Those in search of quality vegan food need not turn to a crunchy backpacker for advice. Instead, ask the members of the Brooklyn-based rock band Parts & Labor. Between vegetarian Dan Friel on keyboard, guitar, electronics and vocals, allergic-to-fish BJ Warshaw on bass, electronics and vocals, and lactose-intolerant Christopher R. Weingarten on drums, the local vegan – or at least vegetarian – restaurants they encounter while touring offer the easiest accommodations for these diet-restricted, explosive rockers.
“It’s certainly not glamorous, but I’m loving it,” says Weingarten, who described touring as seeing the roads, venues, record shops and vegan restaurants and finding “some dude’s floor” to crash on at every stop.
On April 8, Parts & Labor performed on their home turf, at the Williamsburg, N.Y., indie haven, North Six. The concert – a record release party for the band’s newest album, Stay Afraid – featured other bands, including fellow passionate noisemakers Oneida.
Friel, who says he woke up around 2 p.m. the day after the show, says it went “amazingly.”
“It drew a lot of people who wouldn’t be at a noisy, hipster-rock clusterfuck in Brooklyn,” Friel says.
The new LP, Stay Afraid – a follow-up to both 2003’s Groundswell and a split album with Tyondai Braxton from the same year, Rise, Rise, Rise – may in fact attract a larger audience for the already-praised band.
Friel and Warshaw share vocal duties on Stay Afraid, the band’s first album to feature vocals on every track. Another change is the addition of Weingarten, who joined Parts & Labor in 2004. Although he has toured with the band, this is Weingarten’s first appearance on an album.
Weingarten’s drum style is fast and hard. “Chris is a ball of energy when we play,” Friel says.
For Weingarten, it’s as much about throbbing beats as throbbing muscles.
“I just sort of get up there and play until I feel physical pain,” Weingarten says. “If I don’t feel like I’m hurting myself, I just hit harder. If it gets to the point where I can’t hit harder or play faster, I know I’m where I should be.”
To transport the band’s frenetic force into the new album, Parts & Labor needed a good engineer. They found one – Scott Norton – at Headgear studios in Brooklyn, Warshaw says.
“We put so much distortion on our stuff, which makes it sound like a wall of sound,” Warshaw says. Enlisting Norton, who familiarized himself with the band’s live sound, helped make Stay Afraid the album that it is.
“Most of what you hear on the record is what we’re able to reproduce live. I think the way we did it was just to stay true to what we do,” Warshaw says.
The album is just that: a wall of sound smashed open by catchy instrumental riffs and fast, nervous vocal melodies.
“The record is a little more of a punk-rock record than I realized we were making at the time,” Friel says. “It’s fast. I’m really proud of it.”
Warshaw echoed the sentiment, describing Parts & Labor as high-energy punk-rock that retained its experimental influences on the new album, which runs just over half-an-hour. Friel’s solo keyboard work still impacts the band, Warshaw says.
Parts & Labor formed from Friel and Warshaw’s friendship. In 1999, both worked at the Knitting Factory, a New York concert venue. They sometimes played together, but Warshaw moved away from New York and Friel began experimenting on a toy keyboard and recorded an album. When Warshaw returned, he and Friel, along with original drummer Jim Sykes, formed Parts & Labor.
“We started making rock versions out of these experimental keyboard melodies,” Warshaw says.
Those rock versions have exploded into an unruly, heart-pounding mixture of the songs that nod at the band’s other influences: H
