Tune Inn's anti-Spring Fling

Call it the anti-Spring Fling. While next month many Yalies will be swaying to the sounds of college-circuit crooner Ben Harper, the underground rock scene is alive, well, and ready to kick some ass this weekend at the Tune Inn's Junk Culture Festival. A two-day, 20-band extravaganza with a lineup that includes the French Kicks, The Walkmen (ex-Jonathan Fire*Eater), Les Savy Fav, Texas Terri and the Stiff Ones, and The Raging Teens is scheduled to inflict some aural damage while catering to an eager audience. As Tune Inn owner and founder Fernando Pinto said, "I don't recall attending a festival with this diversity of talent in the New Haven area, ever."

COURTESY THOMAS HINTON (Left to Right) Nick Stumpf, Josh Wise, and Matt Stinchcomb of the French Kicks.

Since opening in 1992, the Tune Inn has consistently brought pioneering music and spoken word performances to New Haven, last year alone hosting the likes of Luna, Juliana Hatfield, and Frank Black and the Catholics. Pinto, who previously organized the 1991 Woodbury festival "Fuck the Lalapalooza," now works extensively to expand the list of Tune Inn performers, and he draws audiences from all over New England, crowds he describes as "adults like myself and younger folks who are hip and who are curious to find their favorite new band."

The Junk Culture Festival promises to be no exception. Pinto is enthusiastic about the futures of the bands that will deliver rock 'n roll, rock-abilly, new wave, indie rock, and more to listeners this weekend. He boasts of hosting "some of the best bands around the east coast and beyond," including the rocked-out goodness of local band favorites Groovski, Bunny Brains, and the Damn Personals, as well as an instrumental surf band replete with go-go dancers called the Irreversible Slacks, and a female New Wave group from Liverpool called Jezebelle. "I am always thinking of ways to promote younger bands," Pinto said. "You can tell your friends within a year that you saw all those bands at the Tune Inn...[they] are going to be the buzz bands within the next six months."

One such "buzz band" is the French Kicks, formed in the spring of 1998 when Jamie Krents, Matt Stinchcomb, and Nick Stumpf hooked up with Nick's brother Lawrence and Alabaman Josh Wise in New York. Hitting the Junk Culture Fest on Saturday as part of a five-week tour of the Midwest, South, and Eastcoast, the French Kicks will channel their combination of '70s rock, melodic D.C. hardcore, Brit-pop, and indie harmonies to New Haven audiences for the second time in two months. They played a stint at Rudy's in February, which went well despite set-up issues. "Their stage is about the size of our bass amp," Stinchcomb said.

Throughout high school and college, which three of the Kicks attended together at Oberlin, they played in everything from early '80s cover groups to punk bands. Lawrence, classically trained at the Duke Ellington School of Music, even frequented Southern Baptist churches while touring with a soul group. However, it's their native D.C. scene (Dischord Record's Nation of Ulysses and Fugazi) and Stinchcomb's love of classic rock (his first album was a double cassette of The Rolling Stones' Exile on Mainstreet: "It was cheapest") that are most influential to the French Kicks' current sound.

The Stones' vibe is still heavy, as are some sweet, sweet harmonies, a fully collaborative three-dimensional auditory experience, and lyrics grown organically from the input of the three vocalists. The Kicks honed their sound during the summer of 1998, when they left the hype and pressures of New York to invade a friend's house and work as waiters at the same greasy spoon restaurant in rural Virginia. What they produced in that focused environment is a slick, well-crafted, and out 'n out rockin' clash of guitar, keyboard, and drums. They subsequently put out two EPs, the most recent of which is last year's Young Lawyer.

On their new album, they experiment more with keyboards than they have in the past, but the group is still striving to keep in tune with that classic, scuzzy rock aesthetic.

They're planning a national eight-week tour for the summer, but aren't above playing for two people in a bookstore in Athens, Ga., and getting paid $5 for it. This is certainly a band that understands the dues that up-and-coming rock stars must pay: after losing two of three girlfriends to the strenuous schedule of the road and starting a moving company to keep up with the costs of performance space and rent in New York, Stumpf still works as a cook at Moomba, a posh New York club/restaurant, and Stinchcomb occasionally lends his hand at operating freight elevators and doing freelance writing.

Pinto is eager to have the Kicks at the Junk Culture Festival. "I'm looking forward to see[ing] them live. I heard they rock live." They will share the weekend stage with fellow D.C. denizens The Walkmen and other bands they have toured with in the past. Pinto maintains, "The Festival is all about energy—for those about to rock. I think that we are the club that brings hip music to Connecticut. If you're a Yale student who isn't into tribute bands or KC 101 dance parties, then the Tune Inn is the place for you." For those who take his words to heart, you know where to go this weekend.

Samantha Culp contributed to this article.

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