Why the Scottish pop band Belle and Sebastian is huge in Garden Grove
Keyboardist Chris Geddes is happy to talk all things Belle and Sebastian: From the Scottish indie pop band’s three upcoming shows in Los Angeles to the group’s two most recent albums, “A Bit of Previous” and “Late Developers.”
But he’s especially delighted when the conversation turns to Belle and Sebastian‘s appearance on a popular and long-running American television series in December.
If you’re thinking “Saturday Night Live” or a late-night talk show, think again. Nope, the band appeared on the “The Simpsons.”
“When it happened, my Facebook timeline was full of it,” Geddes says, laughing, of the reaction to the band showing up in the episode where Groundskeeper Willie returns to his native Scotland. “It meant a great deal to us because since the early days of the band we’d been massive ‘Simpsons’ fans.”
How massive? Well, in the early days of the band, before “The Simpsons” was on broadcast TV in Scotland, you had to know someone with cable in order to watch it, Geddes says.
“One of the perks of working in the studio where we recorded the early records was that they had cable TV,” he says of the late ’90s when Belle and Sebastian released early albums such as “Tigermilk” and “If You’re Feeling Sinister.” “And we were almost as excited about getting to watch ‘The Simpsons’ on the TV as we were about being in the studio to record.
“So to think that we would one day actually end up portrayed in it was, you know, something we never would have dreamed.”
Belle and Sebastian probably won’t play “Willie and the Dream of Peat Bogs,” the song they wrote and performed for “The Simpsons,” when they come to Los Angeles venues the Bellwether on Monday and Tuesday, May 13-14, and the United Theatre on Broadway (formerly the Theatre at Ace Hotel), on Wednesday, May 15.
But they’ll definitely play songs from the 12 studio albums they’ve released since 1996 when Glasgow students Stuart Murdoch and Stuart David recruited Geddes, Stevie Jackson, Richard Colburn, and Isobel Campbell to form the band, with Sarah Martin joining a few months later.
Geddes, singer Murdoch, guitarist Jackson, drummer Colburn, and singer-violinist Martin have been in the band ever since. Guitarist Bobby Kildea and bassist Dave McGowan round out the current lineup
In an interview edited for length and clarity, Geddes talked about Belle and Sebastian’s current tour and recent albums, how the band has kept the music going for nearly three decades, and why he was particularly interested in talking to a reporter from the Southern California News Group’s Orange County Register.
Q: Hi Chris! Thank you for making time to talk about Belle and Sebastian today.
A: Nice to meet you. I have to say I’m excited to speak with you because my wife is from Southern California and her mom lives in Garden Grove and gets the Orange County Register every day. So when I heard there was a chance to do an interview I was like, Right, I have to do it. It’ll make me look like a real celebrity in the family.
Q: That’s amazing. So it must be fun to come to Southern California on tour, which you were supposed to do a year ago but then Stuart needed to take some time off.
A: That’s right. There was a point when Stuart’s health wasn’t that great, so we did have to postpone a load of stuff we had planned. This tour, I mean, it’s obviously just been a great relief really that Stuart’s doing well again and we’ve been able to get back out on the road. And the first few concerts have gone really well.
Q: As far as Southern California, I tried to figure out when Belle and Sebastian first played here. I think it was 2001?
A: It was 2001. I remember when we played in Los Angeles. I think we might have played two nights at the Wiltern.
Q: That must have been exciting, to be an indie band from Scotland making your L.A. debut over two nights in a good-sized venue.
A: It was tremendously exciting. And it did kind of feel like at that stage of the band that we definitely skipped a few rungs in the ladder. I think because early records had been quite popular on college radio, so it felt like we had a decent-sized audience over in California without having to kind of do it the hard way, and come and do the kind of touring where you’re in the back of the van, crashing on people’s floors, and playing small venues.
So the records had kind of done the legwork for us almost. I mean to be able to come over sort of straight away and be able to play those kinds of venues, it was really exciting. But we definitely had to do our apprenticeship on the road and learn how to be a live band kind of quite quickly.
Q: Do you remember any particular moments in those Wiltern shows?
A: The thing that really sticks in my mind is our friend Evie Sands, who we’d met in Glasgow a few years before, she guested on a song with us. I think we did her sort of ’60s hit ‘Take Me For a Little While.’ And back in those days we always used to try and do locally themed covers during the set. I think we maybe did the Mamas & the Papas, one of the things. [According to setlists, they played the Mamas & the Papas ‘Creeque Alley’ one night, and L.A. band Love’s ‘Alone Again Or’ the other.]
Q: You said the records had done some of the legwork. Belle and Sebastian isn’t typical pop or rock music, so what was it, or is it, that appeals to fans, particular in the United States?
A: I think the thing that makes the music connect with people, and especially the early records, is the musical aspect of it. The melodies and the production and the playing style of the band. Then there’s also the kind of sensibility and the worldview that Stuart kind of presents in his lyrics. It’s maybe quite a kind of quirky view and not totally mainstream, but it does connect with a certain type of person. Certainly in all the major cities in America, there are people who have this sort of, I don’t know, that kind of quirky, alternative sensibility, and the band is kind of joined with those people.
Q: The two most recent albums came out closely together. It’s like a ’60s band putting out two albums in less than a year.
A: We recorded all of the songs in one big block, really. In a certain sense, it was because of the lockdown. There wasn’t really anything that we could do together other than work in the studio, and so it made us more productive than we had been for a long time.
Q: You, Stuart, Stevie and Richard have been together almost three decades now, and Sarah almost all of that time, too. What factors have kept Belle and Sebastian together when so many bands don’t stay together nearly as long?
A: I mean, we’re definitely not the kind of archetypal rock star personalities. I think we are generally speaking quite level-headed people. It’s not the band hasn’t had its ups and downs over the years, but I think we generally have good relationships between ourselves. I would say almost like a kind of family relationship.
Even though the core of the band has stayed together, the lineup changes, when they have taken place, have always given the band fresh impetus at the time. Like Bob joining the band in 2001 really gave us a kind of energy that we hadn’t had before. And then Mick (Cooke), the original trumpet player, who also took over bass duties when Stuart David left … him leaving in 2010 seemed like a real big blow to the band. But replacing him with Dave McGowan, who’s primarily a bassist, gave the band a real different kind of groove to the records we’ve done with Dave.
Q: You mentioned your mother-in-law will see you’re a celebrity now that you’re in the Orange County Register, but it may be hard to top being on ‘The Simpsons,’ right?
A: To think we would one day end up portrayed on it was something we never would have dreamed of. Actually, that takes us full circle. Because one of the other things that happened the very first time we were in L.A. was we got invited along to a (‘Simpsons’) cast read-through of a script around the table. I think there was someone, I’m not sure whether it was Matt Groening himself, but there was someone involved in ‘The Simpsons’ production who was a fan of the band as far back as 2001.
I don’t know whether they’ve been thinking about trying to get us on an episode for as long as that, and it took them that long to do it. But yeah, it was amazing, especially with the whole story of the episode being in Scotland. It’s funny to think that we were chosen to sort of represent our country.