Tom Schraeder draws inspiration from the south

Tom Schraeder has grown up a lot in the last year. It's not that he's cut back on the drinking, started caring any less about wine, women and song, or even really tampered with his basic formula of Ryan Adams-meets-Paul Westerberg alt-Americana. But this time around, the songs are darker, the recording is leaner, and the new band (the cheekily monikered Tom Schraeder & His Ego) is a totally different beast from the 10-piece mini-orchestra seen at last year's Lollapalooza. In fact, since he took a vacation down to Austin, Texas, a lot has changed for the Chicago singer-songwriter.

"What happened was that my band was made up of a lot of members who were in other projects," he explained over a crackly phone connection. "I ended up going to Texas by myself, and in that time their bands started to do things as well. So I ended up having to kind of fight for myself, and I realized that I didn't have to hide behind so many people this time. I wanted to show people that I could do it as a songwriter as well, rather than having such a big orchestra kind of thing going.

"I loved doing it, but for this record I kind of wanted to take a more songwriter approach, make it more about the lyrics. Also I quit smoking, so I wanted to show off that I can sing now without coughing up a lung. It's more of a personal record I guess," he said.

The new EP, "Lying Through Dinner," to be released Sept. 6 at the Hideout in Chicago, certainly achieves this goal. The production by Schraeder and Austin-based musician Danny Malone - the only other musician on the recording - is very sparse in places, making the inclusion of strings and horns and other various cacophonous implements that much more impactful.

And to think - the whole thing happened by accident.

"The story itself is really strange," Schraeder elaborates. "The only person I knew in Austin couldn't pick me up from the airport, so he sent Danny Malone. Danny picked me up, I went back to his place with no knowledge of where I was going to stay. His roommate ended up hitchhiking to Mexico, so I ended up staying there."

The chance meeting sparked a creative flow that soon found the two collaborating. Malone, who plays "drums and everything else you need" according to Schraeder, owns HotTracks!!!, an analog recording studio, and the two snuck in to record whenever it was empty.

"It went from me saying 'Hey, I've got a song I kind of like,' to Danny saying 'OK, let's hear it,' and then all of a sudden we'd be laying down drums and bass and then the song was almost done," said Schraeder. "And that's how the approach was for the whole record. We went all analog on it, and kept reading about Fleetwood Mac and how they recorded, watching Motown videos and Stones documentaries, listening to all these old records and we just wanted to recreate those sounds from where they would place microphones, where they placed different snare hits. I went out there for a vacation, and I came back with an analog record. I own the reel-to-reel."

The unplanned recording sessions were a chance for Schraeder to showcase his formidable songwriting skills in a much more relaxed setting, and songs like "Guadalupe Cries" sound much more focused and fleshed-out than anything on last year's "The Door, The Gutter, The Grave," despite the lack of a huge backing ensemble.

"My management, nobody had even heard the songs," laughed Schraeder, "so it was kind of scary with everybody on my case about getting the songs out, me going and recording this stuff with nobody else playing on it, they didn't know if they were going to get a songwriter record or a bunch of acoustic demos, and then it came back and it had barking dogs and horns and lyrics about heroin and crazy stuff, so no one knew what was going on.

"I think I really enjoyed having some shock in there. I've never done heroin of course, but I kind of wanted to get some shock value out of this record."

That's right: barking dogs. In addition to lifting inspiration from classic rock and Motown albums, Schraeder and Malone literally goaded a dog into attacking engineer Matthew Smith - and caught it on tape.

"The dog hated fart noises," Schraeder explained. "Like, when you do the blowing-into-the-palm-of-your-hand thing, the dog would just go nuts. That was the only way though, because it was a really good dog, so that was the only way to make the dog bark. One time we did it when the engineer was doing some mic placement, and the dog just attacked. It was a lot of fun, and we felt bad afterward, but we recorded it. That's the thing though, with this record it felt like we were just a bunch of kids having fun in a playhouse."

Citing Fleetwood Mac, the Rolling Stones and the Beatles as his primary influences this time around, "Lying Through Dinner" certainly has a more classic, rosy, early-rock feel than its predecessor. With some name recognition as a result of last year's stellar Lollapalooza gig, Schraeder is ready to get back to gigging with His Ego - whose lineup includes Matt Schuessler and Adam Kaltenhauser of This Is Me Smiling, Henry Bianco of Probably Vampires and Chicago stalwart Dan Moulder - and building up a stronger following.

"We did CMJ and SXSW last year, and I did a show with Lucero last year, which was pretty fun," Schraeder said, "but it's been weird because we jumped from doing a lot of opening slots to just headlining, so it's like there's been a big gap and now I'm going back to wanting to open, trying to get a stronger following, because I'm feeling like we took that leap a little early just to catch up to everything. Which was great, I'm not disappointed in that at all, but right before Lolla, I was opening at the Metro, and after Lolla it was almost all headlining gigs. I had to grow as a musician before I felt I really deserved that slot. That's kind of why I went to Austin. I had to find myself again, really get my act together with playing and singing and writing."

While he's still looking for label support, still hoping to prove himself with his new album and new band, and still craving a still-larger version of the financially-taxing mini-orchestra he started out with, right now Tom Schraeder is happy with where he's at. His new songs are equal parts world-weariness and youthful exuberance, songs like the chilling "Needle Will Bite" juxtaposed with lively drunken singalongs like "When You're Not Around" (which, like last year's "The Whiskey Song," sounds like it was recorded in the middle of a crowded bar, but this time, it's a bar full of drunken horn players). And at this point in his career, he's got one important piece of advice: "Everyone should go to Austin."

Tom Schrader

When: Sept. 6, 9 p.m.

Where: The Hideout; 1354 West Wabansia, Chicago

Cost: $10

Tickets and info: hideoutchicago.com

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