Ivy: A Long Talk About Their Unlikely, Ceremonious, and Emotional Return
Q&A: After co-founder Adam Schlesinger’s passing in 2020, Dominique Durand and Andy Chase thought their band was over for good. Upon finding a few dozen demos at a Rhode Island studio and calling on an old friend for help, they assembled a new album, Traces of You, with Schlesinger’s ideas present at every turn.
When Andy Chase needed a guitarist for his new band, ideally somebody who also liked Prefab Sprout and the Go-Betweens in 1991, he placed an ad in the Village Voice. A 24-year-old Adam Schlesinger picked up the phone. Three years later, they met Dominique Durand, a Parisian singer who’d relocated to New York City to study English. One recording contract signed with Seed later and Ivy was born, releasing “Get Enough” and, soon after, an EP called Lately. But their biggish break came thanks to a cover of Orange Juice’s “I Guess I’m Just a Little Too Sensitive,” a release that caught the ear of the song’s writer, Edwyn Collins, who invited Ivy to tour with him.
Ivy is, to me, a quiet marvel. Most bands in 2025 would kill to release anything as good as Aparment Life, which Chase, Schlesinger, and Durand made with members of the Smashing Pumpkins (James Iha) and Galaxie 500 (Dean Wareham). Lloyd Cole and Chris Botti were also present at the sessions, which took place across three studios—Compositions, Duotone, and The Place—in New York. The album’s success was marginal, getting a slight bump once “This Is the Day” was plucked for the There’s Something About Mary soundtrack in 1998. But still, Atlantic Records released Ivy from its contract, and the band gravitated to 550 Music, a Sony imprint.
Long Distance, Ivy’s third and then-best LP, came out in 2001 and confirmed the band’s cult status. This was after, of course, Schlesinger nabbed an Oscar nomination for his work on That Thing You Do! but before his other project, Fountains of Wayne, found radio popularity through “Stacy’s Mom.” (It was also the year that Schlesinger wrote “Pretend to Be Nice” for the Josie and the Pussycats soundtrack, IYKYK.) Though it didn’t sell many copies, critics were high on Long Distance. It was guitar-pop at its catchiest, done without synths or sequencers. Lush tracks like “Disappointed” and “Edge of the Ocean” highlighted Chase and Schlesinger’s gifts for melody, while “Lucy Doesn’t Love You” was a swirling and swooning menagerie of horns and chugging strums that would have impressed Everything but the Girl and Saint Entienne alike. And at every turn, especially in the colorful epic “Undertow,” there stood Durand and her captivating vocal that was part-sensual and part-playful.
Ivy would move forward after Long Distance, releasing Guestroom in 2002 and In the Clear in 2005. Their final record, All Hours, came out in 2011 and, as an accompanying tour neared and interpersonal resentment boiled over, the band cancelled every date and, soon after, called it quits seemingly for good but never officially. Spouses Chase and Durand separated, Chase started a new band of his own, Camera2, and Schlesinger turned his focus towards music departments for film and television, earning Emmy nominations and wins for his work on Sesame Street and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. He even snagged some Tony love for his and David Javerbaum’s Cry-Baby score in 2008.
For much of that time period, Chase and Schlesinger weren’t speaking to each other, due to their contrasting business attitudes and the closure of the studio they owned together, Stratosphere Sound. The pair eventually reunited, in 2018, but, in April 2020, it was announced that Schlesinger had died of COVID-19 complications at age 52. Tributes came in droves, and Father/Daughter Records put out an album, Saving for a Custom Van, that June. A year later, Schlesinger’s old band Tinted Windows reunited for a livestream event and dedicated it to him. And through all of this, Ivy’s remaining members kept out of the public eye, grieving together while revisiting the band’s old material.
In 2023, Bar/None Records, under the direction of the late Mark Lipsitz, who was there at the band’s beginning 30 years ago, reissued Ivy’s debut album, Realistic, and its follow-up, Apartment Life. A year later, a 25th anniversary edition of Long Distance was pressed to vinyl. Most, if not all of Ivy’s fanbase likely assumed that Bar/None’s new print run of those cherished LPs would be the proper capstone on Chase, Schlesinger, and Durand’s work together. But, in June 2025, word broke about Traces of You, the band’s first album in 14 years.
While sorting through old tapes in their Rhode Island studio, Chase and Durand found about five-dozen sketches, demos, fragments, and outlines—many of which featured Schlesinger. After calling keyboardist/guitarist Bruce Driscoll, an old touring and recording buddy, for help, Ivy built 10 songs out of material dating as far back as 1994. Schlesinger is present on every song, and Traces of You is undoubtedly good—a late-career encapsulation of Ivy’s downtown sound and its agelessness. Listening to these songs, like the drum ‘n’ bass skitters of “Fragile People,” the crests of monochrome washing over “Say You Will,” and the brassy bounce of “Heartbreak,” you may not be able to distinguish Schlesinger’s parts from everyone else’s (don’t worry, the band can’t distinguish them either), but you’ll find one important confirmation: Ivy’s identity—great pop musicians who are even greater in each other’s company—remains intact and enchanting.
And, because there were so many ideas worth bringing to life in that Rhode Island studio, there will be another Ivy album out in 2026. In June, I had a long talk with Chase, Durand, and Driscoll, where we discussed Traces of You, how they grieved Schlesinger’s death while sorting through demos, preserving the modern-day Ivy sound on tapes as old as the band itself, and the 30th anniversary of their fateful 1995 tour with Edwyn Collins.
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Paste Magazine: Let’s go back 13 years. Andy, you had said recently that, in 2012, the world thought that Ivy was over. Was that a feeling shared by the rest of the band, as well?
Andy Chase: Yes. I’m saying “the world,” but I probably should have said “Ivy.” The world didn’t give a shit, nor did they really know. I was sort of speaking generally—internally, we were kind of done. We were done with each other, we were done with so many things in our life. We were going through transitions. It was clear: We didn’t ever think we were making another Ivy record again. Whether the world was paying attention and thought the same thing… Five years later, there were ruminations and emails coming from fans, like, “What’s going on? Did you break up?” But, ironically, the month before Adam passed away, we were talking about doing another Ivy record.
Dominique Durand: Between the three of us, we never had a conversation and decided to break up. That was never a discussion among us. But it was just a feeling. When All Hours came out, we had a tour booked for, like, five weeks. The week before—it was mostly coming from me, and Adam a little bit—we decided to cancel the tour. We were in a space where it just didn’t feel right anymore. Our last performance was in New York, at the Gramercy Theatre, and it was the first performance we did for All Hours, promoting the record. We were supposed to have a whole tour after that. And I remember playing in New York—the last song when we were performing, I said “goodbye.” I had this feeling. I was like, ‘Oh, God, I think it’s the last time. I think it’s really the last time.” So, I said “goodbye,” and I was right.
What did those eight years, between 2012 and Adam’s passing in 2020, look like for the three of you, musically?
Durand: Adam was very busy, focusing on TV shows and theater work. I was doing something in the music business, but not as a performer or writing songs. I was doing music exhibition.
Chase: I had my band Camera2, and we did a couple of tours in the US and Europe in 2013, 2014. Adam and I had a studio that we shut down, called Stratosphere Sound, in 2014. From 2012 to 2014, there were a lot of things going on, keeping us busy, distracted, or frustrated with each other. Adam and I were not on the same page about whether we should shut it down. Starting in 2014, I went through about four years where I didn’t speak to Adam at all—and this is a guy that I had spoken to every day of my life for almost 20 years prior to that. Part of it was cathartic, to not be involved in each other’s lives anymore. I didn’t know if that was forever, but I had a lot of misgivings about continuing any kind of relationship with Adam. So, for that reason and more, it seemed like Ivy would never do another record again. At Dominique’s insistence, I met Adam for a drink. We hadn’t seen each other in four years, and we just apologized to each other. We had a very psychological three hours of drinking Jameson and talking about our grievances. That part was very cathartic. That was late 2018. All of 2019, he and I were seeing each other again.
There’s a difference between a band ending while all of its members are still alive and then believing that a project is over once a member does pass away. Ivy was the first real band for the three of you 30 years ago. What were those conversations between the two of you, Andy and Dominique, like in 2020 after Adam passed away? How much time passed before you started thinking about Ivy again?
Durand: When Adam passed away, that was it. It felt so indecent, to even imagine anything like that. It wasn’t at all in our plan. But what happened is, when Adam passed away, the timing was very strange, because we got a call from Nettwerk Records, who own all of our records, and they said that our contract was inspiring and asked if we wanted to resign with them. At some point, Andy and I started to discuss that. And, of course, Adam was not there to help us decide what we wanted to do. But we discussed it and we were like, “These are our options: We can resign with Nettwerk, or we can take everything back, own it, and do whatever we want with it, or we just shop it to other people.” I was like, “Now that Adam is gone, we should really go back to the original person who actually discovered and took a chance on Ivy,” which was Mark Lipsitz. He was working at Bar/None Records, and Bar/None was actually a label that, when I first moved to New York in ‘89, I was really into, because it was the quintessential New York indie record label, with bands I really liked. So we got in touch with him, and he was absolutely totally for it.
Chase: It seemed like a fitting end to our little Ivy legacy, that we circled back to the person who discovered us and signed us and gave us our first record deal. Mark really was the reason that we all have careers, including Adam, because Ivy came before Fountains of Wayne. If it wasn’t for Ivy’s deal with Mark Lipsitz, Fountains of Wayne probably never would have been taken as seriously. We really felt like we were honoring Adam’s memory and honoring the importance of what Mark had done for us back in 1994. We were really happy to see our whole back catalog be released, but that was it! That was clearly the end of Ivy.
Durand: But in the process of finding this old reel-to-reel tape of our material in a storage place in Rhode Island, we discovered all these unfinished tracks and some songs that were actually very old and that we completely forgot about. Some of them were almost done.
Chase: Lots of sketches, all of them with Adam. But the reason we went back to those tapes is because Mark asked us to try to find a couple of bonus tracks or B-sides that we had never released, just to help him with the reissues.
We get 10 songs on Traces of You, but how many demos did you end up encountering at the Rhode Island studio?
Durand: Oh, 45. 60? Imagine, this is 20 years of career. We discovered stuff from ‘94 all the way to 2012.
Chase: It was an interesting span of technology, because we had reel-to-reel tapes, two-inch tapes, half-inch tapes, DAT tapes, cassette tapes, CDs, hard drives. It was a potpourri of different technologies and, yeah, there were close to 60 unfinished sketches, demos—some fully fleshed-out, some just two or three instruments really shittily recorded. Our mandate was: “Well, let’s try to finish the ones that Adam is playing on and see if they end up being any good. Maybe we have another Ivy album in us.”
At what point do you say to Bar/None, “Hey, it’s not just about B-sides for the reissues anymore. We have enough to actually come out with one more album”?
Durand: We actually didn’t say anything for a while. We kept it a secret. We found some of the stuff for the vinyl reissues but, when we discovered all this treasure, we discussed it. We said, “What do we do? Do we take a chance on them? Do we actually record it?” It was overwhelming, because there were so many demos. We said, “It’s too much for Andy and I, plus we’re too close to it. We need someone who’s more objective.” The first person we came up with was Bruce, because we’ve known him for 20 years and he played with Ivy. Adam worked with Bruce, too. And Adam really didn’t respect anybody—
Chase:Nobody.
Durand: —except for Bruce. It felt perfect. We called up Bruce, explained what was going on, and we asked him.
Bruce Driscoll: I got a call that I didn’t expect to get, because I thought Ivy was done. I hadn’t talked to them in a few years, despite knowing them for so long and them being instrumental in me pursuing music as a career. I got that call and, of course, I mean—how could you say no? I was so excited, being an Ivy fan, first and foremost. To get to hear these little things—the rejects, basically, from their music. And I personally think that everything they do is good, because all the melodies are good, which is what I respond to. So I knew that even a throwaway from them would have massive potential. Sorting through it all was an honor. We got together in Martha’s Vineyard and went through the ideas. They all had promise. Some of them were just chords and a drum beat, or a riff. Some of them were more finished. Some had the verse and a chorus but needed finished and brought to completion.
Chase: Dominique and I were seriously overwhelmed. Even when the two of us could slog our way through it, we could be in the middle of trying to work on these old ideas that are 15, 20 years old and we’d solo one of the tracks, and there’s Adam talking. He’s leaning into the guitar microphone and he’s talking to Dominique, who’s in the control room. She and I would just break down, and then the whole song would change. We didn’t even know what to do with it because, all of a sudden, we were so clouded by our emotions and our feelings about Adam that it didn’t become a song anymore. “Oh, that’s the one where Adam’s talking to you.” We had no idea. So Bruce came in with this completely fresh perspective and, really, I’d say, steered the ship.
Durand: So we started working on this project with Bruce, and it took us a very long time, because we all were living in different places. But we didn’t say anything to Bar/None. We didn’t say anything to anybody, except we reached out to Adam’s family and estate, to have their blessing. And they were perfectly fine with that. We just did our work for years without saying anything. When we felt like, “Okay, this is a real thing. This is a real record,” we went to Bar/None and told them, and Mark was just completely floored. He couldn’t believe it, and I think he got very excited that there would be more songs from Ivy with Adam on them.
What would Adam’s role have been, had he been there to finish those songs with you?
Chase: Exactly what Bruce’s role was—co-writing melodies, playing instruments, everything. Adam and I would play half of the instruments each. We’d be sharing melody ideas; I might come up with a verse melody and he’d do the chorus melody. Dominique would do a bridge melody. There were songs that I would write in Ivy and bring to the band, and vice-versa for Adam, but, in this case, it was much more collaborative, because we were really only starting with the majority of them as sketches. The stuff that’s on Traces of You is 80-percent new. Out of those initial tracks, most of them didn’t make the cut. And, once in a while, we lost track of what we had been deleting and throwing away. We’d take a look at each other and go, “Wait, where’s Adam? Is Adam on this?” And we would start soloing the tracks and realize, holy shit, we almost finished this thing and, at some point, maybe a month ago, we deleted him. We got together a month ago and made that decision. So, we either had to bring back his part that we deleted, or we would have to throw the song away, because the mandate was he had to be on everything.
Bruce, does that cross your mind at all while you’re in the studio with Andy and Dominique—that you’re taking over for Adam, but you’re not necessarily replicating what he’s doing?
Driscoll: It’s like being handed a family heirloom. You want to make your mark on it, but you don’t want to fuck it up. That, and being an Ivy fan—I love them, and Adam too. I’d have an idea and—I don’t want to say I knew where Adam would take it, but I had an instinct, and we have very similar influences, so I was just doing my thing and, looking to them, say, “Do you like this?” We would just keep going with the songs and spit out ideas. With Adam on the tracks, it did feel like he was there, looking over our shoulder a bit. I don’t know how happy he’d be but, at the time, when we were making [Traces of You], we did feel like he would dig it. Or we hoped he would.
Durand: I think, musically, Bruce and Adam are very similar. They can play everything.
Chase: The reason that we say Adam would have blessed Bruce’s participation is because Bruce was the only person that Adam felt a kindred spirit with, musically. It’s no surprise that Bruce and I started a band together, Camera2. Bruce was the closest to the Ivy sensibility of anybody I’ve ever met.
When you started finalizing these demos, were you trying to meet the recordings where they were as the musicians you are in 2025, or was there any part of you that wanted to recapture what Ivy was in 2012?
Durand: This is something we were struggling with. At the end, it had to make sense. We had recordings from ‘94 or ‘95 that sounded so indie—super charming, but not professional. We decided to modernize the sound.
Chase: But all that meant was we were going to do what our instincts told us to do. We weren’t trying consciously tipping our hat to the era that that sketch had been created in. We decided, “Let’s do what we’ve always done.” And here we are. It was, maybe at first, a conscious decision to not try to finish it within the spirit that it had been created in, but that’s literally 20 minutes of a talk. From then on, we recalibrated and, for the next year that we met, for a week at a time throughout that year, we wouldn’t even think about it. We were just trying to make the song cool.
“Say You Will” is from 2009. What ended up being the oldest song on the record?
Driscoll: Andy, you had Shallow Hal demos.
Chase: We scored the music to Shallow Hal in 2001 and had a lot of outtakes from that.
Driscoll: “Mystery Girl” sounds like the Apartment Life era.
Chase: “Mystery Girl” was from 1997, that was an outtake from the Apartment Life sessions. Sometimes, we’d listen to these sketches that got aborted and tried to remember who was the guilty culprit in Ivy that railroaded that song and stopped us from working on it.
Durand:Me!
Chase: It was usually the pesky French singer.
Durand: There’s a song, “Midnight Hour,” that we originally wrote a demo of for a movie. I don’t remember which movie, but they didn’t take it. So we recorded the first verse and chorus. I’m singing the lyrics and everything, but that was it. But we kind of liked it—we liked the song—so we said, “Well, let’s finish it!” We wrote the second verse and then finished the song. We kept my vocal from 20 years ago for the first verse and first chorus, and then the second verse and the second chorus is me today. It’s crazy, because we barely hear the difference.
Talk to me about “Fragile People” and why that became such an emotional and important track for you three.
Durand: We don’t have an answer about that. It was purely a feeling when we were working on it. I love that song but, at some point, Andy and I were listening to the track and, at the same moment, we started to get very emotional. We looked at each other and we were floored, like, why at that moment? Maybe it was because the chords change—
Chase: Was this before the lyrics? Because I remember, once you sang, the lyrics evoked some feeling that I think, for both of us, somehow touched on Adam and his passing. It’s not overt but, to us being in the band, it was hard to listen to it for a long time. It made me think about Adam more than any other song on the record.
Is there a specific part in any of these songs that you feel really encapsulates how great Adam was? I’m thinking of the guitar part in “Hate That It’s True” especially, but I’m curious if there’s something that, when you hear it, reminds you why Adam made Ivy so great.
Driscoll: In the variety of what he’s doing across all the tracks—on “Hate That It’s True,” that’s him on acoustic; on “Fragile People,” that’s him on bass; on “Midnight Hour,” he’s doing drum fills before the choruses—you see how much he was music. He could do any instrument. He could do anything, and his chord choices were always cool. He just had that in him. When he had a part on a track, it was vital to whatever we were working on. Ideas were always just pouring out of him, and you can hear it.
Chase: There’s an interesting realization that I have about this new album. Traditionally, Adam and I would play all the instruments. And, after the record was done, neither of us could really remember who played what, other than if Adam played drums, because he had a very certain way of playing. Any of the guitar parts, any of the keyboard parts, the sequencing—we had no idea, in the end, who did what. We totally forgot. And we know now that Traces of You at least has Adam on each song. Sometimes he’s playing two instruments but, generally it’s just one, because there wasn’t that much to work with from those files. And yet, now, I have no idea who’s playing what. We tried to brush up on it, because we knew we might be asked this question by you. But, honestly, it turned into another typical Ivy record, where I can’t tell who’s playing what parts. And I love that. It means we were a school of fish all working together and moving in a way that we weren’t even aware of.
It’s not lost on me either that the album is called Traces of You and Adam is on every single thing. Was the demo of that song always called that? It feels serendipitous that you get to pay tribute to Adam in that way.
Durand: I don’t think it was called that.
Driscoll: It was called, like, “Idea 9.”
Durand: While we were looking for a title for the record, because “Traces of You” is not even going to be a single, we felt like that was, in a way, the perfect title for the record—because there are traces of him everywhere.
Chase: There wasn’t anything that had a normal title. We would title things like “Stupid Cat,” or “Idea 9,” or “Another Wacky Idea,” because, at the time, we were like, “Ha-ha, another wacky idea!” 20 years later, that would mean nothing to us. And that would make it even harder, because we had our work cut out for us. Like, how do we turn that into a song?
How did working on this music, and being able to begin Ivy’s send-off, bring the three of you closer together?
Driscoll: After Adam’s passing and how heavy that was for all of us, it was beautiful to see [Durand and Chase] in their element, having a great time making music. Being able to see, and enjoy, Dominique’s singing again in the studio—hearing her voice come through the monitors, hearing that she could still sing, because she hadn’t in a long time, and she was singing maybe better than ever.
Durand: I didn’t think I could sing anymore.
Chase: We kept saying, “Do you have a doctor’s note? Who told you you can’t sing?” And she was like, “I’m too old, I cannot sing.” It was interesting, because, like she said, she sang the second verse [of “Midnight Hour”] in 2023, and the first verse was sung in the late ‘90s. We A-B’d the two to prove to her, like, “Can you tell which era you sang this in?” “No.” “Come on, you still got it.”
Driscoll: We did multiple trips over a year or so, getting together for a week at a time. We felt like family. My son came, my wife came. We were all hanging out in a house together, making this.
Durand: It was a very intimate and joyful experience, which was really nice, because we didn’t want it to be heavy. It was a very deep experience, but we didn’t want it to be so sullen and somber.
Chase: We went through a year of real grieving after Adam passed away. We weren’t even that public, in any statements. It was a very difficult period for us. So, when we found ourselves in the studio with Bruce, it was a good thing. We got all of that grieving out of our system. And that was important, because we wouldn’t have gotten through this record if we tried to make it, for some weird reason, the year after he passed away. It would have been impossible.
Durand: When we first discovered the demos and we would hear Adam talking to me or making a joke, it was so painful. We could barely stand it. Years later, it was so great to hear his voice. I love to hear when he’s talking to me and giving me a hard time. It’s amazing, how time completely changes everything—the way you can listen to things, or hear things, or accept things.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that this year is also the 30th anniversary of your career-changing tour with Edwyn Collins. I love him. “I Guess I’m Just A Little Too Sensitive” is one of my favorite songs of all time, and I know that was a big track for you. What do you remember from around that time, when you found out that Edwyn liked your cover?
Durand: I was the big Orange Juice fan. Adam and Andy didn’t even know the band.
Chase: You were like, “I think we should do a cover,” and Adam and I were like, “Okay, cool. What are you thinking?” You say, “‘I Guess I’m Just A Little Too Sensitive’ by a band called Orange Juice.” We were like, “Fuck no!”
Durand: They were like, “Are you fucking kidding? This is so cheesy. It’s outdated. There’s no way.” But I convinced them. And I don’t even remember how it went to Edwyn, but he listened to the version and he was super thankful.
Chase: It was in the early days of email. I think it was, like, ‘95, and we got an email that came to our label. They forwarded it to us and it said, “Thank you for doing justice to my little ditty.” That’s all.
Durand: When we got that note, I was so happy. Orange Juice was big in Europe but, in America, nobody knew. Then, he came up with his solo record and “A Girl Like You” became this radio sensation. He asked us if we wanted to open for him. Imagine for me, being the biggest fan, how exciting that was. I couldn’t believe it! We had the best time. He was a real character, and the band was amazing. They had Paul Cook, the drummer from the Sex Pistols, on tour with them, and they were all Scottish. Every time they talked to us, we couldn’t understand anything, because of the accents.
Chase: Edwyn could be really cantankerous, especially if he was drinking. He started getting really pissed at his shows, because people would come and have no idea about who he was. They just wanted to hear “A Girl Like You.” It got to the point where, when somebody would scream “A Girl Like You!,” he’d say, “The next motherfucker that asks for that song, I’m fucking walking off the stage.” And somebody else would yell “A Girl Like You!” and he would drop his guitar. And that was the end of the show. He didn’t fuck around. I grew to really love his music and respect him.
Were there nights where the audience would hear more Ivy songs than Edwyn Collins songs?
Chase: I think it got so bad that somebody in their entourage would say to the management of the venue, “Tell people not to yell ‘A Girl Like You’ or the show’s going to end early.”
Durand: He had so many great, amazing songs and the American audience was there just because he was on the radio. They were not real music lovers. They had no idea. I can’t imagine how frustrating it was for him. But he was great.
Were you playing the cover, or was he playing it in his set? Was there overlap?
Durand: It wasn’t in his set, but we played it. Most of the audience didn’t even know that it was an Orange Juice song. A few times, which was so sweet of him, he came on stage to sing with me.
Chase: He would come up at the end of our set, which was cool, because, as a headliner, most people play it cool. They’re not going to come on with the opening bad before they go on. Our first day on tour, we were sound-checking, and he walked in. We hadn’t met yet, and he’s standing there listening to it. We said, “Let’s sound-check ‘I Guess I’m Just A Little Too Sensitive.’” He came up afterwards and introduced himself. And he was like, “What are you singing in that line?” Dominique was like, “Oh, a ‘tatter drag.’ Yeah, we were trying to figure that out when we were recording it in New York City. ‘Tatter drag,’ that must be some expression.” And he was like, “It’s a ‘tattered rag,’ not ‘tattered drag.’” We were like, ‘Oh, fuck!’” and he said, “Yeah, I meant to tell you that when I heard your little ditty, but it’s okay.”
Matt Mitchell is Paste’s music editor, reporting from their home in Los Angeles.
