Hamilton Leithauser on Returning to Café Carlyle, His New Solo Record, and Brooklyn Home Repairs
The Café Carlyle kicks off its 2019 season tonight with a three-night stand from Hamilton Leithauser—now well into his career as a solo artist after 15 or so years fronting the legendary New York City band The Walkmen—who returns after kicking out the jams there (so to speak) last year in a two-week residency that he enjoyed immensely.
“It was awesome,” Leithauser says over lunch. “It took a bit to really warm up, but once we got into the swing of it and figured out how to keep the tempo and volume going and what worked, I loved it—and I immediately told them I’d love to come back this year, so here I am.”
Also on the docket at the Café: Punk and rock legend David Johansen, the infamous frontman of the New York Dolls, inhabiting his more lounge-friendly crooner alter ego Buster Poindexter (April 2–13); the actress/singer/dancer Dianna Agron, perhaps best known as Quinn from Glee (January 22–February 2); and the inimitable Isaac Mizrahi, returning for his third residency to perform classics from Bernstein to Cole Porter and beyond (February 5–16).
For those who know the sort of riotous mayhem that The Walkmen could summon as a live act, though, the casting of Leithauser in particular as a now-seasoned habitué of the stately room, with its charming Marcel Vertès murals, might seem a bit peculiar—even to Leithauser himself. “I was as surprised as everybody else seemed to be when they approached me last year,” he says. “I think they’re trying to find a younger audience. And by the time my show kind of kicked into gear last year, we sold out, and the crowd was definitely my crowd, or a Walkmen kind of crowd—though when I looked out on the first few nights, I’m thinking there were a few couples there who were expecting Bobby Short.”
We asked Leithauser what’s new with this year’s show, who inspired his surprisingly crooner-friendly voice—and how his new solo album, due in early summer, is coming along.
Last year’s shows were, honestly, kind of a revelation—I couldn’t have imagined that your voice and your songs would work that well in a room like that. Are you sticking with the same sort of minimal arrangements and instrumentation?
No—last time it was just me and two guys, but I’m bringing a big band this time—a full drummer and a bass player, an electric guitar player, a piano player. And I might have some guest singers with me. But it’s a tiny stage—you find your little post and you don’t move, otherwise you’re going to end up on somebody’s lap. We had our first full day of practice last week at a space in Brooklyn, and it was eye-opening as to what’s not going to work. I was trying to break out some of my more difficult stuff that’s too quiet or too moody for a big club . . . but we’ll see. I want to do a lot of different songs than what I did last year. But it’s actually more difficult to perform in a room like that than in, say, a rock club, because everything is so reliant on the singing—there’s no big drums to hide your voice behind, or loud guitars. You’re really just out there on your own.
Having known your music and your voice originally through The Walkmen, the notion of you doing a kind of Sinatra turn was a little disorienting—is he a conscious inspiration, or singers in that realm?
Definitely. When I was really getting into music in my teens I was into Iggy Pop and Fugazi and The Cramps—and those guys aren’t really singerly singers. But when I was 18, I discovered Roy Orbison, and that voice was so out of time and out of space—it was like hearing an opera singer. So much of the music itself you could just kind of throw away—this kind of production from the ’60s in L.A.—but the sound of his voice . . . that was the guy that I was trying to copy at the beginning of The Walkmen. I don’t sound a thing like him—he sings with this firm vibrato that’s just unmistakably him. But that’s what I was shooting for originally.
Because of the way you sing—I mean, you’re basically going there emotionally and passionately both in the way you write and the way you sing—is it kind of exhausting to perform? It would seem impossible for you to do a show where you weren’t giving, like, 110% all the time.
That’s true, but that’s a problem for me too—a big problem. I’m working on a record now, a new solo record, and I’m very far into it and getting to the end, and sometimes I wish I could find a way of being able to sing in a way that’s not so impassioned. You don’t want to fight what works, but I really want to get myself out of my comfort zone and find a new personality to get in front of the music—but somehow I keep refinding my own thing.
Who are you working with on the new record?
I’ve been working almost 100 percent by myself. I have about three samples that my friend (ex-Walkmen guitarist) Paul Maroon made that I turned into songs—he makes these samples out of horns and guitar and weird instruments. But other than that, I play everything—even drums—and I’m going to record it and mix it myself. I just like the process better. I mean, I write music all day every day—and I don’t even mean that like it’s a good work ethic. I wouldn’t trade it for the world, but it drives my wife crazy. Sometimes she’ll be like, “Relax!” and I’ll be like, “I can’t!” Some people like to go out into the woods to make records—that’s the opposite of what I do. I just live it—by the time I’m recording a record, I’ve already got the next one halfway written. I just have to get the first one out first.
You also may be the only rock frontman or solo artist I’ve ever seen—and granted, I haven’t seen Bryan Ferry live—who performs, seemingly un-self-consciously, in a white linen suit. [Ed. note: It was summertime.]
That’s just what I like to wear. I like seersucker, I like suits. From the time I was in fourth grade through 12th grade, I had to wear a coat and tie every day. I just got used to putting a tie on. I guess there were times in my late 20s in The Walkmen that I can remember putting on a tie—maybe you’re in Europe for a really long time, maybe you’ve been partying a little too much—and you put on a tie and can somehow tell yourself, I have a job. I’m going to work now.
Aside from writing music all day, every day, what else do you do?
Well, lately I’ve been working on my house. We [Leithauser and his wife have two daughters, 5 and 7] bought a house in Brooklyn a year or so ago, and I have gotten incredibly handy out of sheer desperation. You name it, I do it—there’s nothing I’m afraid of anymore. I do electricity now. I do plumbing. I bought a nail gun.
How did you learn to do all of this?
Google. YouTube. You just deal with these incompetent contractors who just have you over a barrel, and it makes me so angry, and eventually you just say, “Fuck it—I’ll do it myself.” And you Google it, watch a video, buy the nail gun, fuck it up yourself, and maybe you figure it out eventually. I would not have described myself as handy, but I could do just about anything in the house now. I bought a pipe cutter. I bought a diamond-tipped miter saw to cut stone for my front walk. Why do you think I’m behind on my record?
