When its standing, two-hour practice sessions came to a dead stop after more than 15 years at the same location, at the same time, Mucca Pazza was left wondering how it would carry on in the wake of the pandemic. It was difficult enough for artists to survive the months of shutdown, but what about a rockin’ marching band/theater troupe of 30-odd people?
“It was a dark time,” confesses Andy Dietrich, one of the act’s original drummers and composers and treasurer of its business arm, Leather Bus.
“I was holding my breath to see if we’d survive,” he said. “We’d also lost our rehearsal space, so it was like we’d lost our home. I didn’t know if we would have the infrastructure, the personnel or the drive to restart that big ocean-going barge that is Mucca Pazza. But there’s so much that drew us all back. This year, 2023, is really the band waking up again. It’s revitalized and it feels really good.”
Formed in 2004 along the banks of the Chicago River, practicing in the parking lot of a steel mill, Mucca Pazza has thrilled audiences from Lollapalooza and the Montreal Jazz Festival to the Lincoln Center with its thunderous live show. A group of talented musicians and respected performance artists from the city’s underground, the group’s goal has been to spread joy through what it admits is “goofy” and “absurd,” but is an act that has provided care and community to more than 60 members since its inception. Initially, they were just eight. Within the first six months, eight ballooned to 20, and 20 climbed to hold steady now at 30(ish).
The outfit’s perseverance speaks to its roots in the city: Referring to its vibe as “Chicago-style,” Dietrich says the city is a place where “people get to work and don’t get caught up too much in complaining and just get things done.” That has instilled a similar work ethic in Chicago’s artists. If those survival skills hadn’t been obvious over the course of Mucca Pazza’s previous existence, they certainly came to the fore during the pandemic.
Every member remained dedicated to Mucca Pazza’s vision and intrepid approach to music-making, exploring new boundaries and contributing individual compositions for its new LP, “Get Pumped!” Released in May, it’s their first in nine years.
The album is a dizzying, spectacular deepening of the band’s unique marriage of the marching band format and aesthetic with rock sensibilities and vaudevillian charm. At times, guitars mimic psychedelic, carnivalesque accordions, while flourishes of cymbals and tambourines exude whimsicality; other songs like “Almost Ready” gravitate toward a swampy, New Orleans brass band sound with elements of swing. The album’s finale, “The Master and the Ghost,” is simply epic in its rhythmic and stylistic changes.
A year ahead of their 20th anniversary, they’ve returned in fighting form, recently undertaking a five-day tour that wrapped the last of their canceled 2020 performances. Once pandemic bans were being lifted, rehearsal resumed. And for member Melissa McNeal Adams — celebrating a decade as a trombone and flute player with the group — the beauty of being able to pick up where they left off was overwhelming.
“I sobbed like a baby,” she laughs on a joint call with Deitrich and sousaphone player Akshat Jain, who joined in September 2021.
“We did a couple of projects where we recorded our parts individually, or would film ourselves individually in our homes. We got hired to do a gig where the client sent each of us this colored backdrop, and we recorded our parts in our uniform and ‘performed’ that way to the camera with the cat hanging around. It was fine,” she continues. “But the first rehearsal where we came back and were able to be in-person with each other, I wept as I played. It felt miraculous to be able to be back doing this thing that means so much to me.”
What the three members go on to describe has been called “Mucca 3.0”: the third iteration of a collective willing to listen and try new things to keep people invested in and empowered by the creative spirit. Its current organizational structure developed in part due to 10 years of static leadership that led to the departure of several members. The new structure is also a product of necessity — to avoid burnout, to share the load, to provide different opportunities and to be transparent with one another.
And the current personnel are realistic and optimistic about what’s ahead, brimming with what Adams calls “pent-up energy.”
“Doing things this way, working out new tunes — it takes a long time. We have different people coming to rehearsal, different combinations of people, and a lot of stuff to get through in our two hours,” Dietrich explains. “Some of these pieces we performed first live, maybe eight years ago. It’s taken up until now for them to be mature enough to be on an album. We also do a lot of theatrical work during rehearsals. The performance art aspect of a show is just as important as the music and the impact that it might have on the audience. We work really hard on choreography, we work really hard on ‘what do we do at the end of this song?’”
“It’s very easy to just freeze,” he adds, “but we want to work on these transitions between pieces. The cheerleaders in the band, they lead the theatrical exercises. That’s all part of what we’re working on every week.”
As one can imagine, getting this “ocean barge” of an ensemble “down the block to Square Roots Festival — let alone Europe one day,” jokes Jain—is daunting, and a much bigger investment than for a trio or quartet. To alleviate the burden of planning falling always to one or two people, they’ve established a rotating leadership structure, for the long-term and gig to gig, that ensures everyone has a voice. Decision-making around performances is informed by where a gig falls on a Venn diagram that includes a) fun, b) building community, and c) making money (it should do at least two).
“In more traditional ensembles, you may not be afforded those experiences of being able to musically direct a gig or learn how to do the finances,” Jain says. “Chicago tends to keep people around because the community is very strong. It’s a loyal place. Once you find your people, you’re with those people, and you’re there to support them and uplift them. From the smallest degree of needing a water to ‘how do we book this gig?’ Mucca does that super well, and it’s why I wanted to join. It’s why people still want to join.”
