Soon after the cassette's release Barlow was kicked out of Dinosaur Jr. Homestead Records head Gerard Cosloy heard the cassette release of The Freed Man and released it as a full-length album on Homestead in 1989. Both Barlow and Gaffney contributed songs to The Freed Man (1988) cassette. Barlow and Eric Gaffney released the Weed Forestin' cassette in 1987 on Homestead Records under the name Sebadoh, which was a nonsense word Barlow often muttered in his recordings.
Barlow spent progressively more time recording his own songs at home.
While both Barlow and leader J Mascis wrote songs, Mascis' material dominated the group's output because Barlow was intimidated by the guitarist's songwriting efforts. Lou Barlow was the bass player for alternative rock band Dinosaur Jr. The album Act Surprised followed in 2019. The group, fronted by Barlow and now featuring drummer Bob D'Amico, returned in 2012 with the Secret EP and, in 2013, a full-length album titled Defend Yourself, which were both self-recorded. The band then went on a 14-year recording hiatus, during which time members pursued other projects while occasionally touring as Sebadoh. His replacement and erstwhile stand-in, Bob Fay, appeared on Bakesale (1994) and Harmacy (1996), but was fired before the sessions for the band's major label release The Sebadoh (1999), featuring drummer Russ Pollard. Following the release of Bubble & Scrape in 1993, Gaffney left the band. The band's early output, such as The Freed Man and Weed Forestin' (both released 1990), as well as Sebadoh III (1991), was typical of this style. Mascis gradually took over creative control of Dinosaur Jr., in which Barlow plays bass guitar.Īlong with such bands as Pavement, Beat Happening and Guided by Voices, Sebadoh helped pioneer a lo-fi style of indie rock characterized by low-fidelity recording techniques that employed four-track cassette tape machines. Barlow co-created Sebadoh as an outlet for his songwriting when J. Sebadoh ( / ˈ s ɛ b ə d oʊ/) is an American indie rock band formed in 1986 in Northampton, Massachusetts, by Eric Gaffney and Lou Barlow, with multi-instrumentalist Jason Loewenstein completing the line-up in 1989.