Ultimate Fakebook reunites for a show remembering the best of times at RecordBar this Saturday

After playing a “final” farewell show in March 2004, Manhattan power-pop trio Ultimate Fakebook reunited for a friend’s birthday party in December 2008. The years since have seen the band make an annual tradition of getting back onstage and running through the hits to crowds of friends and fans, in addition to digitally releasing a collection of B-sides and rarities in 2010.

This Saturday, Ultimate Fakebook takes the stage once more at RecordBar. We spoke with guitarist and vocalist Bill McShane and drummer Eric Melin about the strange nature of being a band that plays so infrequently. 

The Pitch: What’s it like to be a band that plays only once a year, and all material written over a decade ago?

McShane: Well, for us, it’s very easy actually! It’s nothing but fun. There’s absolutely no weirdness whatsoever. We are all still really great friends, and so getting back together to do a show and have a party with our friends and fans is a huge treat. Every reunion show we’ve done has been a blast, and I think it’s due to the fact that our collective UFB batteries build up energy all year, and then it just explodes onstage. Which is the kind of thing you’re looking for, or else why even do it? We do it for ourselves to have a great time and because we feel so lucky and honored that we have fans that still care.

Melin: That’s a good question. Well, we don’t really consider ourselves a band anymore, I guess. You know what I mean? We played together for so long – no, that’s not true. We played together so often. I’ve been in the Dead Girls longer than both of the other bands I was in before that, but we did so much touring, and played so often, that those songs are burned into my brain.

And when Bill comes to town, it’s like, “If Bill’s there, why not play the songs, since it requires little to no effort on our part to remember them?” When I hang out with Bill, it’s always fun, and the thing we used to do together the most was play, so why not have fun and play a show?

The first UFB reunion was back in December 2008, for a friend’s birthday show, followed by the JayDoc benefit show a couple of months later. What kept it from being a one-off thing?

McShane: When we broke up, there was a little bit of a feeling of unfinished business, and those first two reunions provided an amazing and much needed amount of closure for us as well as the fans. The birthday party was our tribute to our friend, and the JayDoc show was our big UFB, pull-out-all-the-stops-style official reunion party. So, I guess, to really answer your question, it’s because it’s totally addicting.

Melin: The simple answer is that people ask. I don’t think that we’ve ever set up a show once. What happens is, people come to us, and we just say yes. Jim Crego and Hilary Watts came to us and said, “Jim’s coming to town. You guys want to play?” And, usually, that’s how it works – somebody will just contact us and say, “Do you want to play?”

The easiest thing to say is that we still enjoy seeing each other and we still enjoy playing the songs, and we love seeing old friends.

When do you find time to practice before these shows?

McShane: If and when we practice, it is usually the night before the show, practicing in the Dead Girls’ basement practice space in Lawrence. But sometimes we just raw dog it – and don’t even practice. For instance: when we played SXSW in Austin [this] year, we just all showed up – got up onstage and rocked the fuck out. It was awesome.

But our situation is a little different. I mean, we all are pretty good players, and these songs are in our DNA from touring nonstop, for five years straight. Actually, though, this time we are planning a few not-as-often-played UFB songs.

Melin: This time, we’re stretching out a little bit because, frankly, we just played in March, and between March and December, I don’t want to play all those hits again. I want to do something a little bit different. It’s easy for me, man. I’m the drummer. It’s muscle memory. I sit down at the kit, and my arms and legs move like they used to, albeit a little bit slower probably.

[page]How much fun is it getting up there onstage and rocking out to these songs?

McShane: How much fun is it? Dude, I can’t even put it into words.

Melin: When we go over the songs, I remember how great they are, but when we’re onstage, it’s different, because I’m just feeding off whatever energy the crowd has. So, as long as the crowd’s having a good time, it’s really, really fun. It’s awesome. And when you only play once every year or two years, or once every eight months, there’s a good chance it’s going to be very fun.

Do you think there will come a point where you don’t do these holiday shows?

McShane: It’s hard to say. I mean, there is a big, big, big part of us that doesn’t want to be the old, lame dudes onstage still trying to act like they still got it. That’s never ever been what we’re about. But the overriding part of us, and the thing that makes us who we are, is the firm belief that you are never too old to play music or to rock, and being able to have a great night playing music with your friends at an amazing live venue is not something to take for granted. We feel lucky as hell that our band has friends and fans that still wanna see us, and sing along to our songs with us.

Melin: I don’t know – they’re very energetic and hard to play, in some ways. We weren’t necessarily a busy band, but we were a technical band. Maybe when I’m really old and can’t play anymore. I don’t know. As long as people want to hear ’em, and we’re still hanging out together, I think we’ll be pretty happy to play them.

But I don’t wanna make it sound like we’re getting up onstage to hang out with our friends, and if you’re not one of our friends, you shouldn’t come. It’s actually really fun when people who have heard the name before, but never really understood what it was all about, come because we still feel like the show that we put on was very different back then, and it’s still different today. Nobody’s still doing what we did then, and it’s still fresh, and new people can have a good time, too.

McShane currently plays guitar and sings in the Pride of Erie PA with Tony Thaxton (Motion City Soundtrack), Patrick Carrie (Limbeck) and comedian Mike Phirman, while Melin is the world champion of air guitar and drummer for the Dead Girls.

Ultimate Fakebook performs Saturday, December 28, at RecordBar, with Jim Crego and the Hillary Watts Riot. Details here.