‘Free’ Dada Plays for Fun

Band re-forms, plans shows without ‘help’ of record company

Dada’s show at the Gothic Theatre tonight is almost a stealth concert.

The band burst onto the national scene with the single Dizzkneeland in 1992 and followed it up with a solid series of albums and a strong following in Colorado, both in concert and on the radio.

So why is the band slipping into town, almost unannounced, for tonight’s show?

Michael Gurley

Because it was never really planned, says guitarist Michael Gurley, who along with drummer Phil Leavitt and bassist Joie Calio make up the Los Angeles-based trio.

The band hasn’t played a show here since 1998, with the three splitting up to do various side projects, including Gurley’s band Butterfly Jones.

Almost out of the blue, they got a call this year from a California promoter wanting to know if they’d get together for a show.

“We started rehearsing again, and it just felt really good,” Gurley says from L.A., where he’s mixing a project. “There was no record company involved this time. We’re not worried about radio play or a single. We got together and it was just so much fun. We had our managers call around and see if there was anywhere we could play.”

That led to tonight’s gig, plans for new studio recordings and the compilation of lost tracks due out soon.

“Everybody’s still working on their own things. We’ve been together as a band since ’90. The longer you hang out, especially in the music business, the more you know how you want to do it and the easier it becomes if you hang together and don’t hate each other,” Gurley says.

It’s a chance to say, “Let’s do it the way we want to do it, on our own terms,” Gurley says. “It’s kinda freeing to not be working for a record company, just for yourselves. You get to make more decisions.”

So tonight’s show is a fly-in to play just for the fun of it. The band’s long Colorado history plays a part in that. KBCO is one of the stations that helped break Dada nationwide with early support, including recording and broadcasting a 1992 Boulder Theater show that later partially appeared on CD singles for the band.

Denver got included on every tour after that, including a 1998 in-store performance at Media Play in Littleton, much of which was recorded and available for download at the band’s official Web site, www.dizzkneeland.com.

“Some of it may be legal, some of it may not be, but I’m glad it’s all up there,” Gurley says of the extensive live music the band has put up on its site.

Within the next three months, a disc of unreleased material from the late ’90s, The Atlanta Sessions, will be available through the site as well, including the unreleased live favorite Blue Girl.

“I think we actually played that in Colorado one time,” Gurley says. Indeed, the live footage of the song from the Bluebird Theater in 1997 is on the band’s site.

“See? My memory’s not so bad,” he says.

-Mark Brown

Source: Rocky Mountain News – Denver, CO.