Communist Daughter

Hometown: St. Paul/Minneapolis
Members: Johnny Solomon, Adam Switlick, Al Weiers, Molly Moore, Jonathan Blaseg, Dan Demuth, Dillon Marchus
Current Release: Lions & Lambs EP
For Fans Of: Bon Iver, Sunny Day Real Estate, Elliott Smith

Back in 2007, things were going well for Minneapolis band Friends Like These. The indie-pop group had been on tour with The Stills and The Brian Jonestown Massacre and had just booked a gig opening for fellow Minnesotan band Soul Asylum. The only problem was that on the night of the show, frontman Johnny Solomon had once again found himself in jail. Solomon called guitarist Adam Switlick to come and bail him out, and the two raced for the venue. But they were too late, and it marked the ending for the band. The drummer moved to Scotland. The bass player went back to school. And Solomon just ran away.

“After I got out of jail, I realized my life was a mess,” he remembers. “I decided I was just going to give up music. My intention was to move far away, but I only got just across the border to a small town in Wisconsin. I thought I could just live like a small-town guy and get a job.”

But the drugs and alcohol—“bad choices and wildness”—that had landed Solomon in jail weren’t the only thing he was struggling with. His bipolar disorder was undiagnosed and untreated, and things just kept getting worse. He turned back to music.

“I just started writing again,” he says. “The Current [KCMP, 89.3 FM] picked up one of those songs, [“Not the Kid”], and started playing it, and it kind of took off as a single. They told me I better finish an album.”

Solomon didn’t have a band name—or a band—and came up with Communist Daughter on the spot, after the Neutral Milk Hotel song. He called friends including Switlick on bass, Al Weiers on guitar, “and this girl, an attractive young girl who supposedly sang,” he says of his now-fiancée Molly Moore. “I was single, and I said, ‘Why don’t you come sing with us.’ And she turned out to be much better than any of us expected. And everything started clicking.”

While Communist Daughter got off to a great start, recording a full-length debut, Soundtrack to the End, and getting invited to play CMJ 2010, things hadn’t really changed for Solomon. His bandmates stuck by him, but it wasn’t always easy. “It seemed to be going well except for my whole ‘still dying’ thing,” he says. “I had a thing for [Molly], but she said she would never date me because I was such a mess. And Adam was the friend you always want, even when things were horrible. He’d be like ‘Ah, you’re horrible to be around,’ and then he’d show up the next week.”

But CMJ was a “disaster,” he says. “I couldn’t play shows or stay normal for very long so I had to check into treatment and put everything on hold for a while and try and get my life back together before we could do anything. The band was like, ‘Hey, why don’t you figure out what you need to do.’ I’d like to say I made a choice but it was like I was going to die or go to treatment, so it wasn’t much of a choice.”

The band canceled all the promising opportunities and Solomon went into treatment in rural Minnesota. By the time he entered a halfway house in St. Paul, all the momentum was gone.

“We really did have to start almost from square one,” he says. “Treatment takes a long time. I was coming off of meth and getting on medicine for the bi-polar stuff. My brain took a long time to get back to functioning. Half the band were new guys, and I had to fill out the sound differently. We just started again. Once your album’s been out for a year and you haven’t been doing anything, people kind of write you off.”

The new seven-piece lineup released an EP titled Lions & Lambs, a heartbreaking indie-folk album that’s both intimate and intricate. They used its release as an excuse to tour both coasts in a 15-passenger van, sleeping on luggage and slowly rebuilding an audience. But this time, Solomon is doing it sober. He’s engaged, and “it feels good.” For two weeks of the tour, the band found itself opening shows for Jason Isbell, who’d battled demons of his own.

“It was funny,” Solomon says. “Jason Isbell is a songwriting hero to me. When we released Lions & Lambs at First Ave [in Minneapolis], we played with him. Right about then was when he started telling people he was sober. I wouldn’t say there were similarities because every situation is different. But it was cool to have me and Molly on tour with him and Amanda, and being able to chat about some of that stuff. It was kind of a similar thing—Johnny and June kind of stuff.”

Communist Daughter is now shopping an LP around to record labels. It was recorded with Kevin Bowe, who’s written songs for Etta James and Dean Martin. “It was kind of a different step for us,” Solomon says. “We’re kind of indie musicians and he’s not. He kind of held our feet to the fire on stuff. We worked with a lot better microphones and had to sing on key for him. He - Paste Magazine

Now their band, Communist Daughter, is about to release their second record, Lions & Lambs. And while that won’t be out until July 10, we’ve got the premiere of the Mike Mineheart-directed video for the album’s first single, “Speed of Sound,” right here. - BlackBook Magazine

Now their band, Communist Daughter, is about to release their second record, Lions & Lambs. And while that won’t be out until July 10, we’ve got the premiere of the Mike Mineheart-directed video for the album’s first single, “Speed of Sound,” right here. - BlackBook Magazine

My friends, I have done you wrong in my negligence in covering Twin Cities-based Communist Daughter. The band, still riding the momentum of 2010’s Soundtrack To The End, will soon return to the bins with the Lions & Lambs EP, from which Speed of Sound is plucked. Easily one of the best songs I’ve heard this year, I hereby promise to keep the MOKB faithful apprised of all future Communist Daughter happenings. - My Old Kentucky Blog

Enjoy the bittersweet, autobiographical harmonies of one of Minneapolis' greatest singer/songwriter. - FILTER

"Fragile, daydreaming harmonies. Swirling synths that spin and spin until they fall down dizzy. Steady-galloping drums that coolly pass you by. These Midwestern boys have wrapped them all up into rip-your-heart out ballads about getting older but not necessarily happier – songs that capture the old joy of classic records and do-nothing days, and the ache of knowing they're mostly gone. Yes, there's a good kind of sadness, and this is what it sounds like." Melissa Maerz, Rolling Stone Magazine - quote

"Fragile, daydreaming harmonies. Swirling synths that spin and spin until they fall down dizzy. Steady-galloping drums that coolly pass you by. These Midwestern boys have wrapped them all up into rip-your-heart out ballads about getting older but not necessarily happier – songs that capture the old joy of classic records and do-nothing days, and the ache of knowing they're mostly gone. Yes, there's a good kind of sadness, and this is what it sounds like." Melissa Maerz, Rolling Stone Magazine - quote

Solomon started calling friends to come demo what he’d been working on in self-imposed exile, a project they’d eventually name after a Neutral Milk Hotel song. “Not The Kid” is both first single and leaf-turning mpfree from that project and it is a JAAAMMMMM. The album from whence it came, Soundtrack to the End unleashes its mellow wrath on your springtime April 6th.
- Fader Magazine

Twin Cities voters picked their favorite in the first-ever Metromix "Best Band in the Twin Cities".

One month ago we introduced our first-ever, highly subjective, wildly controversial, mildly NSFW Best Bands in the Twin Cities reader poll, where we picked 16 of our favorite MSP bands, big and small, and paired them up through a drawing. Now, after thousands of votes and some spirited rallying of troops, we are happy to announce that Communist Daughter is the winner. - Metro Magazine

A little closer to home, former Friends Like These leader Johnny Solomon took a break from rock 'n' roll to open a restaurant in Prescott, where he "grew a monstrous beard and gained some Midwestern weight ... in Wisconsin, you have to wrestle a bear every year to stay in the state, so I had to bulk up."
Solomon also started work on new music under theCommunist Daughter moniker recorded at his home, which isn't a cabin. But it's in a small town, so that has to count for something. And while Solomon has cultivated the requisite indie-rock facial hair, he hasn't forgotten his power-pop roots, which means he's still kicking out some fierce tunes that sound great regardless of the amount of electricity used in performing them.

If you were too late to score a Bon Iver ticket, do yourself a favor and head over to the Kitty Cat Klub on Saturday to catch Communist Daughter perform on a bill with Jenny Dalton and Patchwork. And if you're a musician, I guess you might want to start hunting for your own forgotten corner of Packerland to start recording the next budding masterpiece. - St. Paul Pioneer Press

Friends Like These always seemed like a band on the verge of breaking out to bigger things: they graced the cover of City Pages in an era when local musicians rarely even sniffed it, the Hold Steady’s Craig Finn was a major booster and guested on some recordings, and, most importantly, their jagged power-pop was undeniably top flight, simply too good to be kept Minnesota’s secret for long. Unfortunately the big break never really happened for FLT and for awhile it looked like the group’s frontman, John Solomon, was going to turn his back on music altogether.

Fortunately reports of Solomon’s musical retirement were greatly exaggerated and he’s back with a new band, Communist Daughter - featuring fellow former FLT-er Adam Switlick on bass, drummer Steve Yasgar and guitarist Jonathan Blaseg -which pursues mellower musical terrain than FLT but is similarly generous in the catchy hook department. Solomon’s currently putting the finishing touches on Communist Daughter’s debut, but in the meantime Reveille got a sneak preview of the goods in the form of two exclusive live solo acoustic performances. - Reveille Magazine

Communist Daughter marks the triumphant return of Friends Like These frontman Johnny Solomon, whose own refined ear for pop melody has been missing from the local scene in recent years. - City Pages