by Paige Bowers, courtesy of Lin Yu
Forget icebreakers. When you're New Orleans rock trio Better Than Ezra and you've gone from playing college bars in the bayou to having your second album, "Friction Baby," go gold, you're a little past awkward introductions.
After all, you're going to presidential inaugural galas and meeting Stevie Wonder now. You're playing the HFStival. You've got eight fan-generated Web sites, all of them "really cool."
There's no need to slip an LL Cool J song in the middle of one of your sets to get a few giggles from your audience.
But if you're playing the 9:30 Club on the last night of your year long tour, you do it anyway. And you throw in a little Prince, Kriss Kross, Soft Cell and Rolling Stones for good measure.
Better Than Ezra has been synonymous with good times with good friends since the band members' days of packing Murphy's Bar in Baton Rouge full of cheap beer-swilling Louisiana State University students. It was at LSU bars and parties, band members said, where they became so proficient with cranking out cover tunes.
"We had to," lead singer and guitarist Kevin Griffin said. "We'd be playing a fraternity house, and someone would shout, 'Play this!' or 'Play that!' So we got to a point where we could play almost anything.
"We used to do our rap version of 'Dr. Love'...You need my love baby oh so bad," Mr. Griffin said, ending in song. "It was so bad. It was just terrible. We only did a few bars, it was so awful."
About two years ago, when the band started getting more national attention, those cover songs started serving as icebreakers for audiences unfamiliar with the Baton Rouge shows.
"People knew the song 'Good,' but we still needed to say, 'Hey come on and have fun with us.' Cover songs were always a good way to get people to let their guard down," Mr. Griffin said.
Not anymore.
Ezra audiences want to hear "In the Blood" and "King of New Orleans." They want to see if they can dance to Tex-Mex rocker "Roselia" without stepping on each others' toes.
"In the middle of songs, we'll still intersperse a bit of a Bonnie Tyler song or LL Cool J," Mr. Griffin said before Thursday's show. "And just so you know, tonight is the last official show of our tour, so there could be some real wacky stuff. Everyone's going to be going crazy tonight."
Lava lamps, plastic sharks, dancing "mystical mice" and two fairies joined Ezra onstage for its sold-out show. Mr. Griffin talked about how he used to sit in his Baton Rouge apartment watching James Bond movies and wishing he had a Bond babe or two.
For a rollicking version of Soft Cell's "Tainted Love," Mr. Griffin, the guitarist, played drums; bassist Tom Drummond played guitar; and drummer Travis McNabb tried his hand at bass. Two young women from the audience jumped onstage and sang backup vocals on the Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil."
Even Chelsea Clinton is a fan. Mr. Griffin said she went to Ezra's last DC show with the Vice President Al Gore's daughters - with Secret Service men in tow.
"You know...she's kinda cute," Mr. Griffin said of the first daughter. "Just really well-spoken and poised."
Mr. McNabb and Mr. Drummond nodded in agreement.
Chelsea and the rest of Washington have been good to Better Than Ezra.
Maybe it's because so many Southerners relocate here, band members said.
Maybe it's all the air play on WHFS-FM (99.1) and WWDC-AM
Mr. Drummond said the band has played Washington about five times in the past year. Yesterday, the musicians planned on paying a visit to Sen. Mary Landrieu, Louisiana Democrat, seeing friends, and going to museums.
When asked about Mrs. Landrieu's controversial election, they didn't seem to care. "We're from Louisiana," Mr. Griffin said. "That's just normal in politics."
The fans have been great, the band members said, adding that "really cool" fan-generated Web sites have put their own to shame.
"We had our own Internet site, and we found out it was just lame compared to the fans' [sites]," Mr. Griffin said. "So we got rid of ours, and we're putting together one that's just amazing. It's going to be an award-winning, state-of-the-art Web page. It's really staggering."
"It's going to be amazing," Mr. Drummond said. "You'll be able to know what we wore last night in concert, what songs we played, if we did something wacky."
Mr. Griffin said old friends pass on gossipy tidbits to the Web sites.
"Bill Davis from [New Orleans punk band] Dash Rip Rock said that I used to be in a band called Surfin' Dachsunds - which is true - and that we were an all-Dash Rip Rock cover band," Mr. Griffin said, prompting his fellow band mates to break out in a fit of laughter.
"We never played any type of Dash, but we played everybody else. We were all in high school then...Surfin' Dachsunds...oh my," he added.
"It's great as far as the Internet goes because information travels so quickly, and I don't think it's ever going to threaten print media, but it's certainly made people in print media" pay attention, Mr. Griffin said. "People at Rolling Stone now have to think about what they can do to get the scoop. As far as immediacy, it's just really big."
The band recently was on CNN for Intel Fest, a New York City concert that was simulcast live on the Internet.
"We're definitely embracing all types of new media," Mr. Griffin said. "The biggest thing is going to be like how Prince has just announced that all his future albums are only going to be available from an 800 number or the Internet. Most bands can't do that."
"People still like going into record stores and stuff like that, but it's really going to affect the labels," he said. "There's going to be some band out there, and they're not going to sign a deal. They'll just do everything themselves."