The Musical Box

the apples in stereo. (robert schneider in glasses). photo by joshua kessler.

No, he hasn’t gone Hollywood. But tonight’s tour opening performance by The Apples in Stereo isn’t the only place where you will find Lexington’s own Robert Schneider this summer. Keep your eyes open during the new Mike Myers comedy The Love Guru for the big Apple in a cameo appearance as a banjo player in a barroom.

“Mike had heard us multiple times in a tea house in New York,” Schneider said. “So he had the music director for his film contact our manager.”

A cameo wasn’t the initial plan, though. Myers mostly wanted a taste of bluegrass for the film. He was especially drawn to the definitive 1949 Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs version of Foggy Mountain Breakdown. But to produce a version that could be properly mixed for the film, Schneider was enlisted. He, in turn, signed up the Benton family string band The McKendrees to replicate the song’s rustic charm and warp-speed melody.

“Mike wanted the music aspect of that scene to be authentically bluegrass. So the producers asked me if I knew of any bluegrass bands in Kentucky,” Schneider said. “I told them, ‘Are you kidding? Of course, I do.

“The whole thing happened very quickly. They called and said, ‘We need the finished song in three days.’ But the McKendrees were awesome. They just blew my mind.”

On film, the Toronto-based Creaking Tree String Quartet was set to portray the barroom band that would be playing the Schneider-produced, McKendrees-performed Foggy Mountain Breakdown. That’s when Myers extended the invitation for Schneider to strap on a banjo and join in the on-camera fun.

“Mike had said, ‘Well, Robert produced the session. We’ve got the authentic sound. Why don’t we get him to do a cameo in the film?’ So he asked me to be the banjo player on screen. They flew me, my wife and my manager up to Toronto. So for 3 days I got to be treated like a movie star.”

Don’t expect much by the way of string music at Headliners Music Hall in Louisville tonight, though. The inaugural night of a month long tour by The Apples in Stereo will bring the band’s longstanding love of power pop and post psychedelia back into play. Some of the songs you will know. Others will be new. A few will be orphaned tunes, like the ones gathered on the recent Apples compilation, Electronic Projects for Musicians.

“As time goes by, the songs we learn to go on tour with will wind up dropping out of our repertoire. Sometimes we’ll never even record them. There will be these great Apples songs over the years that just didn’t fit into any recording project at the time. Usually the only way I’ll remember how they go is by listening to some bootleg or something like that because I don’t record every song I write. That’s impossible.”

“Electronic Projects for Musicians is a set of songs that didn’t fit into any album we were playing around with at the time. The song that starts the album, Shine (in Your Mind), and Onto Something were originally just parts of the music for Fun Trick Noisemaker, our first album (released in 1995). We just never finished them in time.”

Chicago’s Poison Control Center and Lexington’s Big Fresh will open tonight’s show. The Apples in Stereo will conclude its tour by taping performances for World Café Live in Philadelphia on Aug. 2 and, in a return appearance, The Colbert Report in New York on Aug. 4. 

The Apples in Stereo, Poison Control Center and Big Fresh perform at 9 tonight at Headliners Music Hall, 1386 Lexington Rd. in Louisville. $12. Call (502) 584-8088.