If you go
Dinosaur Jr. with Lou Barlow and the Missingmen
Where: 9:30 Club, 815 V St. NW
When: 7 p.m. Thursday
Details: $25; 930.com; 800-955-5566
The cool thing about reforming your rock band and having a solid fan base is you don’t have to make concessions. Just ask Emmett Jefferson “Patrick” Murphy III — known to Dinosaur Jr. fans as Murph, who said he and his bandmates let their music set the band’s image.
“I have no interest in L.A.,” Murph said of why he eschewed the West Coast rock scene. “If I had it all to do over again, I’d do it without the hardships I went through in my 20s. … We are very honest and real. It’s all about the music.”
Not that Dinosaur Jr. — originally called Dinosaur — didn’t rock when it played in the 1980s and ’90s. Distinct guitar solos and feedback distortion became the band’s calling card and won an extensive fan base that included such musicians as Kurt Cobain of Nirvana.
Blame the band members’ young age or the pressures of the road, but it slowly fell apart, finally retiring the name in 1997. After an almost a 10-year hiatus, the members found their way back together. They just released a new album, “Farm,” which has won much popular and critical success.
Although the sound is still as distinctive and compelling as always, the members admit to something of a culture shock upon re-entering the music scene.
“What’s weird is playing festivals and stuff. In the past, we played punk rock shows and all bands were really good,” Murph said. “Then everyone put a lot of effort into their shows; now it’s more about the money and the trends and the fads.”
But not all the fans respond to those fads.
Murph admits when the trio regrouped, they expected audiences full of “old dudes” and were amazed to find that mixed in with their peers were plenty of twenty- and thirtysomething fans.
Expect that base to continue to grow as “Farm” receives more exposure. Anyone who’s heard the album agrees it doesn’t disappoint — filled with hooks, hard-driving guitar and just that almost indefinable “alt” sound we all know and love.
To hear Murph tell it, the reason for the cool sound is the band’s steady-as-she-goes mentality.
The members made the record in about seven months in between tours. Murph concedes he was concerned the new sound might scream “reunion band” but was “pleasantly surprised when it didn’t. Now the whole reunion thing is over and we are just a band again. It’s a band of brothers all have more balance, more genuine good stuff in our lives that brings more to our hearts and soul. Now we’ve brought it all to our music. … It really is like a band of brothers.”
