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It will also serve as an actual reunion for two bands featured on Saturday night’s lineup at St. Stephen and the Incarnation Episcopal Church, which has long been allied with Positive Force and will host the fest’s two concerts. The groups, Lincoln and Samuel S.C. — originally known just as Samuel — are bristling post-punk outfits of similar vintage, and with overlapping histories.
Lincoln’s comeback began with the rediscovery of the song “Repair and Reward,” which singer-guitarist Jay Demko described in a phone interview as “kind of a leftover track.” The Morgantown, W.Va., band released just seven songs during its short career, and Demko originally thought of including the unheard tune with the rest of the material when releasing it to streaming services.
Instead, “Repair and Reward” became the title track on a Lincoln retrospective released by Temporary Residence Limited, a label to which Demko has another link.
Demko works as a touring multi-instrumentalist with Explosions in the Sky, a Texas post-rock group that records for Temporary Residence. “That’s my living,” the musician said of the job.
“Repair and Reward” was released almost a year ago, but Saturday’s show is the first reunion gig for Demko, guitarist John Herod, drummer Justin Wierbonski and bassist Johanna Claasen. “We’re really excited to play this particular show,” Demko said. “We think it’s a cool idea. To play St. Stephen’s, and get back to the roots of those kinds of shows. Giving props to the D.C. scene that supported us.”
“I’m not sure we would have done a reunion show if it weren’t for this particular show,” he added.
Demko suggested the band might play just one more gig, “a hometown show in Morgantown.” Samuel S.C., however, has five more concerts scheduled next month, including one in its hometown.
Samuel began in State College, Pa., the source of the S.C. in its current name. The band was preceded by a short-lived group that featured singer Vanessa Downing, drummer Eric Astor and Demko. It was Demko who encouraged another Morgantown guitarist, James Marinelli, to move to the Pennsylvania town.
Downing, Astor and Marinelli soon founded Samuel with guitarist Josh Deutsch and bassist Dean Taormina. All are heard on “94-95,” a collection of ’90s tracks released last year. Deutsch is not in the current lineup but is present, in a sense, on “High Places,” a 2023 album of newly recorded material. Five of the eight songs, composed but not recorded in 1995, were co-written by Deutsch.
“While he gave us his blessing on reuniting and playing shows again, and putting out this record, he chose not to participate,” explained Marinelli in a phone interview.
Astor lives in Northern Virginia, but most of Samuel S.C.’s members are now based in Massachusetts, and Marinelli’s permanent home is in Norway. That’s a big change from the band’s early days, the guitarist noted. “From 1993 to ’95, most of us lived together. We would practice almost every day.”
And yet, he said, “We still have pretty good musical chemistry. We can just get together and bang out the songs and it will sound pretty good. That was completely unexpected.”
One distinctive aspect of that chemistry is the mix of Downing’s lead and Marinelli’s secondary vocals, whose shifting interplay recalls that of X’s Exene Cervenka and John Doe. “I’m not quite sure how that developed,” Marinelli said. “I sing a line a beat or so before Vanessa does. We try to make them blend together, and play off of each other.”
If Samuel S.C. is more active than Lincoln, Marinelli said the musicians are too busy with other things to be in a full-time band. Part time, though, is a definite possibility. “We’ve already,” he revealed, “written most of a new record.” July 29 at 6 p.m. at St. Stephen and the Incarnation Episcopal Church, 1525 Newton St. NW. reunionsummer.com. Concerts sold out.
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