Written by Tiffany Jones
Armed with a flimsy umbrella, I ran inside Nashville’s Fido, a coffeehouse named for the dog who discovered coffee, in search of shelter from the rain, warmth and the Non-Commissioned Officers’ Eric Lehning.
The Non-Commissioned Officers, or the Non-Comms for short are one of the bands playing at First Thaw Festival.
Unfamiliar with the band, I listened for the first time to their new release, “Money Looking For Thieves,” which left me wanting to know more about this motley assortment of Nashville musicians. Identified by his gray hat and crooked glasses, I found Lehning quickly, and we sat down for our interview on a dreary Tennessee Saturday.
The Non-Comms came together in a very unconventional way; in fact, their first album was a soundtrack to indie zombie movie “Make-Out with Violence.”Eric and his brother Jordan, along with some other “hired guns,” began playing shows to raise money for the movie and out of that zombie soundtrack grew the Non- Comms, making their latest CD more of a debut than a sophomore album.
“We just set a date toplay a release show before we recorded anything.We decided March 11 was when we were going to release something, so we had to write some stuff,” Lehning said. “The last record was this gigantic album — we just wanted to get some new material out of the gate.”
Since their last album, Jordan has moved behind the scenes, and the Non-Comms brought on two Harding favorites,Carson and Cheyenne Medders, on guitar. But this album isn’t the laid-back folk that the Medders are known for. “Money Looking For Thieves” is fun ’80s synth pop. The most upbeat song and stand-out of the album is “Rich Stuff.” Forget zombies; this album could soundtrack any of your favorite John Hughes movies. Lehning’s commanding vocals mixed with the driving drumbeat and wrapped in a thick blanket of synthesizer make for one compelling album. The Non-Commissioned Officers play at First Thaw at 5 p.m., on April 2. Come ready to move your feet.
Q&A with The Non-Commissioned Officers’ Eric Lehning
The Buffalo: Why the name Non-Commissioned Officers?
Eric Lehning:The whole idea of the band is that we would just draw from this pool of musicians, and they were kind of hired guns. They’re just a bunch of non-committal pros that came together to put on a show. The name stuck.
TB: What was it like playing Bonnaroo?
EL:We were the second band playing the whole festival so no one really had any choice but to hear us. So that was exciting, a thousand people listening to us.
Playing at Bonnaroo, there are so many other acts, you really want to see a lot of stuff, but at the same time it’s kind of sensory overload when you play at festivals.
TB: How would you describe your sound to someone who had not heard you before?
EL:I was recently watching this documentary on Scott Walker, not the Wisconsin governor, but the musician. And in this documentary called “30 Century Man,” Brian Eno is talking about this song Scott Walker made called “Night Flights,” it’s a late ‘70s early ‘80s record I believe, and they’ve listened to a couple of tracks, and they say that it’s a shame that we basically haven’t gotten past that, this style of music, this kind of pop synth thing, where you’re trying to be experimental while being accessible to a pop music sensibility. And that’s what we’re trying to do, but I don’t know really if trying to be accessible is always a good thing or not. This is definitely a pop record. This is pop music. There’s lots of synthesizer, and we try to have some dynamic drum sound in there.
As far as my singing goes, I guess Iggy Pop is a big influence on the way I sing, but so is Tina Turner. I don’t know.
Lou Reed is a real influence on my writing. I haven’t had anyone compare my words to Walt Whitman, so it’s pretty much meat-and-potatoes-babbling-brook-of-baloney that I write. I just try to make stuff up until it feels right.
TB: What is your favorite song to perform?
EL:Out of all my stuff, the song “No Means No.” It’s one of the first songs that we wrote, and it’s the one that still feels like it’s got the most legs. It has a lot of great inner-conflict with kind of a good feeling underlying it.
TB: What’s next for the Non-Comms?
EL:I think that we’re going to try to put out as many music videos as we can in a very short period of time. We’ll try to keep touring this record. I think that we’re probably going to start putting together lots of singles. I want to do something that focuses a lot more on stage performance. A bit more theatrical. I don’t like musicals, so I’d like it to be something a little more abstract than just a musical. Getting a great live show on stage is really what it’s all about. We want to license as much material as we possibly can to any and all sources that can get it out there and into people’s ears. I just want to make enough money to pay my band.
I don’t really care if we’re hugely popular so much as we’re economically sustainable. One seems to go with the other, popularity and sustainability. When I played this release show I was really nervous about how this new material was going to go over. It was a stiffer performance than I usually give. I had to admit to myself afterward that my big problem is that I want to be liked and I have to get over that because that’s just poison.
