Word that Mobile psychedelic collective 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea was re-forming barely five months after the band’s reported 2013 breakup turned out to be true — and the reunion show was booked for the same room where it all started.
Bandleader Nemo Simulacra confirmed the comeback in a Q&A ahead of the February 28, 2014 date at the Blind Mule, the downtown Mobile venue that hosted the band’s very first show back in 2009.
Why They Broke Up — and Why They’re Back
The split, Simulacra explained, came down to logistics as much as music. When the band’s booking handler — his partner at the time — left the picture, he assumed he couldn’t carry on. He launched a new project, Electric Sheep, as an outlet and quickly discovered he had a knack for booking; within months Electric Sheep was playing nearly every weekend, with gigs reaching New Orleans, Austin and Birmingham.
But the songs kept pulling him back. Revisiting the band’s “Patchwork” album, he decided walking away would shortchange the work he, Jonathan and Alan had put into it. “As long as I can open my mouth and make a sound, 20,000 Leagues will be a band,” he said. He reached out to Jonathan, original bassist Douglas and Alan — “Let’s do it” — and everyone signed on for what he described as new “psychedelic garage jazz” endeavors with more theatrics and wilder stylistic blending than before.
A Rotating Cast of Twenty
In its first five years the collective cycled through some twenty members and countless guests, including Donna and Jimmy Hall of Mobile rock legends Wet Willie. The roster ran from guitars, bass and drums to saxophone, clarinet, trumpet, french horn, banjo, trombone, organ — and a homemade “ocular synth.”
Simulacra stayed prolific throughout, constantly writing and issuing limited-run demo CDs under the name 12 Ghosts — small pressings of about fifteen copies each, with the strongest material flowing to whichever project fit.
The February 28 homecoming at the Blind Mule doubled as part of Genre Wars, the traveling “anti-competition” festival that asks bands to reveal an unseen side of themselves, capped by a “Genre Warp” encore in which artists take on the tunes — and sometimes the personas — of an entirely different genre.