Todd Clouser’s A Love Electric Comes to Summervale!
By Kally Sample, Music Intern
The band for this week’s Summervale brings an exciting sound and attitude to the music they play. We welcome Todd Clouser’s A Love Electric, a band whose members Todd Clouser, drummer & producer Hernan Hecht, and bassist Aaron Cruz cultivate a unique genre all of their own. Todd Clouser says “we don’t have as much of a genre as we have a sound, I think. It's the result of being from three different countries, a couple different generations, and coming from unique backgrounds. That being said, we all grew up listening to rock music and then went on to look at jazz and improvised music. So we love songs, but we love to improvise”.
A Love Electric began when Clouser put out a record under that title (“more of a jazz record”), and started touring. It was then that Clouser landed in Mexico. “There I met the drummer Hernan Hecht, originally from Argentina, and eventually bassist Aaron Cruz. We played a show with Steven Bernstein (Sex Mob, etc) on trumpet. After the show, Bernstein, who I’d known for some years, looked at me and said, ‘Now that’s a band, don’t let it get away’. So I moved to Mexico City. We began calling the band A Love Electric, and started playing anywhere they would have us, which we’re still doing”.
The three words that Clouser would use to describe A Love Electric are energy, experimentation, and resilience. “I think we also all share personalities that seek out risk and challenges and find joy in the ability to change perspectives, ours and others. That’s been something that’s important about our work in Mexico City, bringing folks like Billy Martin, or Cyro, or Medeski down,” Clouser says. His favorite part of playing in a group is “having it work for everyone. I like finding a way to bring music to the group that I feel is sincere to me but gives everyone a chance to be expressive with what they have to say. The music I write often needs the personalities of the other two to really fly”.
The truly exciting aspect of Todd Clouser’s A Love Electric is that it represents the power of music as a tool for connection. “[Music] can connect and teach us,” Clouser says, “This band is an example of music allowing the seemingly absurd to be realized. A guy from Minneapolis meets an Argentine drummer in Mexico City and moves there to play music, joining with a Mexican bassist, tours the world playing cafes to theaters to street corners, they find a way to work with their heroes like Medeski and Cyro Baptista, working with communities - from indigenous town brass bands to hip hop artists - across Latin America. There’s a lot of people that would laugh at you if you told them this was possible. And it’s just the beginning”.
Come join us on Thursday for a night of wonderful tunes, good eats, and (hopefully) warm sunshine!