Blogs > Indie Outing (the secret jambands roots of indie rockers)

Indie Outing: Leslie Feist

Name: Leslie Feist

Bands: Solo Performer; Broken Social Scene

Instrument: Vocals

Indie-Jam connection: The members of Broken Social Scene grew up playing music with the members of a core jamband, The New Deal. Feist attended many early New Deal shows and even recruited New Deal bassist Dan Kurtz to produce her first solo album. Given their love of long, melodic instrumental passages, many people consider Broken Social Scene Canada’s answer to a jamband anyway.

Notable jam moments: Feist appears on the New Deal’s 2003 studio album Gone Gone Gone. She sings—and offer a hint of her trademark scat—on the infectious track “Don’t Blame Yourself,” a song she co-wrote with the band

Lot Talk: “The members of the Broken Social Scene family and The New Deal all came from the same place. When we were first starting The New Deal, we had this idea to start a record label and play with Andrew Whiteman from Broken Social Scene but we decided earlier on that it was just gonna be the three of us ‘cause Andrew was doing his own thing—and then, next thing, he’s doing Broken Social Scene. Same with Feist, too. Dan produced her first album in 1999 and she would come down to early New Deal shows in the clubs and hang. She sang on our song “Don’t Blame Yourself” right before she became a massive superstar. I was in seventh grade with James Shaw from [the band] Metric and there was a fairly concentrated group of us that shared the same view point that we were gonna make a go of being professional musicians in spite of the status quo.” The New Deal’s Darren Shearer, Relix