A little after nine o'clock on August 25th, Max Drummey and D. A. Wallach were in the back of the Chester French tour bus, rehearsing a cover of Shakira's "She Wolf" that they were about to shoot for their website. The bus was parked behind the Nikon at Jones Beach Theater, where they had just opened a massive concert featuring Weezer and a reunited Blink-182. In the afterglow, Max fiddled with a beat-making contraption while D. A. practiced his falsetto, and the two of them argued cheerfully over a plastic blow-up monkey that both of them wanted to hold in the video.
"You can't just hog all the props," says Max, as he programmed a minimalist imitation of the "She Wolf" beat. "I bought this monkey."
They ran through three takes, and a few days later posted the video to the ChesterFrench.com blog. After the shoot, D. A. and Max took a seat on the couch, as the sound of Blink-182 starting their set wafted through the bus.
"This is the biggest tour we've done," D. A. says. "There's a trade-off involved, because there are more people potentially in the audience every night but fewer who are having a so-called ‘intimate experience' with you. So, we could play a 700-person club, as we've done in the past, and get to meet half the people there before the show. In this situation it's harder to do that."
It's also harder to do it when organizers make you play your 20-minute set a half hour before the concert is supposed to start, which is what happened that night, causing many Chester French fans to miss the band's performance.
No one in the Chester camp complained, though, as all involved know that such
indignities are just part of what happens when you're a young, mid-level band
competing in the majors. Two years after signing their record deal with Pharrell
Williams's Star Trak label while seniors at Harvard, D. A. and Max, now both 24,
seem pleased with their progress.
Above (l-r): Max wears a shirt and jeans by Dior Homme and sunglasses by Oakley. D. A.
wears a shirt and suit by Dior Homme, sunglasses by Thierry Lasry and sneakers
by adidas.
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