As Fountains of Wayne founder, bassist and songwriter Adam Schlesinger tells it, his band once played a full-on rock show at the Birchmere in Alexandria after having performed an acoustic night at the same venue on a previous date. Following that second show, Schlesinger says he received a couple of complaints that their plugged-in set was too loud in comparison to the acoustic night.
Next week, Fountains of Wayne performs at the Birchmere, electric on Sunday and acoustic on Monday.
| Onstage |
| Fountains of Wayne |
| Where: Birchmere, 3701 Mount Vernon Avenue, Alexandria |
| When: 7:30 p.m. Sunday (electric) and Monday (accoustic) |
| Info: $29.50 each night; birchmere.com |
Plan your show-going accordingly.
“For anyone that’s worried about it being too loud, they should go to the acoustic show,” Schlesinger joked during a phone interview last month, before adding “it’s not like the shows are that different. It’s a different vibe for the evening.”
Fountains of Wayne — which includes co-songwriter and lead guitarist Chris Collingwood, guitarist Jody Porter and drummer Brian Young — released “Sky Full of Holes” on Tuesday, and have embarked on a tour.
The band, which released its self-titled first album in 1996, is probably best known for the songs “Stacy’s Mom,” “Radiation Vibe,” “Sink to the Bottom,” and “Leave the Biker.” “Sky Full of Holes” is the group’s first full-length effort in four years.
“It always seems to take us three or four years to get our act together and get a new record out,” said Schlesinger. “There’s always a lot of reasons why.”
“On some level I think the fact that we take so long between records is part of the reason why the band has lasted this long,” continued Schlesinger, who is also a founding member of the band Ivy “I think that everybody gets a break from it every so often and then gets excited about it again when we start it up again.”
Fountains of Wayne isn’t doing the back-to-back electric/acoustic shows on every stop of the tour. But with two nights of music, there’s a great chance fans will hear all the hits.
Schlesinger relayed a story about how the band didn’t play “Stacy’s Mom,” about a young teenager pining for his classmate’s attractive mother, at the Coachella music fest a few years back. He said that’s all everyone wrote about.
“We have so many songs to choose from, and we like mixing it up and pulling out songs we haven’t played in a while,” Schlesinger said, adding that “Radiation Vibe” is almost a lock. “But there are certain ones where if we don’t play them, people wonder what happened.”
“I think the people that really know our band, that’s not necessarily the one they’re coming to hear,” Schlesinger added of “Stacy’s Mom.”
