Premiere: Fakers, ‘I Wanna Be Like Jeff Electric’

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Fakers
Fakers

Fakers are what happens when, having chugged the indie life for a decade (or longer) and cursed all its hangovers, you still want to have musical tallboys with friends. To review: Fakers are the all-star quintet of Travis Shettel (Piebald), Benjamin Heywood (Summer Darling/QunQ), Andy and Joey Siara (The Henry Clay People) and Cameron Dmytryk (Sun Drug/Vanaprasta). When not all cleaned up for a wedding [the photo], they trade off shout-singing, shredding and other manners of inflicting hearing loss. It’s deliriously fun, moreso if you’ve followed their past exploits and get some of their inside-baseball references. And on June 17 Fakers will release their “Sound the Alarmists” EP via Heywood’s Chain Letter Collective imprint.

Which brings us to the most inside-baseball track on the EP: “I Wanna Be Like Jeff Electric.” It’s a punk homage to Jeff Electric, aka Jeff Hartline, an electrician/musician who’s long been a fixture on the scene. Or, to hear Fakers tell it, a mythical figure.

Joey Siara: “Jeff Electric is one of my best friends. I love the guy. He’s one of the first dudes I met when I moved to L.A. I met him wheeling a Twin Reverb down Sunset Boulevard. We’ve been buds ever since. Our old bands played together a ton. He’s sincere and hilarious. Wise and goofy. Talented and adventurous. I’m hard-pressed to think of a better guy. Everyone should want to be like Jeff Electric.”

Andy Siara: “He’s an idea. Mannnnn, we’re all Jeff Electric.”

Dmytryk: “A) He’s Highland Park’s trendiest bowling alley maker, and B) I dunno, he seems handy. … I’ve never been very handy.

Heywood: “He’s a guy I saw jump into a cold pool once. He’s also the only guy I know older than me still playing music. I’m pretty much already a way less-cool, more alcoholic version of Jeff Electric.”

Shettel: “Not sure where Joey got inspired to write a raucous song about one of his friends, but flattered he has me blowing out my vocals every time we play this one. I believe Jeff is an electrician who is a powerfully positive human. At least that’s what I want to believe.”

The EP’s four other songs are rage-filled ragers, their shards of guitar cutting as deep their invective-filled rants. But this one’s a two-minute, a very electric, celebration.

||| Stream: “I Wanna Be Like Jeff Electric”

||| Live: Fakers celebrate their EP release with a show June 18 at the Hi Hat.

||| Previously: “Gold Room”