Long Winters

The Long Winters are John Roderick's band, and the story winds through half of Seattle's indie scene. Born in Seattle and raised in Anchorage, Alaska, Roderick came back to the city, formed the Bun Family Players and then the Western State Hurricanes, and when the Hurricanes folded he took a job playing keyboards on the road for Harvey Danger.

In 2001 Harvey Danger's Sean Nelson pitched a shared album, half Roderick's songs and half his own. Chris Walla of Death Cab for Cutie had just opened his Hall of Justice studio in Seattle and signed on to help, Joe Bass of Sky Cries Mary and Brian Young of Fountains of Wayne filled out some of the tracks, and bit by bit the project turned into a Roderick record. Months later it emerged as The Worst You Can Do Is Harm. A stretch in New York playing solo shows yielded a batch of new songs, some of which landed on the second album, When I Pretend to Fall, and Barsuk Records came knocking.

The Ultimatum EP in 2005 carried "The Commander Thinks Aloud", a slow-building, brooding number, and Putting the Days to Bed followed in 2006 with "Pushover", a sharper, punchier blast of hooks and wit. Nelson, Eric Corson, Nabil Ayers and Michael Shilling all passed through the lineup, but Roderick's wordy, big-chorus songwriting is the constant.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.