INTERVIEW: Leftover Cuties welcome you into their ‘Little Big Room’
Photo: The Leftover Cuties’ new album is called Little Big Room. Photo courtesy of the band / Provided with permission.
This one is for the fans.
Leftover Cuties, a quartet hailing from the Los Angeles area, have found many successes in their musical career, but for a number of reasons, they have been a bit quiet the last few years. That’s going to change with their new album of covers, dubbed Little Big Room, which was recently released.
The group — consisting of Shirli McAllen on vocals and ukulele, Austin Nicholsen on bass and ukulele, Stuart Johnson on drums, and Mike Bolger on piano, trumpet and accordion — has held down many residencies, both in Los Angeles County and Las Vegas. Their tune, “Game Called Life,” was the theme song for Showtime’s The Big C with Laura Linney, and they have released such albums as Places To Go and Spark & The Fire. This reporter first found them because of an inspired EP of Christmas covers, including a memorable “Santa Baby.”
Now they are back to work, not only releasing Little Big Room, but also prepping a new album of original material and thinking about summer dates for their fans.
“We’ve been talking about [a covers album] for years because there’s all these covers that we play live, and people always ask us where they can listen to it,” McAllen said in a recent phone interview. “So we’ve always kind of talked about putting all these covers that we play live into an album, but we really started working on it about two-and-a-half years ago, more like three years ago when I was pregnant. I was very pregnant, and I wanted to work on something that is going to be light-hearted and fun. We decided to do it ourselves, so I basically engineered most of the album in this tiny room that we usually practice in. We started recording it. We recorded the majority of it when I was pregnant, and then I had the baby. So we took a long hiatus and then started chipping away at it a little bit at a time until we got to the finish line.”
[Read Hollywood Soapbox’s 2013 interview with the Leftover Cuties.]
If there are fans in the Southern California area who have heard Leftover Cuties live, there’s a good chance they have experienced some of these covers in person. On the new album are interesting and unique interpretations of “This Little Light of Mine,” “Pennies From Heaven,” “There’s a Place” and “The Book of Love,” among others.
“There’s a few rare gems in there that we’ve never played live actually,” McAllen said. “We have a couple of Beatles covers that we did for a project a long time ago and never released, and a couple more that people just asked us to record for them, and we never released those. So we kind of included those in the mix, along with a bunch of old standards that we play live, like ‘All of Me’ and ‘Pennies From Heaven’ and ‘Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out,’ ‘Stardust.’ So I would say more than half of the album are songs we play live, and some of them are just songs that I think we’ve never played live.”
The band was ready to play each of the 12 songs live at a special album release party, but the coronavirus pandemic disrupted their plans. That said, the Leftover Cuties are looking to reschedule once the world rights itself again.
“Luckily for us, we weren’t really planning a big tour because I still have a 2-and-a-half-year-old, and we can’t really leave for that long of a period,” she said. “[Maybe] a few runs during the summer and possibly festivals, but now we’re putting everything on hold. We did plan an album release show that was supposed to be really special with special guests in a really intimate setting, and for now that’s canceled. We are going to do it at some point when this whole thing is behind us, so it’s a bummer. Compared to other musicians that have whole tours planned that they had to cancel, and that’s basically how they make their living, I feel for those people right now because that’s a hard hit to take.”
McAllen said she can relate to some of the bands having to cancel everything and now facing some difficult realities, even some financial setbacks. There was a different incident that hit the Leftover Cuties a few years back, and they needed to step away from the spotlight for a bit.
“I can relate because a few years back I had a brain surgery, and then I had some complications,” McAllen said. “And I had to go back and do a couple more brain surgeries. I remember having to cancel a bunch of shows that would have brought us in a lot of money, and it really hurt. It hurt the whole band, so I can really relate to the people that are canceling their shows right now. Luckily for us, we didn’t have to cancel too much, just the album release.”
The album is called Little Big Room because actually that’s where they recorded the 12 songs. The band has a special place where they normally rehearse, but this time around, they decided to bring in the equipment and lay down tracks in the intimate setting.
“We recorded it in this little room, and I just feel like today musicians can really record anywhere,” the singer said. “I think listening to the album you wouldn’t be able to tell that it was recorded in a tiny room because I think we managed to make it sound quite big. That’s the idea, the little big room. It’s a little room, but there were beautiful moments that happened here during the recordings. … So I consider it to be larger than it is. I think it’s kind of funny right now because everybody is stuck at home feeling like they’re in a small space, and I hope that people find ways to make their space feel bigger.”
It was important for the band members to make Little Big Room sound original. They knew that many of the songs would be known by the listeners — even hummable and singable — but they wanted to put their Leftover Cuties stamp on the tunes.
“When we play covers live, we definitely make them our own,” she said. “I usually change the melody a little bit, or we do something original with the arrangement. Some of the songs are more clever, and some of them are more straightforward. But I feel like overall the album is really unique to our sound and the way that we interpret these songs. I think overall it has a very unique sound. This album was almost a gift we wanted to give to our fans since we haven’t released anything in a really long time. We just kind of wanted to give them something to enjoy while we’re working on our new original album.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Leftover Cuties’ new album, Little Big Room, is now available. Click here for more information.
