Edge of the World: Let’s Active at 40 (Part 3 of 3)

Continued from Part Two…

Easter initially liked what he knew of the I.R.S. business model. “I liked it from a practical standpoint,” he says. “But I had a very cavalier attitude about it.” He says that friends advised him to shop deals from other labels before signing on the dotted line. “I was like, ‘No, they’re going to forget about us in the next 24 hours,’ so we just went for it.” Looking back four decades on, Easter derisively characterizes Let’s Active’s contract as “a ‘blues deal.’ Ours wasn’t too bad, but… it was not the most beneficial to us.” Today the rights for Let’s Active’s music are tied up in the monolithic conglomerate with a well-suited name, Universal.

As things progressed, Let’s Active witnessed the same sorts of music business machinery that every other band contends with. Easter had half-expected (or at least imagined) record company executive offices to be populated with serious music fans. What he found, of course, was something else. “There was a degree of ‘suburban vibe’ that permeated things.” he says. “And that surprised me. People working in the business and pulling the levers of power would’ve been the dorks at my high school in Winston-Salem,” he observes.

He says that he found that reality somewhat depressing. Displaying remarkable self-knowledge, he observes that when a band is signed to a label, “you need them to love you. And the only thing that’s going to make them love you is selling a whole lot of records, which we never did. So the romance cooled quickly.”

The original trio held together into 1984. During a tour in support of 1984’s Cypress, Let’s Active’s first full-length LP, drummer Sara Romweber quit the band. (She would go on to play with Snatches of Pink, and then with her brother in the Dex Romweber Duo.) And later that same year when the personal relationship between Easter and Hunter ended, the bassist left the group as well. Playing nearly everything himself, Easter recorded a superb second Let’s Active album, Big Plans for Everybody, but some of the winsome charm of the founding trio was gone. And he says that by the time of Let’s Active’s third and final LP, 1988’s Every Dog Has His Day, the label execs “were completely sick of us.”

Robert Plant was on record as being a major fan of Let’s Active. In fact he offered the group the opening slot on his tour. “But our management company turned him down,” Easter says, ruefully. “We didn’t even know about it until after they had turned him down.”

In retrospect, Let’s Active had the goods to succeed on their own merits, with or without the help of well-placed famous friends. Between Mitch Easter’s songs and production skills and the chemistry – personal and musical – among its three members, the original band earned every critical plaudit it received, even if that praise didn’t translate into world-beating record sales figures.

Longtime friend Don Dixon praised Easter during remarks at a November 2021 event commemorating the 40th anniversary of the original Let’s Active trio. “Mitch has a combination of patience, dedication, and brilliance that is remarkable,” he said. “The sad thing about those traits is that they’re negatives if you want to be a rock star. But they’re great if you want to be a good producer and a good human.”

DD Thornton Kenny spoke at the same event. A groundbreaking radio deejay in the ‘80s, Thornton was an early and vocal champion of Let’s Active; Easter had been sending her tapes long before the band got started. “In October ‘83 I finally got the EP Afoot, and I was very excited about having it,” she said. “I had waited a long time, and it’s easier to play vinyl than reel-to-reel tapes.”

In the ‘80s, Rob Ladd was the drummer in popular ska-rock band Pressure Boys. He was (and remains) an ardent fan of Let’s Active, and of Romweber in particular. “The first time I saw her play was a lightbulb moment,” he said at the 2021 event. “But the lightbulb was so bright that it seared my soul. What she was doing was nothing less than magical mastery.”

Ladd credits Romweber as a major influence. “I copied almost everything Sara did for a while before I realized that I would have to be myself if I was going to be any good,” he said. Ladd emphasized that his measure of what was good was simple: “Would Sara like this?” His admiration for Romweber reached an even higher level when she joined with Easter and Hunter. “Suddenly, my cool friend was in the world’s coolest band.”

Post-Let’s Active, Easter would continue with musical endeavors, but his work has tended to be more behind the scenes than onstage. An in-demand producer, he launched The Fidelitorium in 2000 as a bigger, better successor to his original Drive- In Studio. His extensive production, engineering and remix credits include work for Game Theory, Velvet Crush, Pavement, Gin Blossoms and countless others.

As of this writing, Mitch Easter remains busy. In recognition of his contributions to music, Easter was inducted into the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame in 2019. In addition to writing and recording solo material, Easter’s recent mixing projects include sessions for Doug Edmunds (formerly of Gladhands), Western Australian Hall of Fame inductee Dom Mariani, and fellow North Carolina music luminary (and longtime friend) Jeffrey Dean Foster.

Hunter died in 2013, and with Romweber’s passing in 2019, Mitch Easter is the sole surviving member of the original Let’s Active. But Easter – who organized the 2021 tribute to the trio event with wife Tammy and an all-star cast of friends – is proud of the music and friendships. “It didn’t last long enough,” he says. “But it was great while it did.”