Countless are the bands who keep going well past their expiration date, devolving into sad, depressing shades of their former selves (ahem, R.E.M.). On Friday night, John Davis, Harris Klahr and Chris Richards of D.C.'s Q and Not U did what few bands can find the guts to do: they ended with a bang, not a whimper.
"With all of your support, we feel that we've reached all of our shared goals as Q and Not U and we're ready to move on to other projects in life. We all hope to play music together again someday, but we feel that it's a beautiful and natural time to bring this band to a close," guitarist/bassist/singer Chris Richards wrote in an email to online music magazine Pitchfork early last year.
"I feel like this decision had been coming for a really long time, that the three of us just needed to gather the courage and say, 'OK, we should stop,'" said Klahr, guitarist/singer/keyboardist of the band, in an interview with The Eagle. "It seemed better to part ways on what we felt was an artistic high and remain friends at the same time."
It was a tough decision to make. There seemed to be a faint hint of melancholy while talking to members of the band, but they also acknowledge that it is for the best.
"We did a lot, we did enough to be satisfied, but I do feel we could certainly have done a lot more than what we did," Davis said.
Q and Not U, incidentally, has a very strong AU connection. Not only have they played a few shows in the Kay Spiritual Life Center, but their first good show as a three piece (following the departure of bassist Matt Borlik in 2002) was in the SIS Lounge, which cemented the trio's belief that they could keep the band going.
Yet after three albums and seven years, Klahr admits it would have been easy to just fall into a rut, where the band would take the place of any new explorations they wanted to individually pursue.
"I think we just didn't have enough energy left for Q and Not U and for all this new stuff and have the new things be just a side project," said Davis. "I think we all did want to do some kind of different music separately, and that if we kept Q and Not U together, these things would be considered side projects."
It was also important for the band to quit before their personal friendships with each other got the better of them. So many bands have held on for too long, eventually being torn apart by each other. Though there was no evidence of this yet, the intensely ideological band had their share of arguments.
"It was sort of like we'd come to the end of the time we could all say, 'Yes, that is what we want to do.' Now any kind of decision we have to make outside of playing music, it just kind of grinds the band to a halt," said Klahr.
All three members of the band have new projects on the table, some further along in the process than others.
De facto front man Chris Richards has already finished an album and played shows under the name "RisPaulRic."
"It only appears that he immediately made a new record. But he's worked on it for a long time. It's very considered and planned out; he didn't just rush a new record out," Davis said, of his former band mate. "He just jumped right back out, which is what I think he needed to do - just play, and still be active."
The other two members took a little longer to assess the situation and come to terms with the fact that the band they'd been in for the past seven years is over.
John Davis, who's been playing guitar for 17 years, long before drums, will be one of two multi-instrumentalists in his new project.
"I'm in a band with a friend of mine, I think we've been working for about two or three months. I'm kind of playing everything; we're just writing," Davis said, of his new project. "It's been really fun to get to write, like to be one of the main writers. In Q and Not U, I was definitely able to be a songwriter. But in this band, there's more of me and her in a song."
Davis' band has recorded one song, a children's song for a Desoto Records compilation.
Klahr is also working on a project, tentatively entitled "President," in which he is doing all instrumentation and recording himself on his computer.
"I've been working on music since last spring. It's going to be a band, but it's really just me right now. I don't want to get into a position where I feel like I have to be playing music and I have to be playing shows, because I think that's a real easy way to make a lot of shitty music."
So what's next for the D.C. rock scene, as its arguably biggest band goes by the wayside? Chris Richards had something to say about that at the band's second to last show on Thursday, giving an open call for the next wave of D.C. rock.
"Some people think D.C. isn't a place for music, because there's no industry here," he said. "But there's love here, and struggle."
Q and Not U made it through this struggle back in the late '90s, Harris Klahr pointed out.
"Our mission, from the beginning, was to provide sort of a younger voice and face to this idea of a D.C. scene, because I really believed in it, and still believe in it. And I think this is a very important town for music"
