Down the ‘Jackrabbit’ hole with San Fermin

A decade ago, I was an idealistic and hungry music journalist coming into his own. I pitched a national story to Paste Magazine, where I hoped to hop in a tour van for a few days and capture a moment in time with San Fermin, an eight-piece Brooklyn indie band, whose 2013 debut album was among the most original and impactful pieces of indie music I’d heard. While their bandleader and composer, Ellis Ludwig-Leone, had already been profiled, I wanted to get to know the other seven members and write about the personalities and inner-workings of the band as a whole. To my surprise, the publication totally went for it and before I knew it, I was riding in a jam-packed Sprinter van with the band and all their gear from LA to San Francisco for four California stops on the nationwide tour for the band’s second album, Jackrabbit. 

A theatrical, adventurous and explosively-arranged expression of baroque pop, Jackrabbit vaulted San Fermin deeper into the concert touring circuit that they’ve thrived in ever since. Songs like “Emily,” “Jackrabbit,” and “The Woods” are staples in the band’s catalog. San Fermin presents a singular experience through the signature vocal dichotomy of stalwart male lead Allen Tate with a rotating cast of female vocalists over the years. Along with horns, strings, and Ludwig-Leone’s existential songwriting, their concerts are a thrilling, live musical work of art. 

The 10 year anniversary of an album that changed the course of the life of San Fermin as a unit, also marks the 10 year anniversary of a story that also changed the course of my career as a music journalist. It imbued me with the confidence of knowing that grandiose, ambitious ideas were in fact, very possible to execute in this hustle. And now as San Fermin embarks on a 10 year anniversary tour for the album—with a stop in San Francisco at The Independent, Thu/1—it felt like a full-circle opportunity to catch up with Ludwig-Leone once again to reminisce on that consequential 2015 tour, how Jackrabbit shaped the band in the decade since, and what San Francisco (where the band even recorded their Live at The Fillmore album) has meant to them along the way.

ADRIAN SPINELLI What do you remember about the Jackrabbit tour 10 years ago? What marked that period in your life, and what were you feeling as far as your hopes for the band as a musician on the rise?

ELLIS LUDWIG-LEONE That was a real blur of a time. Allen reminded me recently when he looked back and saw that there was a stretch where we literally played like 120 shows over 200 days. It was so crazy. And especially touring at that level, we were an up and coming band, we had a lot of excitement around us. But at the same time, it’s not like we had a ton of crew members that were traveling with us. We were doing a lot of the schlepping as well. And I just remember feeling like it was super exciting, but also kind of surreal in that it felt like every single day I would wake up and sort of forget where I was.

The first year or two of the band happened so fast, that I really didn’t feel like I was able to catch up to it until a few years later. What was really special about that time in particular was that we were really starting to gel as a band—the first record felt much more like it was my songwriting and composer project. Then on Jackrabbit, it really felt like a group of people who are connected in that way. 

ADRIAN SPINELLI I went back and re-read my story from back then, and that was definitely the conclusion that I came to. We talked about it in our last conversation at this Udon shop on Franklin Street that’s not open anymore, how you were releasing the grip on the band a little bit. What do you remember about having a journalist in your van for four or five days? It was definitely like an Almost Famous moment for me—even though I wasn’t even thinking about it that way until Mike Hanf (your drummer back then) was like, “Which one of us is Billy Crudup?!” I mean, that was definitely like my first time going on tour with the band, what was it like for you?

ELLIS LUDWIG-LEONE It was super fun, but I remember at first feeling a little bit anxious about it all. Because so much of the time that you’re on tour, you’re not on stage, so you’re not controlling things in the same way and it did feel a little bit at first like I was aware of that and trying to be careful. But pretty quickly we connected and we were just happy to hang. I mean, you were very easy to spend time with and talk to and I don’t think we really had anything to hide. We were all just figuring this thing out as we went and it was definitely an intense period of change in the band. You came along at a significant moment for us, so that was super fun. 

ADRIAN SPINELLI I remember we went from the Troubadour in West Hollywood to the Constellation Room in Santa Ana, and then we came up to San Francisco to the Independent, which funny enough, is where the anniversary show is happening—and then downtown member’s only club The Battery. Each place really couldn’t have been more different from the other.

ELLIS LUDWIG-LEONE I remember The Battery was hilarious and a bit strange, because it was the best we had been treated as a band, where we got all this like nice food backstage. But you were basically playing like a Soho house, right? It’s like a private club, so it had a different energy to it. That was also right after we found out that we were gonna open for Alt-J on that big tour that we took later that year. So I remember that also being important because that was like a month of being on the road playing stadiums and that felt really big for us. I think we found that out right before the Troubadour show.

ADRIAN SPINELLI You guys have been pretty much the proverbial touring machine ever since then. And to kind of bring it towards San Francisco for a bit, I feel like you’ve always come to this city and you’ve always been super well-received. What’s the significance of San Francisco, and these like key markets that you come back to where you always know that you’re gonna have a significant fan base there?

ELLIS LUDWIG-LEONE San Francisco was really one of the very first cities that showed up for us. I remember we played Cafe du Nord on our very first tour, and we got there and I remember being like, “Whoa, there’s people here!”, and that was an amazing feeling. I think that speaks to San Francisco and the people of the city who are early adopters of new bands and listening to new things. We were about as far away from home as you can get in the continental US, but felt extremely at home there and really welcomed. And that’s always been the case. I mean, we put out our live album from a show at The Fillmore.

ADRIAN SPINELLI That was legit going to be the next thing I asked. I’m guessing that factored into deciding to record your live album at The Fillmore with Magik*Magik Orchestra? How did that come together?

ELLIS LUDWIG-LEONE We knew that would be a great show. The Fillmore is a legendary venue and it was gonna be really special to play there. We knew Magik*Magik were going to be doing that show with us and then we also knew that there was a video crew with us around then, so we thought this would be a perfect time to actually get good live recordings of this band while it’s in this iteration. That was one of Charlene’s [Kaye; former singer, current viral musical comedy sensation] last shows with us that felt like a really crystallized version of that iteration of the band. Funny story about that, a bunch of my friends showed up to the concert who were out in San Francisco at the time and were shouting random stuff at us between songs. So we ended up having to edit that out in the recording. 

ADRIAN SPINELLI That’s hilarious. I don’t know if people remember, but your opener for that show was the comedian Alex Edelman, who just won an Emmy for his comedy special, Just For Us. 

ELLIS LUDWIG-LEONE Alex is still a good friend of ours. He actually opened for us on the Arms tour, for fun in New York and he’s been on quite a ride, really doing great. It’s funny because that was when that was 2018 and he was just starting to develop the Just For Us show, which is now on HBOMax and all that, so we got to see it from the beginning to the end.

ADRIAN SPINELLI You talked about how that was one of Charlene’s last shows and obviously there’s been some changes to the lineup of the band over the years. What’s that been like, bringing new people in and out of this eight piece? 

ELLIS LUDWIG-LEONE Bands are like living organisms and they require a lot from the members. You basically have to be available all the time and ready to go out on the road and do this kind of crazy thing, and there’s no health insurance. It’s not like a stable job, you know?  So you deal with the shifting reality of people’s lives and the best way I can say it, is if as long as you can make the experience of being in the band a really good time, both musically, artistically, and also just socially, then you’re helping yourself as much as possible because then the people in the band want to be there too and they want to be spending time together. And that gives off good vibes for all of it. So when Charlene ended up leaving the band, it was still nothing but good vibes both ways. And we still see each other at our Christmas party and such. 

ADRIAN SPINELLI I definitely see her every year on your band Christmas party Instagram posts.

ELLIS LUDWIG-LEONE A band is going to require these kinds of changes over time. Unless you’re the Rolling Stones or whatever, you can’t hang on to everyone for their whole lives. And honestly I don’t think I would want to. I think that’s a lot of responsibility. So while it’s good for people to be there, when they’re there, it’s my responsibility as a songwriter and the bandleader, to make it a good experience for all of them and then also to work with the reality of people’s lives.

ADRIAN SPINELLI Is touring still what fuels the band and you financially? Or what else occupies you professionally these days?

ELLIS LUDWIG-LEONE I split my time writing music outside of the band as a composer of a lot of contemporary classical music, and I write for theater as well. I just had an opera that happened a year or so ago. The band comes in and out of focus but I’m always writing for any of those various channels. And everyone in the band has a similarly heterogeneous situation. Allen is a producer and he produces a lot of albums here out of our studio, so he does that when he’s not on the road. Stephen performs with a couple other bands, everyone teaches music and sort of pieces it together in these various ways. Which is just the reality of being a musician these days.

ADRIAN SPINELLI What did Jackrabbit specifically mean to you? I know we talked a little bit about the tour itself, but what about the actual music, in the canon of the band, for you as an individual? Why is that album particularly important to you and what do you think about when you think about those songs?

ELLIS LUDWIG-LEONE Every album that I’ve made is its own body of work. It goes through this life cycle where: You make it, you’re really excited about it, maybe you tour it, you play it, perform it, whatever it is. And then after a year or two, you’re like, “Oh God, I don’t want to look at those songs anymore!” And now, coming back to them 10 years later, it’s been really fascinating because there’s some real moments in there that I wouldn’t write now—both for good and for bad—but it’s a really ambitious piece of music, and I’m proud of that part of it. It didn’t shy away from being ugly at times, and kind of aggressive and strange, and it’s been fascinating to see, as we’re doing this tour and played a couple of these anniversary shows already.

These things that I would have thought would have turned people away—like that crazy-ass sax solo on “The Woods,” or the strange lyrics of that song, or the “we’re all gonna die” stuff on “Billy Bibbit.” But all these different parts are the things I would have thought were kind of pushing people away, but they actually end up being the things that keep people with the music for the longest, and that’s been really fascinating. We’re playing these shows and people are coming up to me after and talking about how much this record has meant to them over time. It’s really the first time in my career that I’ve been doing this long enough to where I can see that full lifespan of a work, and it’s really very moving and I’m really deeply grateful to the fans for that.

SAN FERMIN: 10 YEARS OF JACKRABBIT Thu/1, 7:30pm at The Independent, SF. More info here.