Drakkar Sauna decides to retire

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Since 2003, Jeffrey Stolz and Wallace Cochran have made music together as Drakkar Sauna, an oddball folk act specializing in songs with fantastical, sometimes extraterrestrial plots. The band’s most recent album, 2009’s 20009 — pronounced two-thousand-ousand-nine — is hard evidence of the duo’s weird ways. And though it has been six long years since Stolz and Cochran put out new Drakkar Sauna material, it has been easy to take for granted Drakkar Sauna’s ready supply of bizarre charm

Things have changed.

Amid rumors of a new album, Drakkar Sauna has instead announced that it’s all over. Cochran is relocating to the Hawaiian island of Maui in the fall, and so, Stolz tells me, Drakkar Sauna must cease.

Not without a farewell blowout, however.

Friday, August 7, Stolz and Cochran reunite onstage one final time, joined by a host of area musicians: Wayne Gottstine (Split Lip Rayfield), Paul Schmidt (40 Watt Dreams, Midday Ramblers), Evan Herd and Tanner Spreer (Psychic Heat), Ryan Johnson (Floyd the Barber), Sam Goodell (Hearts of Darkness) and Kelly Hangauer (the Hips, Fourth of July).

Ahead of the show, I chatted with Stolz about the end of the Drakkar Sauna era.

The Pitch: Drakkar Sauna is throwing in the towel after 12 years? What gives?

Stolz: We just recorded a new album, the first album in six years, and we were planning a show at the [Lawrence] Arts Center in October for an album release. But Wallace is up and moving to Maui — his wife got a job — and it was kind of quick news for them, too, and they’re leaving a couple of days after the show.

So this is a forced retirement?

Kind of, yeah.

Tell me about the new album. How close is it to completion, and what’s going to happen to it now that Wallace isn’t going to be here for its release?

It’s currently unnamed. We finished recording it, and we’re still mixing it and putting final touches on it. We won’t be releasing it August 7 — I’m not sure when we’ll be able to release it. We don’t know quite yet what we’re going to be doing with it. All of our full-length albums were on Marriage Records, out of Portland [Oregon], and it’s changed ownership, and I’m not sure how active it is right now, so we’re probably going to be seeing if anyone is interested in the album. That might take a little time.

We hadn’t really been anticipating touring on the new record anyway, just because we had so much going on with our careers and whatnot, so I don’t know. We probably would have done a lot more regional shows , but as it looks now, it’s still in the planning stages. I may need to play some shows with a cardboard cutout or possibly a hologram.

Let’s talk about the farewell show. You’ve got a lot of special guests on the bill. How is that going to look?

They will all be kind of sitting in on various songs with us, and it’ll just be Drakkar Sauna songs. We’ll have guests coming and going for certain tunes, so we hope to do a range. We’ve got some old stuff we’ll do, some stuff with just Wallace and I, and we’ll add folks as we go on. It should be just a raucous noise fest.

I get that you haven’t been especially active in Drakkar Sauna for the past six years, but with Wallace moving so far away, that definitely has an edge of finality to it. How are you feeling about that?

I’d say it’s 50-50 elation and dread. Just not having Wallace around to scream at me and tell me what to do, that’ll make me feel better. Dread because I need Wallace around to scream at me and tell me what to do in order to be productive.

I already have a side project called the Hips that I hope will continue on, slowly but surely. And I’ve been talking to some people about starting something else up. I’d like to get back to playing drums for a band, and I recently got a Farfisa organ that I’d like to play in a more electric outfit.

I had two more questions for Stolz — what he learned from his 12-year stint in Drakkar Sauna and what he’d miss about the band — and he opted to respond via e-mail with lists. To wit, things I learned during my time with Drakkar Sauna:

• Never sleep on a couch covered in grease-soaked rags.

• Five harmophones are as many harmophones as a man needs.

• Charlie Louvin will offer you his handkerchief in a light drizzle.

• Random drunkards in a Memphis bar do, in fact, care about college basketball.

• Songs don’t necessarily need to have more than one chord.

• One of the best things to eat in Nashville is something called “hot chicken.”

• People competing in a dart tournament do not pay attention to live music, no matter how close in proximity.

• Sometimes the only dynamic you can offer as a two-piece is to have the tambourine shoe come in one verse later.

• Quieter acoustic bands should never follow loud rock bands. That’s what is referred to as a “sonic letdown.”

• You can never charge too much to play at a wedding.

Things I will miss:

• The celestial blend of the harmophone’s slightly flat notes with the slightly sharp notes of Wallace’s singing.

• The holes in Wallace’s guitars.

• Figuring out harmonies to be sung at top volume.

• Sound men’s reactions to hearing that we use a condenser mic onstage.

• Our condenser mic that allows us to hear the audience’s conversations louder than they can hear our music.

• The rich conversation of our audience.