Their smash hit “Closer to Free” remains one of the most iconic songs of the 1990s.
This week, BoDeans perform for three nights at three different venues in the D.C. area, starting with Rams Head in Annapolis, Maryland, on Wednesday, May 15, followed by The Birchmere in Alexandria, Virginia, on May 17 and the Tally Ho Theater in Leesburg, Virginia, on May 19.
“I have many great memories of touring that area of the country, going all the way back to the late ’80s and ’90s and 2000s,” Founder Kurt Neumann told WTOP. “I tell people when I go and play shows these days that I’m going to play six decades of music for them because I do some cover songs from the ’70s. It’s a lot of music, it’s a lot of years on the road, it’s a lot of shows played, so we have lots of memories with fans from the area for many years.”
Born in Milwaukee in 1961, Neumann formed BoDeans in Waukesha, Wisconsin in 1983.
“For me, BoDeans is kind of a combination of Bo Diddley and James Dean, who were two very cool figures in the ’50s,” Neumann said. “When rock ‘n roll was first coming up and forming, you had these iconic characters of rebellion and cool rock ‘n roll music, so that’s what the name always meant for me. … When you’re 20 years old and you’re starting a band, you’re definitely a ‘Rebel Without a Cause.'”
Their first album “Love & Hope & Sex & Dreams” (1986) was produced by T Bone Burnett. It was such a catchy breakthrough that readers of Rolling Stone magazine voted them the Best New American Band in 1987.
“We got a lot of airplay and a lot of news articles and stuff about us, so I think a lot of people were curious,” Neumann said. “People really dug what we were doing, it was very different from the music going on at the time, which was very much the glam, hard, heavy rock, MTV video bands or new wave, then all of a sudden we were playing this raw Americana music. It was really new for the time and it really caught people the right way.”
They experimented with different producers after that. Their second album “Outside Looking In” (1987) was produced by Jerry Harrison of Talking Heads, their third album “Home” (1989) was produced by Jim Scott and their fourth album “Black and White” (1991) was produced by Prince cohort David Z at Paisley Park Studios.
“The second record you have all of this critical acclaim but the record company wants to get you on the radio, which is a whole ‘nother ballgame, and Jerry Harrison was from our hometown of Milwaukee,” Neumann said. “We worked with Jim Scott [on the third album], another really fun record. When we got to the fourth album, the record company loved us but were frustrated. They wanted us to break to a bigger audience, so they thought if we worked with David Z, who had more of a pop radio mentality, that maybe we’d get more traction.”
They returned to their raw American roots for their fifth album “Go Slow Down” (1993), reuniting with T Bone Burnett as executive producer. The album featured the hit song “Idaho,” but the opening track “Closer to Free” didn’t really blow up until it became the theme song of the coming-of-age TV show “Party of Five” (1994-2000).
“It was just a fun, uptempo rock song from the beginning,” Neumann said. “It had great energy and was a lot of fun. For us, for BoDeans, that’s just our sound and style, uptempo rock songs like that. … ‘Closer to Free’ didn’t really get played, but years later when they were testing it for the TV show theme, all of a sudden the TV companies put a lot of money behind making it something — and then it got played everywhere.”
Today, the band has a permanent installation at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland.
“There’s an installation about Midwestern rock bands and we’re one of those bands that are in the installation,” Neumann said. “As a band, music artist, whatever, it’s flattering that you’d ever get anything in the Hall of Fame. You go there and you look at Jimi Hendrix, Rolling Stones and all this stuff, and you’re like, ‘Wow, somebody heard my music and put a guitar of mine and some lyrics up as well?’ That’s quite a big compliment.”
Listen to our full conversation on the podcast below:
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