Catching Up With... Les Savy Fav's Tim Harrington

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There are truly few beasts like the inimitable Les Savy Fav. Sorely unappreciated and irresponsibly loud, the New York-based band has been carelessly stumbling along the thinly dotted demarcations between punk and indie for well over a decade without gaining the kind of massive cult following it deserves. LSF is a spiritual throwback to a time when “indie” and “punk” were ideas closely wound together, a time when “punk” didn’t imply any kind of creative constrictions and “indie” actually stood for “independent.”

The star of LSF's live show is undoubtedly Tim Harrington, the bold and bearded cheerleader of a lead singer who performs for his audience with the frenzied enthusiasm of a busker going out of business. While he now has an online show on Pitchfork.tv called Beardo for his personal skits, the finest evidence of Harrington’s on-stage antics comes in the form of the creatively/crudely titled After the Balls Drop (Frenchkiss Records), a live album recorded in the early hours of Jan. 1, 2008 at the Bowery Ballroom in NYC. It’s an energetic document of the best of LSF’s portfolio (plus a few covers), and at a few points, the songs begin to serve as bumpers for Harrington’s ambling dialogue while he navigates the crowd in a quest to find something interesting.

There’s a moment in the recording of “The Equestrian” where Harrington implores a handful of audience members to repeat the phrase “tender touch” into the mic, and you can just see his sweaty hand grasping strangers’ shoulders to stabilize his balance as they recite their rite. They say a good live record will make you feel like you were there, and After the Balls Drop makes you desperately wish you were a part of that party.

On the afternoon of New Year’s Eve 2009, a day less than a year later, Harrington was driving somewhere on a snowy highway, likely attempting to concentrate on the road yet never ceasing the amusement. Within a few minutes of conversation, pleasantries degenerated into trying to recall a Cuba Gooding, Jr. movie about sled dog races (Snow Dogs) and the portrayals of trees in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers versus those in Evil Dead. Miles from a stage, the man really is the consummate entertainer.

Paste: It is Dec. 31 today, so I think a “Happy New Year” is appropriate. I know what you were doing last year, but what will you be up to tonight or tomorrow?

Harrington: For a real long time, all in high school and a lot of college, I would just watch Red Dawn on New Year’s because a TV channel in New Jersey played Red Dawn on every New Year’s Eve for some reason. I somehow thought it had something to do with New Year’s. Then, I went through a brief mistaken period at the switch of the millennium where I thought it was better to go do stuff and we were in New York and I tried to go to Times Square unsuccessfully a couple of times. Then, I started just making yummy food and going to bed early. In general, I don’t like New Year’s celebrating. I think it and the Super Bowl are BS holidays for frat boys to make six-foot hoagies and drink a lot.

Paste: Why did you do After the Balls Drop, then? It could have been any other holiday.
Harrington: I don’t know. That one seemed good. It had to be the first show of ’08. It started at like 3 a.m., actually.

Paste: Wait a minute, I remember you counting down at the beginning of the album.
Harrington: We were just counting down. When we agreed to it, I thought we were being asked to play the actual New Year’s bash, and I was like, “Oh man, my favorite time in New York! This is going to be so cool.” We were going to do champagne toasts and I was going to be the Toastmaster, but only until one or two weeks earlier I realized that Pat Benatar was going to play New Year’s and we were going to play the after party. It wasn’t Pat Benatar—Patti Smith. So Patti Smith did it, and had her whole concert over, cleaned up and vacuumed, and then we arrived and played our concert. It was super fun. Pitchfork said that I sounded tired on the thing, but the part of the tape I sounded tired on I was hanging upside down from my feet, so you’d sound tired, too. Audio recordings of our live shows don’t really capture the magic. It’s hard to tell that that sounds weird because something physical is being done while it’s being sung or if the guy doesn’t have the pipes. Let me tell you: I’ve got the pipes.

Paste: I know that that is all part of your notoriously uninhibited stage antics. Where did that wild style come from?
Harrington: They are good, I think. I enjoy them. They’re mostly for the benefit of my bandmates. My stage presence developed directly out of being on tour forever, and no one being there. [Laughs] I would go into the audience so that the band could see me, and would face the band and perform for those guys while they played the music. Now there are actual people in the audience watching us, but I still feel like the persons I’m most obliged to entertained are Syd [Butler, bassist], Seth [Jabour, guitarist], and Harrison [Haynes, drummer].

Paste: Have you ever made anyone really uncomfortable?

Harrington: I fancy that I have a kind of disarming style. I also fancy myself a good judge of who either can or will take it. I haven’t had too many surprises when we play and that may be dumb luck, but for now, I ascribe it to my skill.

Paste: Does your style take any inspiration from famously crazy frontmen like Iggy Pop or GG Allin?
Harrington: I like Jello Biafra’s style. I like a lot of old punk style where punk was [about] going a little bit crazy and basically meant that you qualified as punk if no one else liked you, and there were a lot of general weirdos involved. I was really proud the first time when we went over to Europe on tour. Germany is famous for being super up on every band. Then, we especially qualified as a hardcore or emocore band, but on a lot of posters you would see “Les Savy Fav” and, on a number of them, “Confrontation rock” or “Confrontation core.” We got a rep where people were saying, “People are calling you the PG GG Allin.” That’s my favorite comparison—like GG Allin but not scary.