The artist who moved away so his wife could work as a fish nurse plays Saturday at the Tahoe venue named after a Phish song.
Jay Seals’ band Dad’s LPs will play a CD release party at the Divided Sky in Meyers. The former member of Blue Turtle Seduction has played the venue more than any other artist.
“That might be up for dispute,” said Divided Sky owner Brian Levy. “Jay and Tony B. might fight over it. But Blue Turtle probably played here over 30 times, so there’s no way he hasn’t played here more than Tony.”
Seals moved to Long Beach more than a year ago, which made it a challenge to make the EP “Lemon On Fire.” Two members of Dad’s LPs live in the East Bay Area and one lives in Sacramento. They recorded the foundations of the songs in January 2013 in South Lake Tahoe’s American Legion Hall. Each member added parts over the next year at John Morales’s Bay Area studio.
To keep listeners attention, the band is released the album online two songs at a time. “Lemon On Fire” is the follow up to the quartet’s self-titled EP debut.
Dad’s LPs is a rock band with shorter songs than were heard from the jammy Blue Turtle Seduction, which was perhaps Lake Tahoe’s most popular band for most of the first decade of the 2000s.
Blue Turtle Seduction was born at Fallen Leaf Lake in 2001 and by 2003 it was a full-time band. Starting in 2004 with “Under Sierra Ground” coincidentally recorded at the Compound studio in Long Beach, very close to Seals home, it released three full-length albums. It played more than 1,000 shows from Hawaii to New York, Seals said.
“We toured but never got beyond the club level,” Seals said. “We motivated a certain niche of people and we did that very well. Thirty things we did right and 100 we did wrong. That’s not being negative but ultimately you have to be on your game on all levels.”
The band stopped touring in 2010. Seals played in the short-lived Hyrodynamics. He also was host of several open mics at “D-Sky,” the intimate upstairs spot at the highway intersection for folks who work and play at Sierra-at-Tahoe and Kirkwood ski resorts.
Dad’s LPs CD release party
When: 9:30 p.m. Friday, Sept. 12
Where: Divided Sky, Meyers
Cover: $5
