A brief chat with Electric 6

Yellow Scene: What have you been up to over the last year?

Dick Valentine: Well, the tenth album Human Zoo came out so we were pretty busy touring for that. We did a Kickstarter campaign over the summer for the Mimicry and Memories record, which just got mailed out for the people who bid on it. Those are the two main things. I have a solo album coming out next week, and I’m about to do a solo acoustic tour of the UK and Ireland. And we’re in the midst of working on album number 11 for E6.

YS: How does the solo stuff differ to E6?

DV: In the UK, I just hop on trains and go from town to town. When I did the first tour, I didn’t have a product to sell. I realized that if I came up with an album I could make a lot more money. The first two I did were primarily acoustic. The third one, Here Come the Bags, is more of a folk production with drums, bass, guitars, pianos, strings and stuff.

YS: Do you like playing Colorado?

DV: This is probably our 97th Larimer Lounge show. We’ve done the Bluebird a few times, but the Larimer works just as well for our purposes. We usually sell it out. It’s not that big of a place, so it’s always a barn-burner of a night. We’re starting to play Colorado Springs a bit more. But yeah, I always love the Larimer. I always go back to the time we played there in 2005 touring the second album. I drank I think five Long Island ice teas because they kept handing to them to me, and your high elevation caused me to be puking all the way to Kansas City the next day. That was a rough one.

YS: What can we expect from the set?

DV: We’re on album number ten, so we try to play a lot of songs off the new album. You gotta do “Gay Bar,” you gotta do “High Voltage,” you gotta do “Dance Commander,” and then whatever you can do off the other albums is kind of a bonus. We try to encompass the whole career. At this point we don’t over-think it. We just try to have a fun time every night we go out.

YS: When this tour’s done, what’s next?

DV: We kind of take it easy on ourselves in the summer. We have a handful of shows here and there. We do booze cruises in New York City and Boston, but the album gets recorded anywhere from January to May and we tour during that time as well. Our busiest months are September through May, and then we take it easy on ourselves June, July and August.