Tomorrow night at the Black Cat, D.C.’s last great local rock band, Q And Not U, will play their final show. After seven years and three albums, John Davis, Harris Klahr and Chris Richards have decided to end their musical partnership on a high note, with none of the acrimonious bad blood that typically characterizes any breakup.
“We knew amongst ourselves that the band had pretty much run its course,” drummer Davis said last Saturday. “We’d talked about maybe taking a break for a while, but we felt that if we didn’t make it a clean split from being Q And Not U, that would just hang over whatever we did next.”
All of the members fully intend to continue making music, and Davis thinks the breakup will allow their individual side projects to be considered as full bands in their own right. Richards has been playing local concerts as Ris Paul Ric for some time now, and Davis said that Klahr has been working on some organic, danceable electronic pieces of his own.
Davis himself has already started writing songs for a new band, currently comprised of himself and a former neighbor, that draws from ‘60s rock influences like the Beatles, the Kinks and the Who.
“It’s more classically grounded in rock and roll,” he said. Such bands might come as a surprise to fans familiar with Q And Not U’s spastic art-punk and Fugazi-influenced post-hardcore D.C. rock, but Davis claims the influences were there the whole time.
He isn’t too anxious to return to actively playing concerts, as all three members have found themselves burnt out after years of steady touring.
“I’ve been playing shows nonstop for the last bunch of years and have been ignoring the songwriting, and that’s the best part of what I want to do,” he said. “With Q And Not U we didn’t do enough songwriting. Our legacy is maybe only 50 songs, which for 7 years is really not that many.”
While he plans to keep writing, recording and eventually start playing again, the breakup is in many ways simply a result of the musicians growing up. The music has changed along with the musicians; last year’s Power was Davis’ favorite, and displayed a shift from the band’s knotty, complex early work that bore a need to prove itself. Davis has now been married for three and a half months as well, which is incentive to both recover from the burnout of life in a band and still devote himself to music before responsibility starts to weigh too heavily.
He’s anxious to return to the musical life before long, though.
“After doing Q And Not U for a living, it was tight; we weren’t raking in money, but we were able to get by, pay rent and pay the bills, eat once in awhile,” he commented. “Now that I’m working a real job again, it’s just more incentive to keep working on music, because it is much easier living. You don’t have to wake up at 7:00 in the morning.”
As far as the rest of Washington music is concerned, Davis is sure that a new wave of bands will take up the mantle set aside by his band, the Dismemberment Plan, Fugazi and many other now-defunct giants of local rock.
“I don’t see any immediate candidates, but I think it’s going to happen because that’s just the way it’s always been,” he said. “I think it’s just the old ebb and flow that happens.” For now, though, the last great passionate voice of righteous politics and dance-inflected punk in the District will be irreplaceable.
“I’ve thought a lot about what it’s going to be like when I leave the Black Cat that last night,” he reflected. “It’s like walking out in every way.”
