Don’t Get Around Much Anymore
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When their third album, Are You Driving Me Crazy?, was issued in June 1995 by Touch and Go (which has released all but their first album), Seam was in the midst of a grueling four-month U.S. tour, which was followed by a whirlwind trip around Europe. The band took off most of 1996 to recuperate, but by that fall they were eager to begin work on a new album. Over two weeks at Idful Music with producer Brad Wood, who’d done their last two records, they finished seven new songs. By early 1997 front man Sooyoung Park had written more, and the band was ready to record them, but before Seam could return to the studio Park got a call from Wood, who ruefully informed him that the previous session had to be scrapped due to a technical malfunction that was undetectable while recording but had streaked the tapes with a horrible hiss.
“It seemed like no matter what we were doing there was some little gremlin sitting on our shoulders loosening all the rivets in whatever ideas we had,” says Manfrin. They ended up mixing the album near Paulson’s home in Raleigh, North Carolina, in January.
Seam will play select east coast dates through December and are contemplating a brief tour of the southeast, but beyond that nothing is planned. “I still enjoy playing and I still like writing songs,” says Park. He says that he’s inspired by Rick Rizzo and Janet Bean of Eleventh Dream Day, working parents who’ve kept music in their lives but on their own terms. “It’s really cool to see people with that attitude instead of giving it up altogether.”
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): Seam photo by Nathan Mandell.
