Lande’s ‘Waiting for Nancy’ arrives at Spoken Moto

Published 3:00 am Thursday, January 30, 2020

Jennifer Lande Galewski — better known as Lande to friends and family — used to never want to play her songs for anyone.

Although she started playing guitar while in college at the University of California, Irvine, Lande didn’t write her first song until many years later, toward the end of an 18-year stint living in Oahu, Hawaii. She was going through a divorce at the time and dealing with other life changes, and describes those first songs as “really raw and kind of punky and angry.”

“I was just venting to myself really, and it just made me feel better to have something beautiful and creative that could come out of pain,” Lande said recently while discussing her second album, “Waiting for Nancy,” at a coffee shop in Bend. She will play an album release show Friday at Spoken Moto with Portland group Ashleigh Flynn & The Riveters.

“But people really liked them because they’re definitely catchy tunes, and people would say, ‘Oh, this is really good; why don’t you share them?’ And I was painfully shy to share any music. Even playing it for my mom, I was just about to die inside.”

Her first experience in front of a live audience happened while she was still living in Hawaii. Some musicians she met invited her to a party to play her songs for a record-label owner who would be there. Little did she know the party was a wedding.

“They wanted me to get up and play my songs there at this private party for a wedding, and I didn’t want to do it; that just sounded horrible,” Lande said. “So my friend encouraged me and I got up and did it, and they were like, ‘I really like that song.’ And I played (my song) ‘Go Away’ — there was nothing romantic; there was no, like, ‘Harvest Moon’ or anything like that, because all I knew was my own songs. … It’s hilarious in retrospect, but the ladies (there) were like, ‘I feel that way too.’”

Since moving to Bend about eight years ago, Lande has dived head-first into performing and recording. Her debut album, “Stealing Flowers,” came out in 2018, and she has played frequent local shows including the Bend Roots Revival with her band, also called Lande.

“Waiting for Nancy” has been at least a year and a half in the making. Many of its songs were composed during the writing sessions for “Stealing Flowers,” with Lande bringing songs in to engineer/producer Clay Smith at Soundsmith Studios for polishing.

“After a couple of years went by — maybe a year or two — there were a ton of songs, but my favorite ones didn’t really go together,” Lande said. “And so I didn’t call it done for quite a while; I just sat on it.”

Inspiration struck at a party Lande attended some years ago.

“I originally had plans with a friend named Nancy, and she had something else to do,” Lande said. “And I said, ‘No worries, I got invited to a friend’s party, so just show up there whenever you’re done; no hurry.’ So she just went later than she thought, and somebody noticed me looking out the window every now and then, (or) checking my phone. They said, ‘Oh, Lande, who are you waiting for?’ And I said, ‘Oh, I’m waiting for my friend Nancy.’ And then as the night went on and she kept not being there, my friend … and I were just joking about, ‘Oh, there is no Nancy.’”

Her friend suggested “Waiting for Nancy” as an album title, and it stuck. She decided to split the songs she had been working on into two camps: a set of folkier, spacier songs recorded at Soundsmith Studios that would become “Stealing Flowers”; and a poppier, punk-ier album, the about-to-be-released “Waiting for Nancy.”

The rowdy atmosphere at the party also inspired Lande to structure “Waiting for Nancy” as a party. The incidental conversations that link the songs were recorded at two separate parties, and Nancy Gilbertson herself shows up on the final track, “Nancy Thinks Everybody Looks Like Somebody.”

Lande recorded the basic tracks live in one day at her house (AKA Squirrel’s Nest Studios) with engineer and mixer Brock Grenfell, who is Lande’s neighbor’s son and worked as a mixing assistant on The Shins’ 2018 album, “The Worm’s Heart.”

“(Grenfell) had amps in all the different bedrooms covered in blankets and stuff,” Lande said. “I was supposed to sing really quietly so it didn’t get picked up in the drums. People said it was really funny because they’d come up and we’re just all playing, but all you hear is the drums and we all had headphones on.”

The Eric Leadbetter Band — Leadbetter on lead guitar, bassist Patrick Pearsall and drummer Dylan Bernal — served as her backing band on all songs except for “Syncopated Life Blues,” recorded at an earlier session at Soundsmith Studios, and “Shadow in the Moonlight,” recorded years ago with Tommy Gibbons while Lande was in Arizona.

“Eric and Pat and Dylan are so talented, and they listened to what I said,” Lande said. “Eric just picked up with these ghost sounds (on guitar), and it was like, ‘Oh, yes, it’s perfect.’”

Despite the quick recording process, delays in the mixing and mastering process, as well as the cover art (created by Amy Meadow, with photography by Gary Calicott) put the release off to this year.

Lande, the band, was also in transition. The lineup now consists of bassist Mike Beaulieu, drummer Kyle Pickard and lead guitarist Phillip Wallace.

With the album released, Lande hopes to play more out-of-town gigs. She also plans to turn her early songs into a rock opera that will feature her solo performances with an interpretive dancer.

Musically, she is focused on playing lead guitar someday, and continues to take lessons.

“I have to remind myself that playing guitar, singing and writing is enough,” she said. “That’s still a lot, even if I can’t be the main shredder. But one day I will be.”

What: Lande, with Ashleigh Flynn & The Riveters

When: 5:30 p.m. Friday

Where: Spoken Moto, 310 SW Industrial Way, Bend

Cost: Free

Contact: spokenmoto.com or 541-306-6689

GO! listen to Lande’s latest album, “Waiting for Nancy”