Chevy Chase's Royal Rockers Play For Charity, Laughs
WASHINGTON-- It’s late Thursday night in Chevy Chase, D.C. Families are quietly going about their business, putting their kids to sleep and getting ready for the next day. Meanwhile, in a garage on the eastern side of the neighborhood, four guys are very seriously studying the chord progression of a Top 40 pop hit. They pick up their instruments and start playing Icona Pop’s summer anthem, “I Love It”.
“I got this feeling on a summer day when you were gone…” The Farrah Fawcett poster very nearly comes off the wall as Peter, Louis, Vinny and Hunter tear into the song. Tangled wires and carpet squares are trampled underfoot, and beer bottles vibrate on top of the amplifiers. This is PRINCESS, your average amateur rock band. Except, of course, the band members are middle aged dads- - and high powered Washington lawyers.
The PRINCESS origin story is long and mildly complicated. Peter Willsey met Louis Smith at a birthday party for one of Peter’s kids, and then the two picked up Hunter Bennett at an elementary school picnic. Vinny Badolato came into the picture when the trio realized its current drummer wasn’t cutting it. Thus, PRINCESS was born.
The name came from a little pink “princess” rug that belonged to one of Peter’s daughters.
“One day we walked across it”, Peter explains, “And one of us said…”
Louis interjects: “Or maybe both of us”.
“Probably both of us said, ‘that would be a great name for a band of people playing, just… angry music.’”
Hunter looks up from the acoustic guitar he’s playing.
“I thought it was the worst name I’d ever heard, so when they asked me to play with them I kept saying ‘Yeah, yeah, maybe we should call ourselves this,’ but they were adamant that we be PRINCESS.”
The guys have an excellent sense of humor about everything, including themselves.
“The thing to remember is that we really like our audience to laugh with us, but if they’re unwilling to do so, and just want to laugh at us, we’re perfectly OK with that,” Hunter says.
PRINCESS has a “black sheep” kind of appeal- they listened to their parents, went to law school, got jobs and yet they still don’t play by the rules. Too many people grow up and leave their dreams behind. These four guys did the opposite. Despite being successful lawyers- and teachers- they still find time to do what they love: play punk rock covers of pop songs in Peter’s garage.
The band has been together for about four years.
“We’d get together at like, one or two in the morning after work, drink beers, play music really loud, scream…”, Louis says.
They’ve dabbled in writing original material, producing songs such as “Chevy Chase Blues” and the even more popular “Chevy Chase Cougars.” But they prefer the freedom of experimenting with the work of other musicians.
“I feel like the songs we select are ones that have sort of an implicit humor in them… and usually we just massacre them, or sometimes we make them better,” Hunter says.
According to Vinny, it all depends on who’s in the audience.
“We can tell you who’s not in our fanbase,” he says, referring to a disastrous performance at a private school fundraiser during which the large majority of the audience left during the first set.
“They were not at all down with us being in all leather,” Peter adds, “I think that bothered them right off the bat.”
Louis thinks highly of the band’s true fans. “Real connoisseurs of the craft of musicianship…”
“Make sure you put a laugh track after that”, Vinny adds.
When the guys first started playing together, all four were lawyers. Now, Louis has moved on to teaching. The other three still practice law during the week. On the weekends, it’s anyone’s guess what they’ll do. PRINCESS has played over 50 shows at local bars, company functions, block parties, school events, and Banding Together, a battle of the bands fundraiser for Gifts For The Homeless, a charity organization that serves the D.C. homeless population.
Volunteers collect donations of used clothes, like sweatshirts, coats, hats and gloves, and distribute them to over seventy homeless shelters in the greater D.C. area. The fundraising efforts of Banding Together, and the expanding network of volunteers, allows the organization to purchase necessities like underwear, socks and other clothing items that are tough to donate.
GFTH is comprised entirely of volunteers from area law firms, corporate legal departments, and government legal personnel. The organization has no paid staff and no overhead costs, so every donation directly benefits the shelters with whom GFTH works.
Walter Lohmann, the GFTH board member who created Banding Together, explains how the overhead costs are absorbed.
“All of the internal expenses of the group- if we need a ladder for the sorting location or if we need a string of lights to light up our loading dock- individual board members pick up those expenses so that in terms of our outside donations, we maintain this hundred percent arrangement,” he says.
Like the volunteers, all competing bands in the event are made up of lawyers and legal personnel. PRINCESS, with members representing Cooley, LLP, Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP, and the Department of Justice, performed last year, and were shocked they were invited to return.
“I have to admit, when we played last year I definitely thought they would never have us back again because I thought we were going to horrify the audience with what we did… but they were tolerant”, Peter says, sounding surprised, “they were into it.”
This year, PRINCESS is competing against 17 other bands. “I think it’s starting to run our band coordinator, Dan Buchner, a little ragged,” says Lohmann. “I think we may be maxing at 18 bands. But we don’t want to turn anybody down.”
Dan might be stressing about this year’s lineup, but he’s amazed at how far the event has come.
“I think the first year we had a handful of bands- five or six- at a small club in upper Georgetown… they might have raised about $5,000. Last year we had 16 bands on two stages, and we raised something like $300,000 that night.”
The contest winner is determined by “Chicago style” voting, which means you should vote early and often. The band that receives the highest quantity of “votes”- determined by dollars donated- wins. Some bands, like Sutherland Comfort- representing Sutherland, Asbill, and Brennan, LLP- get creative with their fundraising.
Buchner, who’s a member of Sutherland Comfort, says they’ve pit partners against each other in the past to foster a sense of competition among them and to raise as much money for the organization as possible. And winning would be nice, of course, although Dan is modest. “Our chances are good, but I don’t think it’s a lock”.
PRINCESS has an unofficial motto, “sometimes it’s not about the music”, that applies to a lot of the band’s experiences, including this event. Banding Together isn’t about musical talent or winning a prize. It’s about bringing people together to have fun for a good cause.
“I hope that we draw an even bigger crowd this year,” Buchner says. “I think that the need has never been greater than it is right now- the need that Gifts For The Homeless aims to fulfill- and making sure that we have a good turnout, raise a lot of money and have a good time doing it, is really important.”
Back in the garage, PRINCESS is discussing its place in the lineup. Banding Together lasts from 7 p.m. to midnight, but the guys want the crowd to stick it out, if possible.
“You gotta make it to the end, because we’re playing second to last”, Vinny says, as Louis looks concerned.
“Second to last again?”
Hunter doesn’t see a problem with this.
“That way the fans are like a captive audience.”
That’s PRINCESS for you- captive or captivated, they’ll play for you either way.
Originally appeared at wtop.com
