Yo La Tengo is, from left, Georgia Hubley, James McNew and Ira Kaplan.

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KNOXVILLE — The headline was startling: "37 record-store clerks feared dead in Yo La Tengo concert disaster."

"I never knew how many people had my e-mail address until that morning," says Yo La Tengo bassist James McNew in a call from his home in Brooklyn.

The story was, of course, a satirical piece in the Onion in 2002 that only could've been true. If a roof had collapsed at a Yo La Tengo concert on that date, chances are, record store employees and self-proclaimed music snobs would have made up a large percentage of the victims.

The story quoted an emergency worker on the scene as saying: "It's just a twisted mass of black-frame glasses and ironic Girl Scouts T-shirts in there."

"It was really exciting and it was hilarious," says McNew. "I think we were all really flattered that we made it into an Onion story."

Married couple Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley formed the band in Hoboken, N.J., in 1984. With a deep knowledge of vintage rock and an independent sensibility, the group spent several years gaining a following among underground music aficionados. Various musicians filled out the band until McNew joined in the early 1990s.

"When I joined I was just a temp," says McNew. "I signed on with Ira and Georgia to do a real short Midwestern tour and then we went over to Europe to tour for three weeks with Eleventh Dream Day.

It was, he says, one of the best times of his life.

"I was a kid in every way," he says. "I was so excited I would sleep on anybody's floor. I think I could describe every show on that tour,"

He can't remember the name of the club in Knoxville where the group played on that tour, but he does remember Cumberland Avenue overflowing after a football game while the group was trying to make it to sound check.

Although McNew performed on the albums "May I Sing With Me" (1992) and "Painful" (1993), he says he contributed little to the writing of the music.

"At that point I was still a fan," he says. "It's like that 'Simpsons' Halloween episode where Homer goes back in time and is told to not touch anything because it will affect the future. I sort of felt like that. 'I love this band and I love their records! Now I'm invovled the creative process. Don't go in and start breaking stuff!'"

He says by the time of 1995's "Electr-O-Pura" the band was improvising and jamming together to come up with music.

"That's how we've written pretty much every song since then," says McNew. "It just feels like a natural way to work. We really do make things up as a group."

He says the group is now comfortable with the situation and he really enjoys the process: "That's a really exciting time when we don't have any songs and we have to make some up. I wake up in the morning and think, 'Wow, by the time I get home tonight there could be a new song!'"

The band's new album, "Popular Songs," was released earlier this month.

"Now we're in that period where we've recorded all the songs and we have to learn them all over again," says McNew. "They change quite a bit from when we made them up and when we recorded them. Now we try to get the recorded version to translate into a live version and it feels strange, you know, 'This wasn't our original arrangement,' but after a while you just forget what the record sounded like."

© 2009, Knoxville News Sentinel
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