Also this issue:

Nashville's Back Lot
The Folk Alliance Showcase reveals the gears of the music-licensing machine.
-Mary Armstrong

Old Gods Alive Again
The Choral Arts Society exhumes our musical lineage.
-Peter Burwasser

Aereogramme
-John Vettese

The Aislers Set
-Sam Adams

Lo-Hi
-M.J. Fine

TV Smith
-Sam Adams

Mary Timony
-M.J. Fine

Dysrhythmia
-Paul Burress

March 27-April 2, 2003

music

Keep Moving

SECESSION PLAYERS: The Cherry Hill band does its own recording, releasing and booking.

The Secession Movement is a band with a plan.

by Paul Burress

The most important and far-reaching lesson taught by punk rock luminaries The Minutemen, Minor Threat and Black Flag was this: You don’t have to be tapped on the shoulder by valkyries to release your own music or go on tour. Where there’s will, there’ll always be a way.

The four guys in Cherry Hill's The Secession Movement don't want any band to be their collective life, but they intend to learn everything they can from those who came before. After releasing three EPs and their debut, Akedemik, their latest record, We Need a Hill, is a portrait of a band maturing, honing its own ideas and moving past the debts to its influences.

"With this record we were learning from ourselves, looking at things we've done and building on our own ideas instead of saying, damn I heard that new Elliott record, and wanting to make music like this or that," says guitarist/vocalist Dave Downham.

"The music is different and has kind of broken away from where we were coming from before," says drummer Dave Dworanczyk. "We're forming a new type of sound and every time you take that next step, it's new and fresh, especially when you leave the other stuff behind."

As their sound comes into its own, The Secession Movement remains in line with the ethos handed down to every generation of indie band. Not only did they record both We Need a Hill and Akedemik themselves in their spacious basement studio (where they also recorded fellow Philly band Dysrhythmia's first album), the band books its own tours and runs the Keep Safe record label, a means to release its CDs.

Though the Movement has recorded with Geoff Turner at WGNS and at Indre Studios, they seem more content for the time being to record themselves. Says Dworanczyk: "Everything since Akedemik is ours in a way, even where we put microphones."

Bassist Nick Kessler is quick to elaborate: "The latest record is a more relaxed process, where before it was a rush to record and mix a 7-inch in one day. Taking control of the process is more frustrating and time-consuming because we are completely self-reliant, but we are happier with the product and we are able to represent ourselves the way we want to. Also we have no one to blame but ourselves if we are displeased."

The same can be said for their years of hard touring. Though the band has had its fair share of horror stories involving broken vans, lackluster attendance and shady show promoters, it hasn't deterred them.

"[Touring] is an experiment," says Downham. "We'll learn from the mistakes now and if a kid does a bad job of setting up a show, maybe if he's a nice kid and the mistake was an anomaly we'll give him another shot, but it's kind of about trying to develop a network across the country of people who are like-minded."

"It's very easy for a band to lose heart for what they are doing if they don't feel like there is any moral support and only five people show up to their show, which has happened to us before," he continues. "We are getting to an age where a lot of people who were sashaying through music when they were younger are falling away and the people who are still in love with music are taking it much more seriously."

The Secession Movement plays Sat., March 29, 10 p.m., $7, with Up Up Down Down, The North Star, 27th and Poplar sts., 215-684-0808.