The Gated Community has a new album coming out called Goodbye Work. It is a smart social commentary on where the world is today and how we got here. As an added plus, it sounds great. You can hear it live at the release show June 1 at the Parkway Theater.
Tell us how you got together to do music. And what keeps you together for an impressive 20 years?
The band was formed in January 2006 in my (Sumanth Gopinath’s) apartment in the West Bank neighborhood of Minneapolis, on Cedar Ave. across from the Cedar Cultural Center. Thinking of the protest group Billionaires for Bush, I came up with the name The Gated Community. Four or five of us met in my apartment and started working on songs I’d written and covers, and things took off from there. From that time, two of us (Sumanth and Cody Johnson, bassist) are still in the band. The other four band members have been involved for at least a decade; drummer/guitarist Paul Hatlelid has been in the band for fifteen years! Lots of things have kept the band going, but one key part of it is that our friendship is just as important, and maybe more important, than being in the band per se. The pandemic was an important moment for realizing how much The Gated Community meant to everyone: Rosie Harris (vocalist, banjo player, and cellist) wrote to the group, saying that she missed us, and we started figuring out a way to rehearse over Zoom (which was frustrating, but useful in the moment).
The new album, Goodbye Work, feels like a snapshot of now in a great way. With ups and downs. Can you tell me more about “Took In”? Because of my day job (tech-related), I love this as much as a cautionary tale as a song.
We’re so glad you like the song! “Took In” was written in May 2023, and it was initially imagined in response to the Velvet Underground, one of my favorite bands. The opening groove starts off a little like “Pale Blue Eyes,” but then veers off pretty quickly from there. The glockenspiel part in the chorus is a nod to the celesta part (played by John Cale) that opens “Sunday Morning.” And the story is loosely inspired by the song “The Gift,” although the idea of being put into a box, then waiting for years, and then eventually coming out—all for money—makes one think of all sorts of things: The Matrix, phishing/scam phone calls, and, more generally, a parable and metaphor for our tech-laden world (like AI and LLMs) and/or what it means to go to work, which is a key theme of the album. (Cody, who sings the song, says that it reminds him of Kurt Vonnegut’s stories.)
“All Wrong” is a touching song. I have interviewed many people experiencing homelessness for the annual “homeless survey.” And there are so many pictures of what that looks like – especially at the onset. What drove you to write the song? It’s such a gentle reminder of what not having a home can look and happen.
As you know especially well from your interviews, homelessness is one of the major present-day crises in the US, and it is beyond frustrating that our cities and communities seem perpetually incapable of building enough affordable housing for people so that they don’t have to live on the street, in tents or their cars, or crash on the couches of family, friends, and acquaintances. Indeed, surely in part because of the ironic “gated community” bandname, homelessness has come up periodically in my songs, including “I’m in Jail” and “Particular.” This album treats it in at least two songs, both sung by Beth Hartman (vocalist/percussionist in the band and my partner): “All Wrong” and “No More Water.” (“Losing My Wages” can also be interpreted as being about someone who loses their home.) What is, for me, striking about “All Wrong,” which was written in spring 2022, is that the narrator frames their situation as being on the run or on the move, and the language of the song echoes heartbreak-and-ramble songs like “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” by Bob Dylan…but it’s not a love song. (The narrator just needs to crash with someone for the night.) Indeed, the “all right” of Dylan’s song is included in the chorus, but then answered by “all wrong.” (The song’s first line—“Darkness by the light of moon”—is also a rewrite of Dylan’s “Darkness at the break of noon” in “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding).”) What drove me to write the song was seeing all of the people struggling in encampments in our city and at times in my neighborhood. It’s heartbreaking—and complex and multifaceted. The totality of that situation is what, for me, is indexed by the word “darkness.”
Each song on the new album seems to address a social justice issue or just life balance. Was that intentional or did the songs bubble up to lean that way?
A lot of my songs deal with social justice issues, and I tend not to write about love and romance. Or, if I do, it’s from a more sardonic perspective (like my song “Romance”) or framed by other subject matter (like political protest in “(Don’t You) Go Run and Hide”). But the album title and title track “Goodbye Work” seemed to capture something important about our current moment, in which the prospect of work for many is rapidly disappearing, due to deportations, artificial intelligence and automation, economic stagnation and decline, warfare (Ukraine is the subject of “Bunker”), and more. The song resonates with a line by my mentor Michael Denning: “Under capitalism, the only thing worse than being exploited is not being exploited.” Once “Goodbye Work” was written, both Beth and I thought it worked as an album title. That said, the topics for the album’s tracks were not preplanned, and only once we pulled together the songs, which were chosen from a larger number that I’d written, the political charge of the album became apparent. The one song not written by me (“Weed Smoke and Worry,” by lead guitarist Nate Knutson) treats the 2020 Uprising in response to George Floyd’s murder almost as if it were being recounted in a letter by a soldier to his bride. All that said, we mistakenly thought that this album was lighter than the previous one! It turns out to be our heaviest offering yet, even though it has a few somewhat lighter moments (like “Took In” or the single “Hand in the Air”).
Please tell us about the upcoming release show.
We’re performing on Sunday, June 1 at the Parkway Theater in south Minneapolis. It’s the first time we’re returning there since our 2019 solo show, and we’re really excited about it! The Parkway is a beautiful space with great sound, comfortable seats, and a nice bar. Opening the show are the acclaimed Minnesota musicians Rich Mattson and Germaine Gemberling; we’re so touched they are performing with us! We also want to thank the brilliant people who worked on this album with us: John Miller (engineering), Bruce Templeton (mastering), Mark Nye (photography), and Ian Rans (art). Doors open at 6pm and music starts at 7pm. As far as tickets, one can get them from the Parkway’s website (at theparkwaytheater.com, info here) or at the door on the day of the show, and children 12 and under can attend free. We’ll be selling advance copies of our album (as compact discs with digital download cards), which will be available more widely on June 6. In addition to our full band, we’re excited to have Sven-Erik Olsen playing keyboards (and a little guitar) with us. He’s a fabulous musician and singer/songwriter and a mainstay of the Twin Cities independent music scene for over two decades, including most recently in the terrific band Paperbacks. And, finally, the most recent album is the first of ours to feature every band member singing lead vocals on at least one song—an important development for our community. It’s going to be a good show!
Mostly Minnesota 