Sometimes the best way to enjoy a cake is to eat it one piece at a time. The band, like the food it is named after, can be seen the same way. As a group Cake is one of the most dynamic and talented bands of the last twenty years. The band is once again touring now that their latest album “Showroom of Compassion” has hit the airwaves.
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Cake
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Riviera Theatre
Chicago, IL
May 14, 2011
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Lumino had the chance to sit down with Vince DiFiore, trumpet and keyboard player for the band. You can tell a lot about a person by their voice and DiFiore is no different. In the 10 minutes we spent talking it was clear that not only is he one of the most down to Earth musicians on the scene he hasn’t let the fame get to him.
His love of music is clear and you can really sense it when he gets excited. This became obvious when he let slip that the track “Federal Funding” off of the new album, a brass heavy song to begin with , is currently being formatted for sheet music so marching bands around the country can play. “I really loved making Federal Funding,” he said proudly “it is such a classic song I think it is going to be around for a long time.”
When asked about the band’s approach to the new album, a hierarchy that I did not expect showed up. “We hadn’t made an album in a long time and John [McCrea] had a bunch of songs we hadn’t worked on yet because he didn’t feel they fit into our big picture,” he explained.
“A lot of times John will come in and introduce a song to us then we’ll start working on it together, this time around we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to develop the songs the way we wanted them,” said DiFiore. Now that the band has its own studio and record label they finally have the power to run the show their way.
“Record companies make you crank out an album a year and that hampers creativity, with this album we were allowed to do three or four versions of some songs and develop ourselves musically,” he explained.
For Cake this new found power meant that they could finally lead by example. The band has recently received a lot of attention for its stance on remaining eco-friendly, despite the demands of being touring musicians. “It wasn’t all that hard to do, but just as a band period, we realized we were automatically not being green. We decided to put up solar panels on our studio so it was 100 percent solar powered. The hardest thing to do is trying and use a green tour bus, it doesn’t always happen but we always request it,” he said.
Cake’s eco-friendly tour bus will be swinging through Chicago this Saturday night at the Riviera Theatre. Make sure you check them out and get your own piece of Cake.
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