proper robot technique. Blue Turtle Seduction is about to release a new record called 13 Floors and after drummer Adam Navone describes the idea behind the title, it seems that this album's heading may be the most accurate description of the South Lake Tahoe band that you're likely to stumble upon.
"It's got 13 songs on it. Each song is its own floor of a building; there's payroll, and the mailroom and all this different stuff. One floor is hardware, the next is lingerie, ya know. It's a cool analogy," Navone says.
What Navone is getting at here is that Blue Turtle Seduction is a band that one could spend the better part of a fortnight attempting to classify, and still come out with nothing to show for it but a migraine. I knew of people who were advised to go see "this killer bluegrass band called Blue Turtle Seduction," only to head out for what turned out to be a night of funk-filled rock, left wondering what trunk the aforementioned bluegrass band had been stuffed into. The thing is, however, that BTS can play bluegrass, and they can play it well, but they're not a friggin' bluegrass band, or a rock band, or a funk band, which is something Navone thinks fans up and down BTS' tour trodden West Coast path (Navone is visiting friends in Florida when he calls into the Source, describing his vacation as his "first week off the road since Christmas") are starting to grasp.
"Somebody came up to us not long ago and said that we play ten different styles of music to ten different people and I think that's a good way to put it," Navone says.
BTS is a name familiar to some Bend scenesters from the band's days stopping off at the Grove as well as playing both days of last year's 4 Peaks music fest, which they're trekking back up to again this summer. Those at 4 Peaks might remember harmonica player and vocalist Glenn Stewart saying something into the mic along the lines of "Man, we used to play at the Grove. The last time we played there we ended up skateboarding down the middle of downtown at three in the morning." People will also remember that BTS was the band that got the festival crowd on their feet and moving as they rushed from a twangy Americana song to a funk-a-licious groove and back again during their Saturday set.
With the album on its way - a record that Navone says is the band's best studio effort, far eclipsing the respectable, but audibly rushed Deep Sea Rodeo from 2006 - Navone sees good things along the road ahead. From speaking with this drummer and watching the band onstage, it's seems that these self-admitted ski-bum adrenaline junkies don't really give a shit about anything but having a good time, and the party music they produce is almost a byproduct. But either way, Navone acknowledges that this approach is working quite well, and takes what may come in stride.
"This band is just shrouded in serendipity. Things just happen when they're supposed to and it's really been fantastic," he says, without seeming to realize how jealous a statement like that can make us nine-to-fivers.
On the Ipod
Blue Turtle Seduction's Adam Navone
Hip-hop: "After the show when we're having a good time, we'll put on some hip-hop and have a dance party on the bus."
Manu Chao: "We cover a couple of their songs; they're just amazing."
Modest Mouse: "Some of us are really into just rocking."
Blue Turtle Seduction
9pm doors, 10pm show. The Annex, 51 NW Greenwood Ave. $10/door only. 21 and over.