My interview with Beep Beep's Eric Bemberger was pretty easy. All the questions were right there in front of me: What happened to Chris Hughes? What's with the new album's musical split personality? Will you be playing the quiet stuff in concert? Most of the answers made it into the story, here.

But there wasn't enough room to discuss their live set. I told Eric that I was at their Barley St. Tavern show last month and noticed a lack of quieter numbers from the album. He said that the show was a disaster going in. "We knew before we stepped on stage that things would fall apart," he said, adding they were supposed to go on first, but ended up playing last. "By the time we got on stage, the clock was ticking, so we just blasted through our stuff. We just wanted an opportunity to get some shows under our belt before leaving on tour. Ian (Francis) had only been in the band a month; James (Reilly) had been in for six months and had to learn all the synth parts."

The band may work a couple of the more mellow songs into their set Saturday night at The Waiting Room. They haven't been playing them because they're still figuring out how to replicate them on stage. "We now play 'The Lion's Mouth,'" Bemberger said. "A week before the tour, I cracked the code on Dan McCarthy's accordion on 'Return to Me' and translated it to something that could be played with software."

That said, we won't be hearing the Roxy Music-ish "Baby Shoes." Bemberger said he doesn't know what to do about the Wurlitzer and Rhodes sounds used on the track. That's too bad because it stands out as one of the most starkly different tracks on the album.

Anyway, check out the story, then buy tickets to Saturday night's show. And look for more Bemberger comments in tomorrow's column -- a postmortem of SXSW.

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Thunder Power is headlining a show tonight at The Waiting Room with Midwest Dilemma, Jake Bellows and Carbondale, Illinois band The Black Fortys. $7, 9 p.m.

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