ENTERTAINMENT

Love Seed Mama Jump, Delaware's king of covers, turns 25

Ryan Cormier
The News Journal
Love Seed Mama Jump on stage in the '90s at the Bottle & Cork in Dewey Beach.

Love Seed Mama Jump singer Rick Arzt doesn't need an anniversary to tell him that his band has been around for a quarter of a century.

Last summer, a young member of another Dewey Beach cover band came up to him with an early Love Seed album and asked Arzt to sign it, telling him that he's had it since sixth grade.

"It was cool, complimentary, respectful and nice, but also horrifying," jokes Arzt, now 46.

Since getting their start in the early '90s at the University of Delaware, Love Seed has been the soundtrack to the summer for thousands of Delawareans and beach-bound weekend warriors.

A sold-out, standing-room-only crowd listens to Love Seed Mama Jump at the Bottle & Cork on Aug. 23, 1997.

And even though it may not feel like it to the Dewey Beach-based six-piece, the band's 25-year anniversary is upon them and The Rusty Rudder is hosting a birthday bash Saturday night for the lovable band that's always been at the center of the party.

Tickets are $10 for the anniversary show, which brings back several former members and will be loaded with Love Seed nostalgia. The set will be filled with their sing-a-long originals such as "She Likes the Dead" and "Bored," as well as the re-worked covers of songs that many fans like better than the originals. (We're looking at you John Denver's "Take Me Home, Country Roads"!)

"It's awesome that we've been together for 25 years, but we achieved it mostly by existing," cracks Wiedmann, the band's snark-filled bassist, who also sings lead on some songs. "And I don't mean to downplay that because existing is hard for a lot of bands to do. We've outlasted everyone. 'Friends,' 'Seinfeld,' our contemporaries."

Dewey Beach-based cover band Love Seed Mama Jump play Harrington's Delaware State Fair in 2013.

"We've actually become symbolic of a lot of peoples' youth, so this is a milestone for everybody. I think we're all at that point where we're looking back at our lives and taking stock."

Over those years, Love Seed has sold between 150,000 to 200,000 copies of their five albums, including their live debut, 1994's "Drunk at the Stone Balloon," which still stands as one of the state's most beloved live albums of all time.

"There was some amazing energy in the air," remembers Arzt, who sang songs by everyone from Van Morrison and Neil Young to The Police and Peter Gabriel that fall night in 1993.

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From the Stone Balloon to The Rusty Rudder

The band is actually a few years older than 25. This month technically marks 25 years since the band has played as a full six-piece on the Rudder deck, which the band has been playing every summer Thursday since July 1991.

The band started when Cape Henlopen High School classmates Arzt, Wiedmann and former guitarist Will Stack started playing school talent shows together.

Soon, they paired up with local guitarist Brian Gore, who owned Dewey's East of Maui Surf Shop at the time, and percussionist Dave James, who Arzt describes as "this hippie guy with a conga on his bicycle who would show up at Arena's."

When several band members headed north to attend the University of Delaware, they found the final piece to the Love Seed puzzle – drummer Paul Voshell, who was playing during the talent portion of the Greek Games for his fraternity when the band first spotted him.

Love Seed Mama Jump lead vocalist Rick Arzt performs at the Bottle & Cork in Dewey Beach on July 12, 1999.

The following summer, the filled-out band returned to Dewey Beach and their 25-year run was set in motion.

Even though the band has had several members come and go throughout the years, the core remains, minus James and Stack.

With support of local music shops like Rainbow Records and radio – the band counted WMMR 93.3-FM and Pierre Robert as early supporters – Love Seed grew from a local phenomenon to a regional powerhouse, even shooting promos for Philadelphia's WPVI-TV.

In 1996, Billboard featured the unsigned Love Seed, drawing attention to the popularity of "Drunk at the Stone Balloon," which the magazine reported sold 16,000 copies in its first year. (It ended up selling about 100,000, according to the band.)

"That figure becomes even more remarkable when one considers that, with the exception of two tracks, 'Drunk' is an album of cover tunes with the indelible LSMJ stamp of energetic quirkiness," the article read.

The two originals on the album, the humorous punk-turned-hippie ode "She Likes the Dead" and the harmonica-laced "Free," remain as two of the band's most requested originals. And since their own songs are slipped into both their covers-dominated shows, many think they are cover songs as well.

"They don't take much credit for it, but they wrote some interesting music. And they have played so long, it's almost like they cover their own songs," says Alex Pires, co-owner of The Rusty Rudder and the Bottle & Cork, who has been booking Love Seed for nearly 20 years. "That's unique to them. None of the other cover bands wrote any of their own music and that shows you how much talent is there."

Love Seed Mama Jump bassist Pete Weidmann (right) and singer Rick Arzt perform at the Delaware Music Festival in Dewey Beach in 2014.

Every one of their albums was sold the old-fashioned way – in person – before the internet took over, delivering music to fans through Amazon.com, iTunes or streaming services. The band would travel to play shows up and down the East Coast, building up its fan base one concert at a time and selling albums one-by-one to newly converted fans.

"It was grassroots. People would burn the CD for their friends and it was all word-of-mouth," Arzt says, remembering the times they played their punk version of "Take Me Home, Country Roads" at West Virginia University, which still uses their rendition as a fight song. "We had no idea that was their anthem. They were some of the craziest shows we ever played. I mean, trees came down and bushes came out of the ground."

By 2001, the band was preparing the release of their fifth album, which was self-titled and released by New York-based Artemis Records, a leading indie label that counted everyone from Warren Zevon to Steve Earle as artists.

The album was officially released in the summer with a mid-September marketing push planned. On Sep. 11 of that year, everything changed for the nation following the terrorist attacks in New York. And the same was true for the band, albeit on a different level.

"We were supposed to be pushed to radio that week and they didn't get back into their offices for two or three weeks," Arzt says. "Other than a couple of thousands of our friends, no one really heard it."

These days, the band is still one of the busiest bands in the state. During the summer, they regularly play beachside venues in Delaware and New Jersey. In the winter, they play clubs across the region, in addition to regular gigs at Washington, D.C.'s FedExField after Washington Redskins games.

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'Most popular band Delaware has ever seen'

Love Seed has grown into an elder statesman of the state's cover band scene (whether they like it or not), while still delivering shows that draw big, smiling crowds.

And, sure, their shows aren't quite as fearless and daring as they were back in the '90s, but they make up for it.

Love Seed Mama Jump opens the Rehoboth Beach Bandstand in 2013.

"Back in the day, it was chaos. Like if Will had tequila instead of Jäger that night, I'm wondering, 'Is he going to whip out a chainsaw or stage dive?'" he says. "While that is not as present as it used to be, what is there is a pretty tight, high-energy band. We're on it."

So how does a band stick together this long? After all, they've outlasted all their contemporaries, especially after the 2013 retirement of Mr. Greengenes, ending their own nearly 20-year run of high-energy, whip-them-into-a-frenzy sets. (Mr. Greengenes will come out of retirement and team up with Love Seed and others for the Bottle & Cork's already-sold-out 80th-anniversary concert Aug. 26.)

Some in the band point to the fact they started out as friends during their high school and college days as the secret to their success. Or maybe it was because they had higher aspirations than just singing covers. Others simply say taking separate cars to gigs can help keep them from getting burned out since they are all in their mid-40s with different lives off stage, including some with families of their own.

Economic stability also helps. Early in their run, Elvin Steinberg, the band's manager and former Stone Balloon owner, set up a corporation for the band. All of the band's earnings go into Zani Mati, Inc., and they each get a salary. Because of the flush summers and slow winters, it helps some in the band get through lean months.

Whatever the magic mix, Love Seed now stands on their own.

"You can say they are really the most popular band Delaware has ever seen," Pires says, "and they are still doing very well."

'American Girl' on repeat

Domenic Maiorano, 33, first saw Love Seed at the Stone Balloon shortly before the storied Newark rock club closed on Main Street in 2005. Even though it was 10 years after the release of "Drunk at the Stone Balloon," the then-21-year-old knew the album well thanks to his older brother Sonny.

Dewey Beach's Love Seed Mama Jump on the Rehoboth Beach Boardwalk in 1996.

Since then, Maiorano estimates he has seen the band about 200 times. And, yes, he will be on the Rudder deck on Saturday night.

"It's cool seeing them at places like the Rudder, places they have played since they started. When you think of the Rudder, you think of Love Seed Mama Jump," says Pike Creek's Maiorano, director of alumni affairs for Wilmington's Salesianum School.

When it came to planning their 2009 wedding, the Maioranos each had one want: Lindsay wanted a certain photographer to shoot the event and Domenic wanted Love Seed as the band. Both got their wish. "The dance floor never emptied. People don't remember anything about the food, but they remember the great time they had with the band," he says.

While being in a party cover band for your entire adult life has its perks, there are a few downsides other than Jägermeister hangovers.

One drawback is playing some of the same tunes so many times that even the songs that you love can begin to grate on you.

"I feel so bad, but if I ever meet Tom Petty, I'm going to have to punch him," jokes Wiedmann, 47. "Because at this point, I've probably played 'American Girl' 5,000 times more than he has."

Contact Ryan Cormier of The News Journal at rcormier@delawareonline.com or (302) 324-2863. Follow him on Facebook (@ryancormier), Twitter (@ryancormier) and Instagram (@ryancormier).

IF YOU GO

What: Love Seed Mama Jump's 25th anniversary concert

When: Saturday, 9 p.m.

Where: The Rusty Rudder, 113 Dickinson St., Dewey Beach

Cost: $10

Tickets: deweybeachlife.com