story by Tracy Frey
photo by Pete Kerlin

So where was Ted Leo when the big blackout hit New York? He was onstage at Seaport Pier 17 for the New York Seaport Music Festival. Leo and his band, the Pharmacists, had just begun their sound check when the power cut out. But instead of packing up and trying to make their way home, the band decided the show must go on and hooked up to the generators on a mobile Starbucks truck that happened to be in the area.

"The whole mood of the pier just flipped, like a switch flipped, and everyone's like 'oh my God, we can make this happen in the blackout,'" Leo says in an interview with Chicago Innerview. "It kind of became this mission, and we actually wound up playing. It was pretty amazing."

That kind of attitude is what's fueled Leo for the past 15 years as a musician. From the '90s mod/punk band Chisel through brief stints with the Sin Eaters and the Spinanes, Leo has traveled a rough road that's finally starting to pay off. His third full-length album, Hearts of Oak, garnered critical raves for its passionate, late '70s-influenced sound and wry, cerebral lyrics. Media interest in the singer-songerwriter grew, culminating with articles in both Rolling Stone and Spin, as well as an appearance on "Late Night With Conan O'Brien."

LEO'S INNER VIEW "I really don't have any respect for the ultimate bottom-line culture. I just think that the whole major label system really degrades music and especially punk rock, which was supposed to be something that stood against. It's been so defanged these days that it's even more important to me now than it was 20 years ago."

Yet despite this newfound recognition, Leo remains poised on the edge of success, retaining a certain amount of anonymity. "It's kind of a nice place to be, because there's a little bit of money rolling in, you can pay the bills," Leo says, "but you can still go to the grocery store and pick out your broccoli and no one knows who you are." Other parts of Leo's life have changed though.

"What I've learned over the last year is that the media depiction of events or the media coverage doesn't necessarily reflect the reality of the situation, so a lot of times, you're getting all this coverage and you see yourself everywhere but you're still kind of playing the same sorts of shows you've been playing for a long time. It's one of these weird things where you have to really be careful not to believe the hype too much so that you don't set unrealistic goals for yourself," Leo explains.

"Also, at the same time, that kind of media hype, it does generate more media interest and you end up spending so much more of your day addressing those kind of concerns you never had to worry about before, whether it's interviews or in-store performances or radio shows," he continues. "You wind up sometimes playing three sets in a day and doing three interviews. The whole pace of everything has really ratcheted up to a crazy level that in the midst of it is really awesome, but when you get back from tour you're exhausted. It's got its ups and downs."

Mild media interest in Leo started in 2001 with the release of his second full-length album, Tyranny of Distance, but it was the release of the recent Hearts of Oak that really got the buzz going. Although both albums share a similar sound, Hearts of Oak has a decidedly more political bent with songs like "Ballad of the Sin Eater," which explores anti-American sentiment while traveling abroad, and "The High Party," which examines the role of the artist in the face of global insanity and war. Leo says he didn't intentionally set out to create a political record per se, but in the end it just made sense.

"For Tyranny of Distance, I actually wrote a lot of those songs at the same time. A lot of my focus was on relationships and where I was living and concepts of roots and home, and that came across in both the music and the lyrics," he explains. "I think there was a little bit of a deliberate element in my writing a more political album with Hearts of Oak, because I really consider myself still a punk artist and in looking back at Tyranny of Distance, I found myself a little disappointed in myself that I didn't sort of turn it outward a little more and address some more worldly concerns."

Also, he says he didn't have any agendas when making Tyranny of Distance. He simply put together a collection of songs that he happened to have at the time. "I had enough to make an album with, so I made an album," he says.

"With Hearts of Oak, I was setting out to make 'the next album,' so there was kind of already an agenda in place or there was a framework to accommodate an agenda," he continues. "That might account for a lot of the difference. I had a project with Hearts of Oak and that project was given focus by the climate and my desire to address the climate."

Somewhat surprisingly, both Tyranny of Distance and Hearts of Oak were released on Lookout Records, a label mostly known for their East Bay pop punk bands. Leo may seem like an odd fit, but when you know the history behind it, it makes sense.

"I've been friends with the people who run the label for a long time," he explains."We kind of had this relationship for a long time like back to Chisel, an old band of mine, where they were always kind of like 'hey, if you guys ever want to do anything' and we'd never talk about it anymore and then we'd be like 'hey if you guys at Lookout ever want to do a record with us' and we'd never talk about it anymore."

When Leo decided to go solo, it made sense to switch to Lookout. "They presented an amazing position, a bigger independent label that I had friends at, who I could work with, and they were very interested in sort of trying this experiment because they wanted to expand what they were known for," he says. "It was just a really good synergistic thing for both of us to start working together, and I think that we both benefited."

Staying on an independent label, like Lookout, is something Leo feels strongly about. "I've done a lot of things I've never pictured myself doing when I started, but I haven't done anything that I think has gone really contrary to the things that kind of inspired me to get into the whole thing in the first place." he says.

"It's been a long standing tenet of mine to not enter that world. I really don't have any respect for the ultimate bottom-line culture," Leo says. "I just think that the whole major label system really degrades music and especially punk rock, which was supposed to be something that stood against. It's been so defanged these days that it's even more important to me now than it was 20 years ago."

Staying true to his roots, his music and his fans has always been important to Leo. Despite vocal cord issues that eventually caused him to cancel his spring tour, Leo is back on the road in full force. He says his vocal cords aren't 100 percent, but he's adapting.

"My formula before we played used to be - I don't smoke - but I would have a cigarette and a glass of whisky every night before we played to kind of like artificially warm up my voice," he explains. "It would get it all raw and stuff. Obviously I can't be doing that anymore."

Leo will be touring solo this time, while his band, the Pharmacists, are on hiatus for their drummer's wedding. Leo is also putting out a solo EP in October, so he says the hiatus is somewhat concurrent with that.

The new EP includes three new songs and three covers, and Leo will play some of the new material in his upcoming live shows. He says he's even started work on songs for a new album, which he believes are a natural progression from Hearts of Oak. Considering the building hype over Leo's last two albums, this next album may just be what pushes him out of his anonymity and into the spotlight.