Purveyors of beards, waist-coats, eyeliner, 70s rock and hooky, kinky tracks, San Diego’s Louis XIV gave it another go last week in their hometown at a shitty club called Fluxx, after nearly two years apart.

Singer/songwriters Jason Hill and Brian Karscig have been busy with their own solo stuff – Jason produced and played on the new New York Dolls album and is putting together a platter of his own, while Brian created Nervous Wreckords. But after their late-year CONVOY reunion (a band most of ’em were in before even Louis), it seemed that the air had not totally gone outta the LouisXIV Zeppelin. (Woo double entendre!)

Fans at the show described it as a bit tentative, that perhaps newly-reformed-ish Louis lads (Hill, Karscig, drummer Mark Maigaard and bassist James Armbrust) were a bit nervous. They also commented that the stage was a mile too high, thus negating much crowd interaction, but hey,whatchoo expect? First gig in two years? Uh hello, rusty!

Nevermind. When I asked, Karscig described the gig as fun, “familiar…and right.” So that’s good, hey? But I had a few more Q’s for the bearded hatman. Questions, such as:

Did you arm wrestle over the set list?
Brian Karscig: Not really, I think we all agreed that our 19 song set was what everyone wanted to hear, and we each got to have our one selfish moment with our individual favorites in the set as well.  But songs like “The Distances From Everyone to You”, “All the Little Pieces”, “Hopesick” and other big epics I know Jason and I have been really enjoying going back and listening to those recordings.

What brought the reunion about? And why now?
Well, before LXIV, Mark, Jason, and I were in  CONVOY.  We did a reunion of that band largely for one of the most instrumental members who left the music scene, our good friend and CONVOY star, band mate Robbie Dodds.  That reunion got Mark, Jason, andmyself back on stage, and playing music together again for the first time since the hiatus of LXIV after the last UK/EU/AUS tour.  It was so much fun, and really put us back in touch, and I think we all realized, even with our other musical endeavors we are happy pursuing individually now, we also realized how much we miss playingtogether as well.

New album in the works? Girl needs details.
Well…we’ll see. Jason and I holed up in a Los Angeles studio for a couple of days, drank wine, made dinner, caught up with each other face to face for the first time in a long time, then the next thing you know…..something really magical happened.

Creatively, we hadn’t lost a step as far as how we work together, and it was almost scary how cool of a song we came up with after not really collaborating together in awhile.  If we can do that 9-10 more times, there could be an album, but we’ve put no pressure or plans in writing, so to speak.

Jason is working on some solo material that sounds great! [BSR note – Hill sent me a couple of tracks a year ago and they’re total earworms. Loved them…if they make it on this platter, one’s a groovy slow track, the other’s a T-Rex-ian stomper] and I am working on a new Nervous Wreckords album as we speak that we are really excited about.

After this show, our chemistry, and the time we have been spending together, I think we both realize that we love having our creative freedoms and individual outlets, but we do write some great songs together. \m/

Thanks to Indi Flowers for the photos!