by Mick Rhodes | editor@claremont-courier.com

It’s often said that music heals. In times of stress, sorrow, or strife, the brain responds to rhythm, melody, and harmony in ways that can’t be quantified. We only know that it works.

A new local band, The Disassociation, furthers that argument.

The group includes all five members of independent music legends Refrigerator, Mark Givens from both Refrigerator and Wckr Spgt, Amy Maloof of Falcon Eddy, Sam Sousa of Bring Your Brain, and in what may be a surprise to some, award-winning, bestselling novelist and Pomona College professor Jonathan Lethem.

The band has its roots in the peculiar malaise of the early COVID-19 pandemic, when so many of us were desperate to find meaning in the darkness.

“I was writing a lot of lyrics and poems at that time, because I couldn’t get started on a novel in that first part of lockdown, that miserable part where we were so in shock and washing our groceries and watching these horrible press conferences,” Lethem said. “I think everybody was a little depressed and confused.”

Lethem recognized a similar longing in his friend Maloof and in late 2020 asked if she would like to collaborate, telling her, “‘I’m going to write you some songs. You want to do that?’ Because I could tell she was — like we all were — just foundering in this confusion.”

When it came time to bring in more musicians and songwriters to flesh out the songs, Lethem enlisted Refrigerator’s Dennis Callaci. “I said, ‘Could you guys remotely collaborate with Amy and send her some tracks, and she’ll sing over them?’” Lethem said. “And so this sort of formed that way.”

The still unnamed band continued writing throughout 2021. Then, with COVID still raging and a batch of songs sketched out, the nascent group got together with producer and engineer Steve Folta at a local recording studio in 2022, “very fearful that we were going to end up with this major spreading event,” Lethem said.

Refrigerator’s Allen Callaci is The Disassociation’s primary vocalist.

“I think we went into it — because it’s so hard to get everybody together — so we thought, okay, we’ve got this 48 hours, whatever we come up with, whether it’s a full length record, whether it’s a single, whether it’s nothing, we’re just gonna see what we have at the end of this weekend, at the end of these 48 hours, and go from there,” Allen Callaci said. “What was really unique about this recording session is that … there were like seven, eight, nine of us sometimes in it; half of us would be recording in the actual studio, while the other half of us were in the lobby working over the song we were going to record next. So it’s almost like an assembly line kind of approach to it.”

It ended up a weekend of frenzied creativity, with the band cutting basic tracks for the 11 songs on its debut, “Losing is a Luxury,” which was released March 21 on vinyl and streaming on Grapefruit Records. The new band of veteran performers — and Lethem — will play its first show at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, April 25 at the Folk Music Center in Claremont.

The initial impulse back in 2020 was to write a country album, Lethem said. But, as they do, the project morphed and transformed as it developed, and “Losing is a Luxury” is certainly no country album in the traditional sense. Its laconic vibe brings to mind the mellower side of “Meat Puppets II,” sans the acid-baked psychedelia, with a strong dose of the Velvet Underground and a smidge of Pavement. With the pedigree of the known quantities in the band, it’s no surprise they created an idiosyncratic take on country music, landing somewhere between the avant garde and the shambolic side of the Flying Burrito Brothers.

Lethem, though a neophyte musician, is nonetheless familiar with recording studios, having worked on his own audiobooks for the last 30-plus years. But playing bass and being part of a band over a whirlwind weekend in the studio was another thing altogether.

“I’ve been at microphones all the time, and I think I’ve watched some recording sessions a couple of times, but yeah, by far, of course, there’s absolutely nothing comparable. It was exhilarating,” he said. “It was crazy. It was a dream come true, and also, you know, highly embarrassing to be a 60-year-old beginner.”

Several of the 11 tracks on “Losing is a Luxury” began with a Lethem lyric. But the collaborative nature of the band meant everyone contributed music and lyrics, and most all of his were edited. And that was fine by him.

“It’s just so fun to hear things embodied, you know, come to life in someone’s voice,” Lethem said. “That’s much more important than any precious little syllable I wrote.”

The eight-member core band has swelled to 10 now, with the addition of two backing vocalists, with one doubling on violin.

Lethem singled out “One Willful Act” as a favorite. “I think that, to me, was the song where I as a writer … actually pinned something to the to the page. Because it was a real description of what a given day felt like in deep quarantine.”

One willful act

One willful thing

One willful move at the start of the day

Then the rest just fritters away.

One willful thing

What’ll it be?

One gesture, a thing set in motion

One willful play

At the start of the day

Like the unbroken yolk of the egg on the plate

One willful act

You get just this one

Then the rest is all fritter and waste

You get no big bite, you get just a taste

One act of will

Too precious to spill

To carry out into the light of the day

The remainder frazzles and fritters away

It’s possible other groups came together during the dark days of COVID as an act of creative defiance, but The Disassociation saw it through. The long-gestating album, released six years after its opening spark, is proof that in the midst of death and uncertainty, there is life.

“I think to me, there’s an underlying almost celebratory feel to the album,” Allen Callaci said. “I mean, there’s some dark lyrics in there, but there’s a real sense of, to me, celebration throughout.”

The Disassociation’s debut live performance takes place at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, April 25 at the Folk Music Center, 220 Yale Ave., Claremont, CA 91711. Advance tickets are $20 via phone at (909) 624-2928 or at the store, or if still available, day of show at the door. More info is at folkmusiccenter.com/events.

“Losing is a Luxury” is streaming everywhere and available on vinyl through Grapefruit Records at grapefruitrecordclub.com.