Ex Reverie’s
very busy

Music Row
By Brian Rademaekers

For anyone who heard — and perhaps loved — Ex Reverie’s 2005 three-song release, Phronesis, it may have seemed as though the band just vanished after a promising teaser of a beginning.
Nothing, though, could be further from the truth.
For one, the Fishtown folk-rock ensemble finally just released its much-delayed full-length follow-up, The Door Into Summer.
And in that three-year span between releases, the two primary musicians behind Ex Reverie — Gillian and David Chadwick — have been busy at work. One of the biggest and most noticeable projects that the husband-and-wife duo labored on in 2007 is Golden Ball, a psych-rock outfit with some palpable prog inclinations.
Last year saw Golden Ball tour heavily after the release of its second full album, The Antique Barking Swirls of Dawn. In Golden Ball, it’s David’s songwriting and vocals that take center stage, while Gillian provides backup singing and guitar work.
With Ex Reverie, Gillian expresses her side of the story in a far more folk-inspired context, and her man is on hand to supply the bass lines. On The Door Into Summer, the Chadwicks get help from an impressive cast, including the unmistakable "acid leads" of Greg Weeks’ (Espers) guitar, Margie Wienk’s (Fern Knight) cello, and the violin-playing of Gretchen Lohse and Katt Hernandez, along with contributions from Julius Masri and Jessica Weeks.
Besides her work with Golden Ball, Gillian Chadwick just released an album under the name "Rusalnaia" with Sharron Kraus, and is working on a new album for her band Woodwose, a project she has taken up with Jessica Weeks.
"It’s been a very active last couple of years, and especially the last year of writing and making records," says Chadwick. "Last year was a really, really full year for me musically."
And as long as it took to get Ex Reverie’s full-length debut on tape, the album — recorded in Greg Weeks’ Hexham Head studio and released on his Language of Stone label — has been gestating for more than a decade.
"The recording of the album was only a few weeks long, but it was definitely brewing in my mind for several years," explained the 29-year-old Chadwick. "Some of the songs have parts that I wrote when I was seventeen years old, and I’ve revised them. It just took the right time for it all to come together. Something clicked last year, and I figured out exactly what I wanted to do musically and how to tie all of my disparate musical interests into a single voice, basically."
Those influences — ranging from David Bowie to Led Zeppelin and the Fairport Convention — go through a wild blender and yet are clearly present on The Door Into Summer. The album opens with The Second Son, a six-minute crusher rich with Weeks’ guitar work and Chadwick’s delicate-to-menacing vocals, used perfectly to deliver her eerie songwriting.
Others, like The Years, have a softer, more fragile and traditional folk tinge, while songs like Wooden Sword smack of a folked-up Led Zeppelin/Fairport hybrid.
As seems to be a trademark of Philly’s "freak folk" scene, the songs on The Door Into Summer conjure the ancient, the otherworldly, and the mythical. In many ways, the myth conveyed here is one manufactured by Chadwick, and one that is furthered by the elaborate pageantry that she and her band members display onstage while donning costumes that look to be a mix of the Renaissance, the ’60s, and futurism.
Chadwick says influences of the literary world were just as responsible as her fellow musicians for shaping her ideas and vibe. In particular, she names Robert Heinlein’s 1961 novel Stranger in a Strange Land, a science-fiction screed that became a manifesto of the "sexual revolution," as a major source of inspiration.
Chadwick is, in fact, named after a character in the book, Gillian Boardman, and the album’s title — The Door Into Summer — is also the title to one of Heinlein’s novels.
"I tried to pay homage to him by using that title," explains Chadwick. "His writing has wonderful characters, and they are very joyful, and I really appreciate the way that it is science-fiction but there is a great sense of humanity running through it."
The end result is Ex Reverie’s blend of unique songwriting, powerful stage presence and stellar, dark folk-rock that is absolutely worth catching at the band’s album-release party this Saturday.
Joining Ex Reverie will be the Cleveland-born transgender cabaret queen and harpist/pianist Baby Dee (think Tiny Tim), and one of Philly’s most seminal and impressive female folk singers — Meg Baird. oo
Those two artists alone are enough to warrant twice the $10 door charge, but this will also be one of the few chances you’ll get to see Ex Reverie locally before they take off for a spring tour of the West Coast.
Still, Chadwick says fans will not have to wait quite so long for the next Ex Reverie project:
"I have another record already to go, I just need to promote this one and take it on the road this year, but I’ve already talked to (Greg Weeks) about recording the second album as soon as possible," says Chadwick. "This is going to be a very active year for Ex Reverie." ••