On a tour that will take them to Melbourne, Paris and Prague, indie rock band Yo La Tengo is making stops in Athens and Nelsonville first.
“We love that. There’s something really fun about bands on a longer, worldwide tour, and the list of dates has London, New York and then Nelsonville,” said Brian Koscho, marketing director for Stuart’s Opera House in Nelsonville. “Even domestically, they’re playing really big festivals and then coming to our opera house on a Tuesday night.”
Before Yo La Tengo plays at Stuart’s, Josh Antonuccio, a professor in the School of Media Arts and Studies, will interview Ira Kaplan, who plays guitar and piano and is lead vocalist for the band, on Tuesday afternoon in Glidden Recital Hall. The audience will have an opportunity to ask questions at the end of the interview.
Antonuccio has interviewed Kaplan in the past and said he noticed that the band was coming through Ohio on its tour and decided to contact Kaplan to come to Ohio University before the evening performance.
“It will be an on-stage interview,” Antonuccio said. “I think that’s a more engaging format than a straight talk.”
Antonuccio said the interview will benefit media arts and studies majors who emphasize in the music production and recording industry areas.
“They’ve (Yo La Tengo) had nearly 30 years of success,” Antonuccio said. “They just put out a critically acclaimed album, headlined the Pitchfork Music Festival… to have someone talk about what they’ve seen, how they’ve navigated the music industry without compromising their music and how they’ve dictated their career at every stage will be very beneficial … You can do something you love but be business savvy.”
That longstanding greatness was something Koscho said attracted Stuart’s to the band.
“A lot of times, people say Stuart’s has music for the people who love music and Yo La Tengo is a perfect example of that,” he said.
The band has played in Nelsonville in the past, first at Stuart’s in 2009 and then at the Nelsonville Music Festival in 2011 where it played before The Flaming Lips.
“It was one of my personal favorite shows ever,” Koscho said of the 2009 show. “They’re a group that can go back and forth between rocking really hard to loud, distorted songs to poppy, harmonizing, melodic songs … The range that they have really comes across.”
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