The Red and Black

Issue date: 1/14/08 Section: Variety

Media Credit: Courtesy Michael Lavine Yo La Tengo will perform at Melting Point at 8:30 tonight. Doors open at 6. [Click to enlarge]

Touring in a band for over two decades may yield experience with the lifestyle, but it doesn't make it any less strange.

"I think it would be weird if a bunch of people driving around the country didn't seem alien in some way," said Ira Kaplan, a founding member of Hoboken, N.J.-based band Yo La Tengo, in a telephone interview Friday.

"Not only is (touring) unsettling, I think it would be weird if it wasn't. There's a lot of things I like about this tour, but one of them is by being different, it's almost unsettling - extra unsettling," he said.

Kaplan said the "Free-wheeling Yo La Tengo Tour," which is now in its "third leg," is distinctive from any of the band's other tours.

"There'll be a lot of give-and-take with the audience," he said.

The set lists will not be drawn up prior to each performance - instead, they will be created throughout the band's sets, as dictated by audience requests, Kaplan said.

Yo La Tengo, which got its start in 1984, currently features guitarist Kaplan and drummer Georgia Hubley, respective husband and wife, and bassist James McNew.

Numerous articles and interviews with the band refer to Yo La Tengo as a group almost exclusively for rock nerds and music geeks. Kaplan doesn't get that.

"I don't really understand why that - I don't think that's true," he said.

"Unfortunately, people just kind of repeat things, you see that in the political writing in the political race.

"People just kind of get these reputations and I don't think they're necessarily accurate. I don't see why anybody can't enjoy what we do."

While Kaplan insists that Yo La Tengo is a "regular old band," many publications, including The Washington Post and Pitchforkmedia.com refer to the band as veterans and legends of indie-rock history.

The last time the band played in Athens was in 2003, with local group The Glands at the 40 Watt, Kaplan said.

"It was magical. I'm a big fan," Ross Shapiro, guitarist of The Glands and manager of Schoolkids Records, said at the downtown record store on Saturday.

"They did one of the great albums of the '90s," he said, as he left the front counter in search of something.

When he returned, he held a copy of Yo La Tengo's 1997 album "I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One."

Shapiro said he met the band when The Glands played in Nashville and Yo La Tengo was in the city recording music.

Kaplan said he lamented that The Glands aren't active as a band anymore.

Although Kaplan said Yo La Tengo does not have plans to release another album, it has been working on scoring films.

It already has contributed to "Shortbus," "I'm Not There," and Junebug."

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