Cake

With a career that spans almost 20 years, the band Cake has outlasted countless contemporaries and proven to be a tenacious survivor in an industry that often seems geared towards impermanence. While the business of music has seen its share of evolution, both financial and technological, for Cake the old saying still rings true: the more things change, the more they stay the same. Now, as ever, it's all about the songs. And in the case of Cake, infectiously catchy songs propelled by old-school groove and unique lyrics that are simultaneously both cuttingly clever and full of genuine insight.

With Cake's newest album, Showroom of Compassion, just hitting the stores, Guitar Center hosted the band in the Hollywood store's Vintage Room for an engaging episode of Guitar Center Sessions. They performed and chatted with host Nic Harcourt (KCRW and The Live Buzz) about a wide variety of topics, including their early years. Cake got their start in the Northern California city of Sacramento, a laid back environment that played a big part in developing their highly individual sound. "It was all about cheap rent in Sacramento," remembers singer John McCrea. "You could live cheaply enough to work maybe three days a week and spend the rest of the week playing music and so we were able to just really spend a lot of time on making music."

Trumpet player Vince DiFiore adds, "Sacramento felt like a safe place to play music. People came out of their apartments and gathered at all the downtown spots and were just very open to music any way you wanted to present it. There wasn't a lot of industry pressure or anything like that. For us it was a great experience and I think that was a good beginning. It just laid the groundwork for growth."

From the very beginning, Cake's music was different, a conscious reaction against everything McCrea disliked about the music scene of the early 1990s, particularly grunge. "It was sort of a reactionary gesture against grunge," he recalls, "which we thought of as just another form of big, dumb American rock. Sort of like just another wide load, massive cultural gesture with a little bit of self-loathing mixed in. But we didn't really believe the self-loathing because the amp was up to 11. So we initially just wanted to have a band and turn our volume down really low." And that afforded Cake their own, albeit quiet, rebellion against grunge.

Cake self-released their first album, Motorcade of Generosity, before signing with indie label Capricorn, who re-released their debut. Capricorn issued the band's next two releases, Fashion Nugget, which spawned the hit single "The Distance" and their "I Will Survive" cover, and Prolonging the Magic, which featured the hit "Never There". Then the band made the move to a major label, signing with Columbia for their next two records, 2001's Comfort Eagle and 2004's Pressure Chief.

While the move to major label territory offered some advantages, the band was accustomed to being in control and the relationship with Columbia had its challenges. "Our interface with the major label system was not an easy one," McCrea remembers. "A lot of the reason is because we're sort of like a do-it-yourself project that went too far. We design our own record covers and posters and direct our own videos. We produce our own albums. We engineer our own albums. We do a lot of stuff. It's a lot of work and the major label thing is really about a lot of different people taking lots of different jobs and more about politics and about release schedules. We had some frustration in that environment."

Cake ended their relationship with Columbia and declared their independence with the collection B-Sides and Rarities, which featured previously unreleased songs, live tracks, and a diverse group of covers including Black Sabbath's "War Pigs" and Barry White's "Never, Never Gonna Give You Up." The album was the first Cake self-released on their own label, Upbeat Records.

Once again, Cake's destiny is entirely theirs to chart. Control has been extended to every aspect of their music, including building their own studio, Upbeat Studio, in their hometown of Sacramento. Not only does Upbeat serve as a home base for writing, arranging and recording, it also turned into something of a green project. As of 2008, the studio was converted to run on 100% solar power, completely disengaged from Sacramento's power grid. "We looked into it and found it was pretty easy and fairly expensive in the short run but not expensive in the long run," says guitarist Xan McCurdy. "As the price of recorded music has plummeted to free, bands don't get paid what they used to. It's forcing us to go out on the road more, and we always carry this feeling of guilt about how much bus and jet fuel gets burned. It's impossible to be a working band and be totally off the grid, but we try to minimalize our footprint if possible."

The freedom and creative control Cake worked so hard for has paid off in the form of their new, self-released and self-produced album Showroom of Compassion. But while self-producing helps the band retain control, it doesn't necessarily make things easy. John McCrea insists it's always an effort to find the right sounds; "I think that you can use your energy in one of two ways in regard to finding the right sound. You can use a lot of energy trying to describe to another person the sound that you want, or another option is using a certain amount of energy just trying to get the sound yourself. And so both ways you're expending energy. One, you're trying to communicate to someone else exactly what it is, and sometimes sounds are fairly ephemeral and hard to pinpoint with words, and so I think we just started having this desire to turn knobs ourselves."

While McCrea remains the primary songwriter, bringing in ideas, lyrics and unpolished songs, the entire band plays a role in the writing, arranging and recording process. "A big part of the music happens after I bring the songs to the band and we write bass lines and trumpet parts and keyboard parts. We just live with these songs, maybe for a long time. We get really involved in recording for a long time and then we have to step back for a few weeks sometimes just to get perspective. It takes you a few weeks to realize that the guitar part you spent 16 hours to get just right actually sucks and it's better to just erase that part. That's what an outside producer would tell you, but we do it the hard way. So it's an absolutely grueling process."

Cake's do-it-yourself approach inspired every member of the group to step up and contribute, which meant a wealth of ideas, but also the need to consider everyone's input and opinions, which took time. "I would say it's probably our most democratic album, in terms of everyone participating, coming up with a lot of ideas and really being present during the process. And that's not always been the case in the past. I think it's just a matter of everyone in the band becoming more and more confident with their ideas. That said, democracy is sometimes really slow and tedious, so that's why it took over two years to finish. But once we were finished we had this album that everyone feels very invested in, which is a great feeling."

With a new album out, Cake are bringing their signature sound to cities across the country. Despite the frequent headaches of touring, the members of Cake agree that playing live is really what it's all about. "That's what makes us feel real," says DiFiore. "Going out and performing, that's what a band does and we enjoy doing that. It makes the music better. It makes it more of an event that there are some guys playing music together. And that's what live shows are all about. I mean even if it wasn't an industry thing, something that we had to do to fund the band, I'm sure that it would be something we felt we needed to do for the existence of the band."

The more things change, the more they stay the same. The music industry may be in constant flux, but Cake have carved out their own niche by relying on some very traditional virtues – great songs, intelligent lyrics and good old fashioned live gigs. Throw in a hefty dose of creative independence and you've got a recipe for a band that's in it for the long term, on their own terms.