[Read our 25th Anniversary tribute to Ivy’s ‘Apartment Life’ here.]

The story of Ivy is one of seemingly incongruous phenomena at play. Serendipity and intention. Ambition and humility. Friendship and professionalism. And thankfully for us, the listeners, all of these competing dynamics conspired and coalesced to produce one of the most resplendent recorded repertoires of the past thirty years.

Arguably the supreme pinnacle of Andy Chase, Dominique Durand and the late Adam Schlesinger’s many creative peaks together, Ivy’s second studio album Apartment Life (1997) marks its 25-year milestone this week. And as a fitting complement to my own reflections about one of my all-time favorite albums, Chase and Durand recently—and very generously—took the time to sit down with me to revisit the experience of making this glorious record in depth.

During our refreshingly candid conversation, the couple explored a wide range of topics, including the vicissitudes of Ivy’s career, their steadfast commitment to preserving their identity and integrity as a band, and their vivid memories of their beloved friend and bandmate, who passed away due to COVID-19 related complications two-and-a-half years ago in April 2020. Additionally, toward the end of our chat, Chase and Durand teased a few exciting projects that are on the horizon, all of which I, for one, can’t wait to hear.

If asked to pinpoint a singular theme present throughout the duration of our discussion, I’d say it was the unequivocal and enduring connection that these three kindred musical spirits have shared with each other. And hearing Chase and Durand tell their story firsthand was a beautiful thing to behold, indeed.

Andy, a few minutes into the video you recently made as a tribute for Adam, you explain that “Ivy always flew under the radar to the world…but in the context of Adam, and even myself and Dominique, Ivy was the rabbit’s foot, the magical union between the three of us that really launched our careers.” Can you each talk a bit more about the reasons why the creative—and the personal—connection between the three of you was so magical, and seemed to work so well right from the beginning?

Dominique Durand: For me, you need to see the context, it was 1991 when we all met, and we were obviously very young. At this point, I did not want to be in the music business. That was not my dream. But Adam and Andy were really dreaming of being in this world. So, there was this sense of urgency to try to make it in the music world, but also this innocence and this drive.

It's a long story, but when the three of us got together with all of this energy and the dreams of making it, it was sort of like a happy accident, with everything aligned, and it just happened. There was this completely magical feeling of like, ‘oh my God, we’ve just realized our dreams.’ It was like the world is open to us. We were like little kids being so excited about all of the possibilities and it was so pure, that feeling of innocence. And that realization, to me, was magical, even more than the music itself—when everything aligned, and it was just there for us.

Andy Chase: Using the rabbit's foot analogy, everything we did, despite ourselves and despite our efforts—or our lack of efforts—the Wheel of Fate just kept propelling us forward into the best direction. Which makes it really hard for us to give advice at this point, at our age, when people ask us how we got into the music business. We don't know. It was despite our own efforts. Fate just kept forging us forward.

For example, in 1991, I put an ad in The Village Voice. And I was trying to put a band together with me as the singer and my girlfriend, Dominique, at the time. She was going to be a documentary filmmaker, or a photographer or a journalist, but certainly not a singer—she had never sung. So, one of the few people that answered my Village Voice ad, looking for another guitar player or maybe a bass player, was Adam Schlesinger.

So, he comes to our little one-bedroom apartment and I'm like, “this is an important business meeting.” I said to Dominique, “go in the bedroom, just disappear.” So, she goes into the bedroom. I didn't even introduce them. I didn't want him to come to this stranger's apartment for an interview for a potential band and there's this girl, like, just staring at him.

So she goes in the bedroom, and I close the door. But Adam comes in with Chris Collingwood, who ultimately became the singer in Fountains of Wayne. So, they sort of admit to me that “yeah, you know, we liked your ad. But we're looking for a guitar player, which you said, you can play guitar. But Chris is going to sing vocals.” And I was like, “well, nice to meet you, Chris. But I'm looking to put a band together and I'm going to be singing vocals.”

So very quickly, we realized, okay, this is not going to work. But Adam and I had such an immediate connection. As soon as they left, I opened the door and Dominique comes falling out, you know, because she's been leaning against the door, listening. And she's like, “Oh, my God, that guy Adam is so cool. I want to meet him.” And we were all new to New York City, so we're looking for friends, we're looking for connections. Dominique wasn’t thinking ‘let's start a band.’

DD: I just wanted to meet really interesting people. Funny, smart, clever people. And Adam was filling the profile.

AC: I didn't have that many friends in New York at that point. So, I was like, clearly the band thing won't work out. But this is a great guy to know, fun to hang out with. He was funny and charming, smart, driven. So that was the beginning of the union between Dominique, Adam and me, and there was no such thing as Ivy yet. So, it really was friendship first.

That was the initial connection and we ended up hanging out quite a few times over the next year or two. After that first meeting, we would have drinks and talk about music. Adam and I commiserated on our respective bands, his band (Pinwheel) with Chris Collingwood, which wasn’t known as Fountains of Wayne back then. We were both trying to get record deals and we were both miserable because it was just not happening.

The video you made for Adam was such a moving and poignant tribute, as well as a refreshingly candid and insightful portrait of his dynamic, complicated personality and the bond the three of you shared, both personally and professionally. Can you talk about the making of the video and how the process of putting it together may have helped you process the loss of your friend and crystallize your memories of him?

DD: Andy was always ahead of his time, before social media, and he always had a camera with him. He used to film all the time, which would sometimes drive Adam and me crazy. But it was amazing, because we have so much footage of just our ordinary life, us cooking in the kitchen or us arguing, just living our life.

AC: My camera had a screen that you could flip out. And you could either look at it as the person filming, or you could turn it 180 degrees so that people being filmed could actually see themselves in it. Which today is like, ‘okay, no big deal.’ But back then, it was like, ‘whoa, we can see ourselves.’ And I was also flipping it around and turning the camera back on me, similar to what people today would call selfies, right? But back then, it was like, ‘what's this guy doing?’

DD: After Adam passed away, we were in complete shock. And we couldn't even imagine doing anything for him, like even writing a tribute was just too painful. But then after a year, we realized that we have all of this footage. And there were so many other homages made for Adam, but when Andy and I watched them, we thought, ‘that’s not Adam that they're talking about, it's completely fake and funny.’ And we wanted to show the real and authentic man that he was, the best things about him and the not so great…

AC: We loved him.

DD: We wanted to show who he really was, at least to us. We not only shared music with him, but everything else, you know, friendship, family. We raised our kids together, we were neighbors in New York City, he lived across the street from us. So, we realized we have all this footage, and at that point, it was a year later, and we felt ready (to create something) with the footage.

AC: With the good, the bad and the ugly. So hopefully, people walked away feeling like they knew him a little better. And in the end, if you're left with something, it's something beautiful, it's not ugly, it's not bad. It's just the reality of life, you know. We knew Adam for 30 years and we had a complicated relationship with him. And we just felt like it was honoring his legacy to establish something from the few people who really knew him in a way that people can relate to. In the end, I hope what comes across is our love for him.

You released your first two recordings—the Lately EP and Realistic—via the independent label Seed Records. Although, as I understand it, Seed was actually owned by Atlantic Records, right?

AC: This was during the period when most of the major labels were realizing that there were these indie bands that had cachet and a fan base, who would never sign with a major label for philosophical reasons. So how could they rope bands like us in? Well, they would just set up, like, a “fake” indie label. In our case, it was called Seed Records. We loved the bands on Seed and the A&R guy, Mark Lipsitz, really discovered and fought for us, and we wouldn't have a career if it wasn't for him. He would make no bones about the fact that Seed was owned by Atlantic and ultimately, if you sell enough records, Atlantic is going to do what they call “upstreaming,” taking the band off of Seed and up the stream to Atlantic. So that placated our desire to be independent, but also, our dreams of signing with a major—we could have our cake and eat it too.

How did the transition from going from Seed to the parent Atlantic label impact the music that you made? I mean, Realistic is a wonderful record in its own right, but Apartment Life arguably possesses a bigger, more polished, more immersive sound altogether. Was this due to having more resources at your disposal with Atlantic or was it simply the natural evolution of Ivy’s music? Or perhaps a combination of both factors was at play?

DD: I think it was mostly a natural process. With (the) Lately (EP), it's almost funny because it's basically our demos, you know? It was mostly Andy and me just being in our bedroom and coming up with these very silly songs and recording them. I mean, I had never even sung before.

And then with Realistic, we were very, at that point, not professional at all. I mean, even though Andy and Adam were great musicians, it was really the first time that they ever made a record. And so, we really didn't know what we were doing. But after Realistic was released, we went on tour, and I became a better singer with more confidence. And then, of course, Andy and Adam were spending a lot of time in the studio and becoming real producers and recording engineers, and they were both very interested in that process of production and recording.

So, when we were finally ready to make Apartment Life, suddenly our musical experience was on a totally other level. And we were lucky enough to also we have our own recording studio in New York City. So, we could just go and spend as much time there as we wanted. We had this idea for Apartment Life—we wanted to make a very lush record with a lot of horn and string sections. And Andy and Adam were really experimenting with production, without time constraints which can be restricting creatively.

Atlantic Records, even though it’s a major label, they really didn’t put any pressure on us whatsoever. They never said, “you know, you need to have a single, you need to make something that sounds like it's going to be on the radio.” They really let us do it and we were basically producing the record ourselves.

Though I remember one of the main guys at the label saying, “you really need to make Dominique pretty.” And I remember he was trying to compare me to the other singer who was huge on Atlantic Records at the time. She was blonde, I can’t remember…

AC: She was from Alaska.

Jewel?

DD: Yeah, Jewel! He was like, “you need to be like her” because she was huge then. He said, “you have to be like her. She seduces everyone. She's so friendly. You know, you need to be like that.” And I looked at him and just said, “OK, I’ll try.” [Laughs]

AC: Though in a way, he wasn't wrong, right? If you're running a big corporation like Atlantic, that’s the kind of advice that will make your company money. It just didn't make sense for us. But with us, he was dealing with a very difficult French girl [laughs] and two Type A personality Jews who had their own recording studio at that point. So, we were so autonomous. We were like, “okay, yeah, she needs to pretty.” And he would say, “Adam, you need to slim down, and you guys need to both wear matching suits.” But we would just do what we wanted to do.

DD: We were very independent. We did what we wanted to do for everything, not just musically, but with our image, the album covers, we had our own photographer. That was the beauty of our musical career in that we were on so many different labels, but we always remained completely independent.

AC: For better or worse. [Laughs]

DD: [Laughs]

AC: We started working on Apartment Life, and then Seed told us that they were getting closed down and all of the bands were getting dropped, except for us and this other band called Madder Rose. We were getting upstreamed, meaning that we're still alive, Atlantic is keeping us. And so, we're like, ‘okay,’ and then the advance was bigger, which was great for us since we had more money to live on then.

But it didn't really impact us creatively because we were already deep into making Apartment Life. I think when we realized there was a larger budget, we were able to do all the things that Adam and I had wanted to do as producers. We can have real horns, not fake horns—we can afford that. And we can try strings on this song, and we can hire a guy who's really good at loops and samples. We were already putting horns on the record before we could afford it. It was just like, ‘Oh, thank God, we're on Atlantic now,’ because they basically reimbursed us for our costs. So, I think the evolution from Realistic to Apartment Life was pretty organic, not impacted by the label we were on, and it was mostly because I owned a recording studio. We were very autonomous. We weren't dependent on record label money.

And then, of course, in typical a major label fashion, we committed to a two-month tour when Apartment Life came out, which would be one of many tours to come because we would typically tour for a year. And three weeks into that two-month tour, Atlantic dropped us. Go figure. And our management at the time said that it was nothing personal, you know, the label dropped 14 or 15 other bands like us, it was a corporate decision. But like the rabbit's foot analogy, every step backwards, so to speak, was two steps forward. We continued to tour the record because we had Atlantic’s money that they had advanced us. And we made the album for really cheap in our own studios and had the finances to just keep touring and committing to the album.

DD: So, then we get picked up by Sony/550 and we re-released Apartment Life. So, Apartment Life had a lot of lives, for sure.

You’ve spoken about Adam’s and your commitment to the DIY approach of making and producing your records and I'm curious, did you ever feel tempted—or were you ever encouraged by others—to hire outside producers? Or were you always just very committed to doing it yourselves?

AC: Ultimately, we were always committed to the DIY approach. And we always trusted ourselves. I was producing other bands, so I felt confident as a record producer. Adam was also producing other bands. And we realized early on that we were pretty damn lucky. We have this amazing chanteuse (in Dominique). And all three of us adored each other. And yet, in our own right, separately, Adam and I were producers in demand, and I was also in demand as a mixing engineer, so we didn't take that lightly. By the time of Apartment Life, we knew we were onto something, that we were doing something right.

And all of the labels that we were on—Seed, Atlantic, Sony, and then Nettwerk Records—their attitude, luckily for us, was, ‘we really like what these guys have done. That's why we're signing them today. And oh, they produce themselves.’ None of them ever tried to impose their thoughts on us, they never suggested that maybe we shouldn't produce ourselves or we should hire somebody who can take us to the next level.

At some point, past Apartment Life, with our future records, we started to realize, ‘okay, well, maybe we can produce it ourselves. But at the end, we'll bring in somebody who can take it to the next level and work with us at the mixing stage.’ As we grew and evolved, we also became less precious about the control issues, and brought in people at various stages that we felt could elevate us beyond where we could take ourselves. But we always had confidence about what we were doing. It was very insular. We loved it. It was just me, Adam and Dominique in the studio. And you know, I'm a recording engineer, Adam became a great mixing engineer. That was part of the fun—that we could just do everything ourselves. And the bottom line was that we just wanted to express ourselves and the freedom to do it just the three of us, for better or worse, was really what drove us.

DD: Apartment Life was mixed by these two amazing guys in Boston…

AC: (Paul) Koldene and (Sean) Slade.

DD: And that was really fun. At first, we were not sure because we were very controlling. But that ended up being such a great experience.

AC: We were so naive, so innocent. And we handed our record—which was basically finished but needed to be mixed—to Koldene and Slade, and they smoked pot. We had never seen anybody smoke that much pot. [Laughs]

One of them was manning the main control, you know, the mixing board, like sixteen of the twenty-four faders, and the other guy would have the other eight, so he had less work to do. So, he was the one rolling all the joints. And at some point, we're sitting in the back of the room, watching these guys mix and baked out of their minds, and they're having the funniest conversations, but they're doing such an amazing job. At some point, they turn around, and they're like, “you guys want a hit?” And we don’t smoke pot. But we each passed around one of their joints, and Dominique took a little puff, I took a puff, Adam took a puff. These are three people who really aren't pot smokers and we hallucinated for, like, ten hours straight. And we're like, “how can these fucking guys (Koldene & Slade) function?” We’re sitting in the back, freaking out, seeing like, you know, bats flying around the room. But it was an introduction to a great period when we actually did smoke a lot of pot. [Laughs]

I see, so that’s why Apartment Life sounds as amazing as it does.

DD: I think so. [Laughs]

So musically, there's so much to love about the record, and I could go on and on about it. But one of the things I’m very curious about is the sequencing of the songs throughout the record and specifically, the shifts in tempos. From song to song, there are such notable transitions in tempo and mood, from fast and loud to slow and subdued. Was this sequencing a conscious decision on your part?

DD: Well, all I can tell you is that we worked so hard on the sequencing. We would spend days and nights overthinking the sequencing of the record. And at the end, the three of us had different opinions, and we had to come up with a compromise where everyone was happy. This is something that was very important to us. And we liked it this way, getting different moods, where the next song is quite different than the one before it, to make it more challenging.

AC: It's almost silly, almost strange to talk about this, with people in their twenties who are, like, “what’s sequencing? What a waste of time. I'm just streaming my favorite songs and adding them to my playlist.” So, nobody is ever privy to the beauty of sequencing, you know, you'd have to sit down and listen to the album from beginning to end. Even the crossfades—how much time there is between the end of one song to the beginning of the next song—that was important. There was so much thought that went into it, to keep the mood going and take you on a journey. A sonic and dynamic journey.

I’ve always loved the title of the album and it resonates with me personally more than ever, I think, after 22 years of my own “apartment life” here in New York City. Why did the three of you select the title, and what did the notion of “Apartment Life” signify for you back then and 25 years later, what does it mean for you now?

DD: The title made total sense to us. The three of us were basically living a life of being inside an apartment. We were writing inside the apartment, we were recording in our apartment. This is our life. This is what we do. And even though we lived in New York, we really didn't go out there very much. We weren’t taking advantage of going to the theater or clubs. We were just basically inside our tiny little New York apartments. And just on the couch, all day, playing music, writing music, and all of the songs, the lyrics, were about that—being inside and just feeling alienated from the outside world. So, it was a very natural title and vibe for the record.

AC: I remember Adam came up with the title. We had the song titles, the record was finished, we mixed it, it was mastered. And we were like, “what do we call this thing?” And one of the key clues to us was that we had a song called “Get Out of the City,” which seemed to embody our feeling that all of the songs were written in either our apartment or Adam’s apartment. We shot all of the album photos in Adam’s apartment.

So, Adam called us one day, and he's like, “I think I came up with a name.” And we're like, “The Queen is Dead? Like, what kind of crazy name are we gonna come up with?” And he says, “Apartment Life.” And we said, “Apartment Life? That is so obvious.” And he's like, “I know, it's good. It's really good.” And then we thought, “You know, you’re kinda right.” I'm sure we tried to talk him out of it, you know, “what about something like the Lonely Journey in New York City.” And he was like, “Come on. Apartment Life.” He was really good at being succinct. And that was definitely Adam to a tee.

So, rumor has it that there may be a few special things coming up on the horizon with respect to Ivy’s catalog. Without revealing too many details and all of your secrets at this point, what can Ivy's fans look forward to soon?

AC: It was complete coincidence, but a few months after Adam passed away on April 1, 2020, we realized that our entire catalog of work had been owned temporarily, for like, 10 years, by Nettwerk Records and those terms were now up, with everything reverting back to us. And we thought of the guy who really discovered us, who was responsible for our career—Mark Lipsitz, who had been with Seed Records, our first label. When he discovered us, he fought for us, he signed us, all despite the higher-ups he was beholden to telling him “no, we don't want to sign this band.” But he fought for us. And now here we are, years and years later, and Mark is now with a great indie label that we've always respected called Bar/None.

DD: I called him up. And at that point, we had not really talked to him in the last 20 years, because our lives went off in different directions. But I knew that he was working at Bar/None and I’ve always loved that record label because to me, it's like the quintessential New York City label. I mean, they’re based in Hoboken (New Jersey), but whatever, it’s still part of the city, and they’ve signed great bands, some of my favorite bands. So, I called him up and I said, “this is what's happening with our records, and would you be interested if we give these records back to you?” And he was like, “yeah.” So, it just makes sense for us to go back to our roots.

AC: So, we spoke with Mark and Bar/None is now planning to re-release our catalog. He wanted to do vinyl, which we really hadn't done much of. And so, in talking with him, we thought, ‘well, maybe we could do something even more special.’ We'll re-release Apartment Life digitally. Obviously, we'll do vinyl. But what if we go back into our archives, and we find all of the demo versions for each song that ended up being on Apartment Life, and we'll do an Apartment Life demos release. We'll find the original artwork, and we'll use some of the outtakes. So, the artwork almost looks the same, but it's not. And we'll have the same sequence of songs in the same order, but there'll be the demo versions. So that's what we've done.

Wow, I can't wait to hear that! And hopefully, a new generation of music lovers will discover the brilliance of Apartment Life and all of your music. So, 11 years or so have passed since the last Ivy album, All Hours (2011), was released. I'm curious to know how each of you have been indulging your creativity and your art during the past 11 years?

AC: Well, Dominique and I recorded a new album under the name of The Never Endings and it has not yet seen the light of day. And I think releasing the album is one of the things that we want to accomplish in the next year or so—to find a home for that as a finished album, with artwork and everything. It’s just her and me and a couple of our friends, and it's a record we're really proud of. It was a huge labor of love for us.

DD: And what I’ve done for the last 10 years? Well, first of all, I lived my life, we raised three kids in New York City…

AC: Oh right, those three kids. [Laughs]

DD: Besides the music that Andy and I did together, I also worked on this multimedia exhibition on the Velvet Underground in France and New York that took years to put together. And then I did a lot of traveling.

AC: Tahiti 80 is a French band that I've worked with for years, I produced their first two albums (1999’s Puzzle and 2002’s Wallpaper for the Soul) and I worked with them on their seventh album (2018’s The Sunsh!ne Beat Vol. 1). So, we were pretty active. We were cueing up The Never Endings album, trying to find a home for it. In the winter and early spring of 2020, Dominique and I were talking to Adam about doing another Ivy album. And then, of course, COVID hit and Adam passed away. So, we're revisiting all of it now. I'm thinking about doing more producing again. We've got The Never Endings coming up. And I don't know, maybe there'll be another Ivy album.

OK, last question. In the spirit of Albumism, what are your five favorite albums of all time?

DD: Okay, so for me, the number one is The Velvet Underground and Nico. Next is Nancy & Lee by Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood. Survival by Bob Marley and the Wailers. The Smiths’ The Queen Is Dead. And then the fifth is a tough one. I have so many more, but I would say Substance by New Order.

That’s a fantastic list.

DD: Of course, I have so many others.

Which ones come to mind?

DD: The other ones are What's Going On by Marvin Gaye, Mezzanine by Massive Attack, and then 16 Lovers Lane by The Go-Betweens. It’s all different kinds of music, but these are very important records to me.

And how about yours, Andy?

AC: Well, these are the records that I still listen to the most. So, in chronological order, I would say, The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, David Bowie’s Hunky Dory, Prefab Sprout’s Two Wheels Good, Tahiti 80’s Wallpaper for the Soul, and Frank Ocean’s Blonde.

Editor’s Note: This interview has been edited from the original transcript for length and clarity.

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