Sean Nelson of Harvey Danger: There's life after a one-hit wonder

When I met Sean Nelson in his now-hometown of Seattle in 2001, the L.A. native had already peaked as a pop star.

His band, Harvey Danger, had one big hit perched atop the Modern Rock charts 10 years ago -- “Flagpole Sitta,” a lovely burst of poison sunshine that perfectly captured alt-rock’s transition from grunge-era heaviness to Death Cab-style cheerful neuroticism. (You remember it: “I’m not sick, but I’m not well,” Sean sang, his choir-boy tenor cracking on the high note. If you've forgotten, this YouTube video should jar your memory.)

“10 years ago (pretty much exactly), we had the number one song on KROQ, and sold out the Troubadour, The Roxy and The Viper Room during the summer. Next week we'll play in front of 60 people. And we're happy,” Sean wrote in a recent e-mail announcing Saturday’s acoustic Harvey Danger show at Largo.

I thought that was interesting. Here’s a guy who’d lived the rock-star dream for a nanosecond -- and he’s more content now that chance has faded away. Sean’s life is a useful reminder that what happens after fame, especially for a one-hit wonder, matters more than the “big moment.” I thought others might learn from his example, so I asked him to write up a timeline of his experiences since that fateful “Flagpole Sitta” summer.

-- Ann Powers

Life since "Flagpole Sitta"
by Sean Nelson of Harvey Danger

1998: Harvey Danger has a surprise hit that simultaneously invents and destroys their career.

December 1998-September 2000: Record, deliver and await the release of "King James Version" (London-Sire), major label follow-up to surprise hit debut album.
We made all the standard mistakes of a band trying to follow up a successful record -- spend a lot of money, work in an expensive studio, intentionally change our sound in an effort to be taken more seriously, etc. Still, we definitely put everything we had into making 'KJV.' But the music biz had just begun to consolidate, and thanks to various reshufflings, we spent almost two stultifying years waiting for the album to come out. It’s gratifying to know that it has become a legitimate cult item, but the way it sort of barely came out after such a huge build-up was a huge blow to my confidence.

2001: Becomes partner in Barsuk Records.
Barsuk was started by a couple of my closest friends to release records by Death Cab for Cutie, who were/are also good friends. After the humble but undeniable success of their first two albums, everyone concerned became interested in stepping things up, which included buying a proper studio in which Chris Walla could expand what was obviously becoming a powerfully original production aesthetic. It just so happened that at that very moment, an unexpected tax bill had put John and Stu’s Place (formerly Reciprocal Recording) -- a legendary room that had been the birthplace of such diverse albums as Nirvana’s "Bleach," Mudhoney’s "Superfuzz Bigmuff," Low’s "The Curtain Hits the Cast," Sleater-Kinney’s "Dig Me Out" and, uh, Harvey Danger’s "Where Have All the Merrymakers Gone?" -- on the market. So I came into the fold and Barsuk expanded its ambitions, which included an effort to encompass bands other than their star attraction. Death Cab broke in the new studio with "The Photo Album" and achieved glory there with "Transatlanticism." It remains amazing, though not surprising, that they are now Billboard chart-toppers -- I have no compunction about bragging that I saw it coming a decade ago when they played their first show in Seattle, opening for Harvey Danger.

2001: Harvey Danger breaks up.
Our business infrastructure had crumbled, we were being pressured to tour with the crappiest bands imaginable and we had lost the means of reaching the people who cared about what we were doing, so we stopped doing it. It appeared at that time that we had had all our good luck at once.

2001-04: Joins the Long Winters, records two albums, tours extensively.
My friend John Roderick, who had played keyboards and bass on the last Harvey Danger tour, invited me to join the support band for his debut album, which he, Chris Walla and I had produced together in Seattle. I was reluctant because I wondered if my visibility from HD, which I considered to be a colossally humiliating failure, would make me a sore thumb. But I love John’s songs beyond all reason and I feel like our voices harmonizing together constitutes something really powerful and exciting. So, I joined and embarked on two years of extensive touring with some of the biggest and best personalities it has ever been my pleasure to know. And be infuriated by. And to infuriate. I know for a fact I will never again laugh as hard and as much as I laughed in those years.

2001-08: Appears on records by Death Cab for Cutie ("The Photo Album," "Transatlanticism," "Plans"), Nada Surf ("The Weight Is a Gift," "Lucky"), The Decemberists ("Picaresque," a Crane Wife B-side), the Minus Five ("The Gun Album") and Robyn Hitchcock ("Olé! Tarantula," forthcoming follow-up), among others.
By far the neatest development was on the Hitchcock sessions, when I misheard a lyric on a song written by Robyn and Andy Partridge. I was supposed to sing “say parallelogram,” but I was sure it was “Saint Parallelogram” (this is, after all, Robyn Hitchcock, so it’s not like out of the question), and he liked it enough to change the title of the song to accommodate it. Hence, “It’s Love (Saint Parallelogram).” I mean, I was happy just to be in the room, but this!

2001-2006: Hosts "Audioasis," a weekly live music program on KEXP-FM in Seattle.

2004: Harvey Danger reforms to play 10^th anniversary show, decides to keep playing.

2005: HD records and releases  "Little By Little…" by making it available for free download.

2006: "Little By Little…" re-released by Kill Rock Stars. HD tours U.S. and Canada for the first time in six years.
There was a great sense of purpose and vindication at all stages of the reunion process. First, simply to play and enjoy one another. Then, to discover that it was still a noteworthy event when we get together to play -- news cameras, lines around the block, people flying in from three continents, etc. I know it’s bad form to brag about stuff like that, but it was such a relief to discover that anyone still cared after the ignominy of our final days. Then, onward to making new songs and a new record, and having done that, the challenge of making sense of a marketplace that had fundamentally changed. But the other thing that had fundamentally changed was our ambition. I knew "Little By Little…" wouldn’t please everyone, but we genuinely loved it. It pleased us. Therefore: success was built in. The idea of giving it away on our website was simply a way of removing the barriers between music and listener. It's nice to know we get mentioned in the Wall Street Journal article about the Radiohead experiment, but what’s nicer is knowing that close to 300,000 people downloaded the record that we know about. The North American tour brought the real closure. We found out just how eager were the people who had been waiting for us. They knew every line to every song, even the unreleased ones, they had theories about what the songs were about, they had stories about what the songs had meant to them at different times in their lives. They were right there, burning to let us know how much they appreciated our work.

2006: Writes "Court and Spark" for Continuum Press’s 33 1/3 series.
These books are so small, but they’re still really hard to write, because there’s always this threat of trying to be definitive. It’s basically a 30,000-word record review. For me anyway. For John Darnielle, it’s a first-person novella about a kid on a mental ward trying to get his counselor to give back his favorite Sabbath tape ("Master of Reality," one of the best books I’ve read all year, btw) … but I was thrilled to do it, because Joni Mitchell's "Court and Spark" is the first album I remember hearing my mother sing along with on the radio, driving through mid-'70s Laurel Canyon in a navy blue VW bug.

2006-07: "Nelson Sings Nilsson" album and shows.
I thought that doing a record of Harry Nilsson songs, based on the 1969 album Nilsson made of Randy Newman songs, would be both a great joke and a fun project to try. I was astonished to learn that most of my friends and confidantes (A) had never heard of Nilsson, or "Nilsson Sings Newman," and (B) thought it was a terrible idea anyway. Still, I soldiered on, and with the help of other friends and confidantes, made what I consider to be a most successful record of 15 songs. Still looking for someone to put it out, I confess… We did two shows in Seattle that were big, life-affirming successes, featuring me backed by a 27-piece rock band/orchestra including strings, horns, a marimba and a choir of little kids in their pajamas.

2007: Tours America and Canada with Robyn Hitchcock and the Venus 3, opening shows as a solo performer and playing as the modular fourth member of the band, which consists of Hitchcock, Peter Buck, Scott McCaughey and Bill Rieflin. Also tours with Hitchcock solo, opening the show and duetting with Robyn.
Just when you think you may be getting too old for rock ’n’ roll, or start feeling like the indignities of the touring life are getting to you comes a chance to tour with not just one, but four of the most inspiring and inspired musicians alive. I have played with Robyn at sold out opera houses to rapturous ovations and dinky rural Canadian bars in front of 22 paying customers alike, and I have watched him transform brilliantly into himself in both settings. One Sunday night last spring, the band was playing a hippie pizza restaurant in Eugene, Ore., and I thought, 'Jesus, this is too depressing for even me.' Then I saw Peter, a man who has played more Sunday night pizza joints than I ever will (and who never needs to play another), setting up his own amp and tuning his own guitar, getting ready for the show. This was about a week after he had been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Meanwhile, Bill was tuning his drums, Scott was putting a new string on the bass. Between the Soft Boys/Egyptians, R.E.M., the Young Fresh Fellows and Ministry(!), there was more rock history on that stage than anyone in the room could fully appreciate. Except me. I learned more about commitment to the life of a musician that night before the show started than I had on most tours I’d done combined. And it was an amazing show.

2007-08: Co-writes and stars in feature film "My Effortless Brilliance," playing a novelist having a hard time following up on early success. Film debuts at SXSW, travels festival circuit, winds up on Independent Film Channel.
Though the trappings of my character are kind of exaggeratedly autobiographical, the movie is really about the limitations of male friendship -- the film opens with a scene where my character gets dumped by his heterosexual male best friend for being a jerk. I then spend the rest of the movie trying to win him back. It’s a small, quiet movie with lots of talking (though it also has a cougar hunt!), and is vaguely related to the vaguely existent mumblecore movement, but mostly because the director is friends with the m-core directors. It’ll be on IFC's on demand system within the next month or so, then on DVD before the end of the year.

2008: Enters studio to finish recording “solo” album under the name Sean Nelson and His Mortal Enemies, featuring contributions and appearances by members of Death Cab for Cutie, R.E.M. and Shearwater.
I’ve been tinkering nervously with this material for a few years now as confidence allows. We’ll see what happens.

2008: Sings onstage with R.E.M., harmonizing to “(Don’t Go Back to) Rockville” in front of 10,000 people in Amsterdam.
This happened. To me. Less than a month ago. I was spending a couple of days on tour with the band as an invited guest, and at the first show of their European tour, I’m at the side of the stage, singing along to every word of this, my favorite song from "Reckoning," a tear in my eye, when I see that Peter Buck and Scott McCaughey -- my friends from Seattle and my sometime bandmates in the Venus 3 and Minus 5 -- are giving me the nod, telling me to come onstage and sing the harmony they knew I was singing to myself. So I ... did. And I know it happened because I saw it on YouTube. The members of Radiohead were backstage, looking the most like a band I have ever seen any band look. I chatted to a couple of them for very brief, very awkward exchanges. But the main thing was that we were all there in this unusual, unlikely space. Actually, sorry, no -- the thing was that I was there in their space and that it was unusual and unlikely for me. But my life in the wake of my brief success is built of such events, some sublime and some truly ridiculous. Sometimes I play on a cruise ship with fellow has-beens. Sometimes I play the little room at Largo, my favorite club in America. Sometimes I get to sing with R.E.M. in front of 10,000 Dutch people. As is so often the case, a Kinks song I couldn’t help humming that night after the show puts it best: “I can’t think of a place I’d rather be/ the whole wide world doesn’t mean so much to me/ for this is where I belong.”

Photo courtesy Sean Nelson

Comments

[sean]

Flagpole Sitta was a fantastic song. Can't take that away from this band ever.