A couple of years back, Django Haskins was casting about for a name for his latest band -- which is harder than you'd think because, as he notes, a lot of them are already taken. So he turned to one of his idols, Leonard Cohen, and an album title. And so The Old Ceremony was born. The name refers to Cohen's 1974's "New Skin for the Old Ceremony."
"I was looking for touchstones, musical or otherwise, for the atmosphere we hoped to create with our music," Haskins says. "Leonard Cohen was one of those touchstones. To people familiar with his stuff, I hope that conjures up a certain aesthetic or attitude about life as well as music. We're trying to create something a little bit broader than the traditional guitar-rock group, and that was one of the things that appealed. And there's also a sense of aspiring to that level of lyric-writing, even though I know I'll never reach that. But you've gotta aim high."
For more about Cohen's music, see the story in Friday's paper, which previews his show in Durham next week.
