Members of Love Riot
Willem Elsevier, Mikel Gehl and Lisa Mathews
Love Riot never really broke up. They just took the long way around.
Formed in Baltimore in the early ‘90s out of the new wave band Beyond Words, Love Riot built its sound around Lisa Mathews’ voice, Mikel Gehl’s fingerpicked acoustic guitar, Mark Evanko’s bass, and Willem Elsevier’s violin and mandolin, with “Young” Ron Campbell on drums. In 1994 they won the grand prize at Yamaha’s MusicQuest in Japan, and put the winnings into Muscle, produced by Eric “Roscoe” Ambel. Maybe She Will (1996) followed, then the Killing Time EP (1997), released after the band appeared as themselves — busking in a subway station — in the Peabody Award-winning “Subway” episode of NBC’s Homicide: Life on the Street. They played Lilith Fair, SXSW, LA’s House of Blues and NYC’s Bottom Line, and opened for 10,000 Maniacs, Wilco, Marshall Crenshaw and Alex Chilton. Heaven Can Wait arrived in 1999.
Then Lisa had a baby, and Mikel had a son not long after. The two started Milkshake, a rock band for kids, which earned a Grammy nomination and landed on PBS KIDS, Nick Jr. and the Emmy-winning ToddWorld. Love Riot went quiet for 25 years.
The kids are grown now. All five are back.
Nothing Is Etched In Stone, released on Deck Party Music, sets six new songs beside five recorded just before the hiatus — and you’d be hard pressed to tell which is which. Smart, warm, emotionally honest, with Lisa’s voice at the center of everything. Same band. Longer story.