "Art,". I've never been a huge Soul Asylum fan, either. Although I know a lot of people who are.
P: I thought it was curious that you're first single ("All The Kids Are Right") came from the last half of the album. That's not too common.
On our last record we had "Fritzs's Corner," which did pretty well for us, and it was the third-to-last song. I like to make sure that what the record company's gonna think of as singles are sprinkled all over the record. Sometimes the average fool never even gets to the end of the record, they only care about the single. This song ("All The Kids Are Right,") is about completely falling apart and sucking and having no value anymore- the guy's band basically sucks, and they don't care anymore. The song had to go there on the record, so the decline could happen.
P:"High-Fiving MF" became an unexpected hit off the last record.
S: Actually, it's "High-Fiving Mother Fucker". On the record it's "High-Fiving MF," because they won't let us put "Mother Fucker". That was the name of the song before the legal department got involved in things...We were taking pictures once, and I've got an AC/DC key chain, so we were in the middle of this arguement over whether or not I can have this AC/DC key chain in the picture. Like AC/DC would have a problem with their logo being in a picture that we took! It's no fun. Too many people saying "No, you can't do this. No you can't do that."
P: Does the business side take that much fun out of it?
S: It would just be a much funnier picture if you could see the AC/DC keychain. We've done pictures before where I've worn a Rush shirt, or I've written Ozzy on my fingers, or something like that. Nobody's said anything about it before. Once you let that kind of thing get a foothold, you start to worry about everybody suing you.
P: Does that make the music itself more of a job?
S:That has nothing to do with the music. This is for a poster or something. For me, a poster is for one reason only--it's to advertise the record. It's the business side, and it has nothing to do with the record. We made ther record to sound good. I don't feel bad about it because it doesn't affect the music and it doesn't affect our live show. Those are two things I refuse to let business affect. Everything else is just advertising. Ecen if they were to cut our song, take the bad words out of it, I don't really care because its just for the radio anyway. It doesn't affect the record.
P:Who's "Cool Magnet" aimed at?
S:"Cool Magnet" is a shot at rock stars who think they really know what's up.
P:The whole album seems to revolve around success.
S:It's about how suvvess can go to your head and just fuck you ap and make you lose your perspective on things, you lose touch with reality. Any further thatn that, I almost perfer that people don't know what it's about, because when I start talking about what I think the whole record means and what the record's about, it becomes really stupid, like talking about some grandiose concept. It's supposed to be a concept record, but it's supposed to be far more personal, not some self-obsessed rock-star record. And it's not, but everytime I try to explain it, it sounds like that.
P:It's old news by now that you play both guitar and bass at the same time, but has your style of play evolved over the years?
S: I don't know, it's really hard to take it much further. there are a few different things, a few twists, different effects-turning on the delay and having a bunch of noise and putting a bass line under it. Something like that. There's a lot more slide on this record than there is on the other one. I'm kind of into that. There's slide on all the records, but I think there's some really good stuff on this one. There's just really something that I really like the sound of... I don't even know how to play metal steel, but I really like that kind of twang.
P:So you have no intention of hiring a bass player?

S: Hiring a bass player just wouldn't be intresting. Whatever we did as far as additional instrumentalists would have to be something that would intrigue us--a trumpet or something.
P: Do you see it as a selling point of the band?

S: I don't think we ever wanted to play that kind of thing up. Anytime anyone asks us, we kind of fluff it off. Like, "Well, that's just the way our band happens to be." We didn't intend for it to be a gimmick, it was just the kind of thing where we don't know anybody, and we didn't want to sit around and wish for a bass player that was never gonna come. That's the only reason that we got it together. Anything that smells of a gimmick, we try to play down, it's just gonna turn bad. It doesn't matter what it is, it's gonna come back on you. So if you try to trade on that instead of on your music, sooner or later people will get tired of it. That's not what we're trying to do. We're just trying to prove ourselves as a really good live rock band that makes good records. That's all we try to do. I feel if we do it like that ans we keep our mind on that rather than doind anything gimmicky, we'll be able to make music longer and eventually we'll make far more money than we would if we went for the fast bucks. That's what I don't understand about record labels and the fast buck. I think they can make a more money if they get behind a record that 20 years from now can still be played on the radio. Pink Floyd's still making tons of money on one record. Everyone complains that everything sucks now, and that could be one of the reasons. It's really funny-- everyone complains about it. It seems to me, that if everyone actually did do somethingthey could get rid of all these bands that eat shit and you could send messages to these crappy radio stations. Say, "Look, this is what we're gonna get behind. You could do whatever you want, but we're not gonna do that." But nobody has the guts to do anything like that. So we just wanted to really make a record where they could play every track on the radio and it's cool.
P: I can't see "'Cha!' Said the Kitty" going top 40! [The entire song is meowing]
S: Yeah, but you can put that as part of the next song. Sort of like when you have "Another Brick in the Wall" on the radio, you hear "The Happiest Days of Our Lives" beforehand. They kind of go with each other. If you hear "All Right (Oh Yeah)" then "'Cha!' Said the Kitty," it's like if you hear "Feeling That Way" or "Anytime" by Journey--You've got to hear those two songs together. I wanted something like that.
P:Sounds like there's something of an arena-rock influence happening here?
S: I've got no problem with big, huge rock'n' roll. I love Led Zeppelin. I've got no problem with that, those are bands that stick around. I like Soundgarden. I think they were a band with a lot of integrity and I like them a lot. I love the new Monster Magnet record...If I was a 14-year-old I'd be worshipping Monster Magnet right now, I've loved them since Spine of God, they're just great.
P: It looks like they're finally getting the break they deserve. Do you feel like it's your time, too?
S: We don't really have it that tough. I mean, we're doing pretty well, and we've always been able to get on decent tours. On the first record we got shit tours, but on the second record we started to get good tours because we had something going on radio. We did the Stone Temple Pilots tour; we did the Silverchair tour--which I loved; we did a tour with Tracy Bonham. We did a tour with Veruca Salt, and we turned Kiss dates down. The problem now is, not having that many bands that are worth touring with. It's pretty slim-there's no way we could open up for Blues Travelers. Then, the problem with having a big song, like Sugar Ray, is that the people who buy those records just don't care. It's all lifestyle music to them. It's just crap. When I go somewhere to eat and I hear some yuppie next to me talking about the Blues Travelers show, it just feels like a different world.

Prowling the Past With Local H
the Music Monitor
Feb 99
By Hal Horowitz

They don't make concept albums like they used to. And they don't make bands quite like Local H either.

Although you'd never know it from their releases or live sound, Local H is only a two piece combo. But that, along with the knowledge that they're one of the only groups (besides the fabulous Shoes) to emanate from tiny Zion, Illinois, and that they're a bi-racial band named after the train that runs local stops through the city, becomes totally irrelevant as soon as you hear the full booming intensity of their attack.

Scott Lucas, the man behind the six four-strings(what?!-Chris), plays both bass and guitar simultaneously (it's some sort of nifty octave splitter hookup which adds bass pick-ups to the low guitar stings), provides the majority of the sonic bluster and is the group's primary lyricist. Along with skin basher Joe Daniels, he's a remaining member of this decade-old band, which started life as a more traditional four piece.

For Pack Up The Cats, Local H enlisted the services of noted '70s producer Roy Thomas Baker (Queen, The Cars) to refine and define their rocking pop/grunge by looking to the past. It's a move that's paid off smartly on the new disc, a song cycle of sorts about a kid trying to escape small town life and moving through various teen psychological moods.

Like most legendary records, Pack Up The Cats finds its cumulative power in its sequencing, and works best when you absorb it in one sitting. "The band's main objective is to try to do things that challenge us rather than do a retread of anything," explains Lucas. "I grew up on a lot of Pink Floyd records. One of the things I always liked about that band was that they made complete albums, and if you took anything out of their records, it would break the flow. So I knew that was what I wanted to do before even writing this one, before we stepped inside the studio. It takes a little bit of planning. You want to mesh tempos of songs that directly run into each other, and you're conscious of making sure songs are in compatible keys, but I thought to do a record like this was going to be a lot harder. We're not doing it on this tour, but in the future we'd like to perform it in its entirety, like Tommy. It'll be better when people are more familiar with the record."

Pack Up The Cats has an enormously full, and noticeably organic sound, filled with subtle hooks and wide ranges in dynamics which Lucas attributes, at least in part, to producer Baker. "There are a lot of misconceptions about Roy. A lot of the bands he started out on, like Free [as an engineer] and the Stones' live stuff [he worked on Gimme Shelter and is in the movie], even the Queen records, are done without a lot of technology. Technology and studios have been invented to get those kinds of sounds that he got just with miking techniques. That's something that isn't done now. You've got the Dust Brothers looping Charlie Watts... and that's not cool. Those records in the '70s aged remarkably well by f**king the sound up in a really cool way and not relying on what happens to be the technology of the day. That's what we wanted to go for. Something timeless."

What they got was exactly what they aimed for: a varied but unified set of moody songs that explore the dark side of teen angst, with nods to '70s punk, power pop (especially Cheap Trick, another Baker production), and the flow and sound of a slightly more innocent time when albums were made to experienced in their entirety. They may not be timeless yet, but Local H have produced a fine release by looking to, and utilizing, the tools of the past.

The year of living strangely