E-Mail This Article to a Friend Gimme indie rock (continued)

Nevertheless, Mascis and Barlow will once again be sharing a stage together, this time a little closer to their original home — at a benefit at Smith College in Northampton on April 30. And the Sebadoh tour probably wouldn’t have come about if Barlow hadn’t been invited by, of all people, his mother to play the benefit, which is being headlined by Sonic Youth. "My mother works for a resource center for families with children who have autism out in East Hampton. And through that, she came in contact with J Mascis’s cousin, who has a kid who has autism. So she and a co-worker formulated this idea of having a benefit for the resource center. They were like, ‘We’ll ask Lou, and J, and Jason . . . ’ The way my mother was thinking, there was no issue between J and me. Since we had already patched things up, it really wasn’t all that outrageous that my mother thought she could put a bill together with J and me. And since she was inviting Jason as well, I thought we should just set up another Sebadoh tour around the benefit."

Most of the shows on the 17-date tour, which kicked off in St. Louis on April 19 and ends in Nashville on May 8, sold out well ahead of time. And given how prolific Barlow has always been when it comes to home recording, you’d think the band’s main American label, Sub Pop, would have some kind of Sebadoh retrospective rarities compilation or box set in the works. But according to the often self-depreciating Barlow, there are major impediments to that’s happening anytime soon. "Sebadoh were guinea pigs for Sub Pop as far as them flirting with being a major label with Warner Bros. As a consequence, they made a lot of stupid decisions on Sebadoh’s behalf, and we went right along with those decisions. So they lost so much money on us. We were willing to do a retrospective of some kind, and they balked because they had to give us money to do it. The Sebadoh catalogue just doesn’t sell. We’re not Pavement. Our records don’t sell anymore, and there really isn’t the interest. And Jason and I both know from when we went out on tour with our respective bands that there’s a very limited audience for it. I mean, when Sub Pop says they can’t afford to do one of our records, that tells you something."

But though the audience for solo material by Barlow and especially Loewenstein (who was always an unsung songwriting hero of sorts in Sebadoh) might not be as robust as either would like, the two could be underestimating the Sebadoh allure. Even Barlow admits that "the Sebadoh tour in England was different. We did do a lot of really old Sebadoh stuff, and there were great silences after a number of my songs. But when we finally started playing songs from later records like Bakesale, people went crazy. So it’s pretty clear what people want to hear from us on this tour.

"Jason is making a bit of a compromise because we’re not playing very electric. Even the percussion has no samples or cymbals. So he’s taking a step back to where I’m really comfortable right now, which is the quieter stuff. But I’m able to step it up a little bit to play his songs. I don’t know how long this can last, but it’s a happy medium between the loud and the quiet."

In the meantime, Barlow has been putting together what amounts to his first fully produced solo album, which he’s planning to release on the North Carolina indie Merge. "I guess the model for what I’m doing are the acoustic songs that were on the last Folk Implosion record." Loewenstein has already played on a couple of the tracks, and it seems likely that the two of them will continue to collaborate, whether or not it’s as Sebadoh. "As long as my friendship with Jason is there, Sebadoh is still alive. We just work really well together. I think people don’t realize how many of the songs on albums like Bakesale are Jason’s: people tend to think that his poppier songs are actually mine, and they’re not."

The current tour may help clear that up, but Barlow isn’t entirely optimistic. "Someone interviewed me from the Onion yesterday and asked why I don’t collaborate with anyone. I mean, except for my home recordings, all I’ve ever done up until now has been collaborative. There are a handful of people who have worked with me and left, but it’s always been for personal reasons, not because I don’t collaborate well with other people. I’m actually very easy to work with. This new album I’m doing is the first time I’ve ever done a studio album by myself listening only to my own opinions about stuff. But I guess the perception is that I don’t collaborate well with other people. It’s kind of depressing. But once I start doing something, I really don’t give a shit about what the perception is."

Sebadoh perform this Sunday, April 25, at T.T. the Bear’s Place, 10 Brookline Street in Harvard Square; call (617) 492-BEAR.