deerfrance Comes to Milwaukee

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In the band photograph deerfrance seems to be smiling. Or is she? Like a mirage, with the release of the sad electronic NOW, deerfrance comes into focus.

In pre-internet days, if you were lucky enough to stumble across a NY Rockermagazine you may have seen her credited collaborating with John Cale or Tom Verlaine. Her resume includes the innerworkings of NYC music clubs Max’s Kansas City and CBGBs, Punk Magazine, the No Wave scene, as well as introducing Devo to Brian Eno. All that would be a fine history. 

Live and on record

Still vital, deerfrance and her band will play a pair of shows in Milwaukee. On Saturday, June 15 she opens for Chuck Prophet at Shank Hall and on Sunday, June 16 she plays Linneman’s Riverwest Inn for a 4 p.m. show with an opening set by a reunited Crime Family.

At 10 songs, the sad electronic NOW are stacked with earworms that take clues from deerfrance’s influences: ‘60s girl groups, Kinks, Stones, Captain Beefheart, Smokey Robinson, Patti Smith, Bob Dylan and Television. 

“Art imitates life,” deerfrance offers when asked if the songs are fact of fiction. “My songs ask me to dance when sometimes I can’t even get up. They are my best friends.”

Those songs take flight thanks to the players, guitarist Rich Thomas (who spent time in Milwaukee with Crime family back in the ‘90s), drummer Bo Conlon (Louie & The Flashbombs, BoDeans) and bassist Kai Eric from Memphis outsiders Tav Falco and the Panther Burns. 

Thomas played with deerfrance in the band Floorkiss, which also included deerfrance’s husband the late Dee Pop (drummer with Bush Tetras, Gun Club). At Pop’s memorial, deerfrance and Thomas set in motion what would lead to recording sessions in Columbus, Ohio engineered by Joe Viers. 

Funny thing, the album doesn’t sound like a recording project so much as a veteran band balancing songcraft and abandon with deerfrance’s verve and vulnerability.

She refers to her band mates as “the oars to my boat.” And maybe as a hint of what to expect from a show, deerfrance reflects on what she gleaned working with the likes of Cale and Verlaine, “never leave an audience conscious; They should have gone mad or don’t show up. Change the molecules.”