My first encounter with David Bazan’s Pedro the Lion came in November of 2002 when he played Washington DC’s The Black Cat, which had recently relocated to a few doors down the street. Pedro the Lion were touring their third LP, Control, a concept album revolving around a businessman whose life was taken by his wife after discovering his extramarital affair. My emo-loving, soon-to-be high school best friend brought me to the show (She didn’t like referring to the performances she preferred as “concerts.”) to introduce me to who she thought was the coolest songwriter of our generation, despite the fact that I was primarily interested in the goth/industrial scene at the time. The con… errr, show was something different for me, but the intimacy with which Bazan approached performing for his nearly-rabid fans was undeniably charming. There was even a Q&A portion in the middle of the set. The first question was, “What’s your favorite band?” to which he replied, “Well, I guess The Beatles.” That always stuck with me, as The Fab Four seemed like a bit of a leap from the Jade Tree sound…
Twenty-two years, but only four albums (Bazan had a decade-and-a-half stint as a solo artist, before returning to the moniker.), later Pedro the Lion released their seventh studio LP, Santa Cruz, which dropped earlier this month courtesy of Polyvinyl Record Co. The album is Pedro the Lion’s third since 2019 and serves as the third part of his musical memoir of his life. And the third track, “Little Help,” documents his very first encounter with the music of John, Paul, George, and Ringo. Bazan, just 13, had recently moved to California from Arizona for his dad’s job at a Bible college. His first friend in the new town, Matt, introduced him to The White Album, which he had previously only known from a church doc warning of the Satanic dangers of playing “Revolution 9” backwards. “Treading water on the open ocean/Then you threw me out a life ring,” he sings in the song, reminiscing about what could be considered the very starting point of the music of Pedro the Lion.
2019’s Phoenix documents Bazan’s youth as the kid of a minister in the titular city, while 2022’s Havasu chronicles the start of his adolescent years. Santa Cruz, however, covers the decade from eighth grade to Bazan’s early twenties, when Pedro the Lion first began to take shape. About two weeks ago Pedro the Lion kicked off their tour behind Santa Cruz, which has Bazan playing drums and singing for the band for the first time ever. The shows have featured the vast majority of the album, in addition to a handful of tracks from the previous two entries in his planned-five-part musical memoir and Pedro the Lion’s earlier records. The first batch of dates are being opened by our good buddy Squirrel Flower/Ella Williams, but Pedro the Lion’s upcoming July 2nd show at The Foundry will be the second night to feature an opening set from Flock of Dimes, the brilliant solo project of Wye Oak’s Jenn Wasner, who grew up in Baltimore and who, at only a year younger than me, I can’t help but wonder was also at that November 2002 show at The Black Cat.
*Get your tickets here.
