Sweet Spirit dances its way to Bend

Published 12:00 am Thursday, March 28, 2019

It takes Sweet Spirit’s lead singer and guitarist Sabrina Ellis a few minutes to remember anything specific about the band’s previous Oregon shows.

“Well, once in Oregon, two of us were propositioned for a threesome,” Ellis said during a recent interview with GO! Magazine. “One of us got their hair cut into a bob — that’s one of those chin-length haircuts — around 3 a.m. with kitchen scissors. What else have we done in Oregon?”

There was some light chatter as Ellis conferred with her bandmates in the van (the six-piece group was traveling from Denver to Salt Lake City for the next stop on its current tour, which lands at Volcanic Theatre Pub on Saturday). Soon, Ellis was laughing so hard she could barely speak.

“Oh yeah! One of us was investigated by the cops because of — because he was sleeping in the attic of the place that was hosting us, and another tenant of the building called the cops and said there was a homeless person peeing in the attic,” Ellis said. “… One time in Athens, Georgia … on top of our keyboard player getting a tick, we set off enough fireworks to get strongly reprimanded by a bicycle cop. Now I’m just remembering a lot of fun moments. Somebody told us that they got pregnant at one of our shows a few years back.”

Ellis and guitarist Andrew Cashen told this story before, on an interview with National Public Radio’s “World Cafe” in 2017. Apparently, the woman in question conceived twins at the show. (As for how it happened, best to leave that to the imagination.)

“There’s been no repeat offenders in the audience that I’ve known of,” Ellis said.

It seems Sweet Spirit’s reputation as a party band, referenced in many interviews and features written about the group, is well founded. Ellis elaborated further on her and her bandmates’ antics when asked what uninitiated audiences could expect from the show:

“I’ve got a bag of costumes, (so) if (people) show up early, maybe they can help me choose what to wear,” Ellis said. “I’m one of the sweatiest people ever there was, so if somebody could bring a blow drier and maybe hit me with it halfway through the set, that would make all the photos better. We sometimes break or spill things, so forgive us. We’ve got a climber (Cashen) in the group; we’ve got a guy who likes to climb.”

Aside from amplifier-scaling and inter-audience relations, Sweet Spirit also has a knack for strong hooks and highly danceable pop-rock tinged with country, electronic and punk influences, as heard on the group’s two albums, 2015’s “Cokomo” and 2017’s “St. Mojo.”

The band formed in 2014 around Ellis, who had just left her group Bobby Jealousy, and Cashen, Ellis’ bandmate in long-running, Austin punk outfit A Giant Dog (the two musicians continue to split their time between the projects). Perhaps surprisingly, Sweet Spirit started as a way for Ellis and Cashen to write mellower material.

“We were writing in this kind of ’60s, acoustic-duo singing style, which I think our band has gotten heavy and stayed away from, but that was the idea that started Sweet Spirit,” Ellis said. “It almost sounded like (Minneapolis duo) The Cactus Blossoms when we started. When I listen to them, I reminisce about starting Sweet Spirit and having this softer, mellower band. But I guess there was too much energy — too much latent dance rage.”

The band got a leg-up early on from fellow Austinite Britt Daniel of Spoon, who invited the group to open a tour in 2014 and featured on a split single in 2015.

“We’ve been friends with Britt for a while, since before Sweet Spirit started,” Ellis said. “But then when we started Sweet Spirit, we were working with (Spoon producer) Mike McCarthy and Britt happened to be hanging around and was in and out of Austin more often. We were bouncing ideas — we collaborated on a song and covered one of his, and we have this really cool, rare 7-inch that’s not in print anymore of that collaboration.”

Dance (or “dahnce,” as Ellis said during the interview, drawing out the vowel) will form a cornerstone of the band’s third album, which has been recorded but does not have a title or release date yet. The group released two new songs last year, “Los Lonely Girls” and “Touch.”

“We’re one of those dance bands that could actually play the song too fast because we’re too excited,” Ellis said.

While Steve Berlin (Los Lobos, Deer Tick) produced “St. Mojo,” the new album was self-produced. The group went into the studio in Austin three times over the course of six months, ending up with “more than an album.”

“After that experience of working with (Berlin), our band decided that we could just do the next record without a producer,” Ellis said.

“The reason for that was we’ve been on the road for nearly two years straight, so the need for creative release was very high and the creativity was ping-ponging around. So we decided to take a different approach instead of recording an album in one sitting.”