Shortly after touching down in Denver on Sunday night after my jaunt to Chicago, I jigged my way over to the Bluebird Theater to see the Bonnie Prince Billy show. Will Oldham sold out that venue (something that surprised many last-minute arrivals), and put on a sublime show that was heavier on the rollicking country vibe than his previous elegantly hushed songwriting. He played with a full backing band, including the arresting violinist/vocalist Cheyenne Mize with a huge voice — their duets together were just gorgeous.
I shot pictures for the Denver Post’s Reverb site, so head on over to read John Moore’s sharp review, and take a look if you’ve always wanted to see Will in his long johns (he took his pants off on stage, saying he didn’t expect it to be so damn hot).
The duet with Mize on “The Girl In Me” (available on the Louisville Is For Lovers compilation) was particularly noteworthy, and looked something like this:
Bonnie Prince Billy’s latest album Bewareis out now on Drag City.
And speaking of concert photos — I’ve added the Mountain Goats/John Vanderslice ones from last week to the original review.
Through non-stop touring over the last two years and a pair of very strong albums (their latest, Furr, on Sub Pop), Portland’s Blitzen Trapper is accumulating a critical amount of deserved buzz behind their music. Straddling genres of expansively golden CSNY rock, the wide-open folk underpinnings of the wilderness, and the squalling rock of fellow Portlanders Pavement, their music delights simply in its unpredictability.
I sat down with half of the band when they were in Denver a few weeks ago, playing a very sold-out show at the Hi-Dive. Brian Adrian Koch (drums and vocals), Eric Earley (lead vocals and guitar) and Marty Marquis (guitar, keyboard and vocals) piled on a sunken green couch and we chatted about their year, while waiting for Ramen from the bar.
BLITZEN TRAPPER INTERVIEW Fuel/Friends:Last time you guys were here in Denver I saw you open for Malkmus, which must have been pretty cool. Your non-stop touring seems to have generated a good deal of enthusiasm in the crowd refracted back to the stage – the singing along with each word on songs like “Furr”….
Eric: Yeah, that’s been great and surprising. People also really seem into “Black River Killer” on this tour…
Marty: Oh, and also “Not Your Lover”, when the three of us do it all singing together
F/F: I’d read about a thematic connection between Black River Killer and (author) Cormac McCarthy. What about his novels inspire you creatively?
Eric: On the one hand, that song is a classic murder ballad, but in other ways it’s more ambiguous as well, with some spiritual aspects. To me the imagery of the song feels related to the world McCarthy creates.
Marty: And I think there’s also the same recurring theme of regeneration through violence and some sort of redemptive quality in the most mindless, pathetic slaughter. It’s an interesting character in that story of our song and I think people are drawn to those contradictions. I mean it’s an American myth, that’s one of the things that makes us tick as a culture. I think Cormac McCarthy also taps into some of that.
Eric: He’s like our classic, our Hemingway or Faulkner, our Steinbeck crossed with Joyce. And he does it with an amount of experience that’s strange, and he’s writing right now. It’s amazing.
Brian: As rife as those novels are, when they’re translated into film – I watched No Country For Old Men, and there’s no music in it at all, and I didn’t even notice until someone pointed it out to me afterwards and I had to go back and check. There’s not a stitch. It’s so effective, I was flabbergasted.
F/F:It’s consistent with his books I think, though, since there’s such a space and a stillness and a silence in them.
Eric: Yeah, completely.
F/F:How do you possibly maintain creativity while you’re on the road? How have you been able to work on finishing your next album being on tour so much?
Eric: Well, I don’t write on the road, I write when I get home. And I can write really fast, I can write a whole record in a month. January I spent the whole time recording and writing.
Marty: You can barely think on the road.
Brian: The road’s a really good place to form ideas, for things to bubble and boil in your head. But as far as developing them into actual songs, it’s not very realistic. A lot of time to think though.
F/F: I also read that you have a record made between each of your records? Do you ever revisit those songs or play them live?
Eric: Well, we’ve used em for a few things… the Tour EP that we’ve had the last couple tours is stuff that was outtakes from Furr, and then all the Wild Mountain Nation outtakes were released here and there, on blogs and stuff like that. There’s probably an album and a half of stuff that hasn’t been put out.
The next record is definitely going to have some older songs that have been recorded years ago, some that were written when I was like nineteen, mixed in among all the new stuff. Generally when I’m making a record I record 25-30 songs, so yeah there’s a whole lot of stuff out there.
F/F:Do you ever play those unreleased rough cuts live?
Marty: Well you know, we want to make everyone have a good time, and it helps when they know the music. But we do play some stuff that’s pretty obscure in our set. As far as your average person who knows about Blitzen Trapper, they mostly want to hear the album Furr and even some of the hits from the last record, but we will also play stuff that they are totally unaware of.
F/F:I wanted to hear more about your record label….Lidkercow?
Eric: Yeah, Lidkercow – that’s a Joyce reference.
F/F:….Are you planning to release your own solo projects on that label, or signing some other bands you admire?
Eric: We are always feeling like we hear bands whose records we’d like to release….
Brian: In our fantasy life, we’ve always looked down the road to a place where people can collaborate and create together, and thinking of ways that we can be a part of that.
Marty: I mean, we’ve learned a lot in the past couple of years, we were a band for a long time and we didn’t know how to get the word out. We were just pretty naïve and playing music around Portland for a long time. So when we finally pushed out, we were really innocent, and it’s been a pretty steep learning curve for us. Now we’re getting to a place where I feel like we could help other artists ascend that curve and it would be pretty cool. There’s definitely some bands and musicians I’ve talked to a little bit that we’re pretty impressed with, but yeah, you don’t want to shortchange people either. What we do is a pretty spartan, bare-bones approach.
F/F:Well, and it is a crowded music market out there.
Eric: It’s difficult to navigate it.
Marty: I think people are getting pretty savvy about navigating all the data that’s out there, though. With music these days you can go and hear something immediately, and that communicates on some super-rational level with your core being and you don’t have to rely on what other people are saying about the music.
F/F: Do you think that people seem to have less patience to some degree for bands that don’t fit into a mold or genre? Like for example, people seem to have no idea how to classify your music – it’s quite amusing reading all the descriptors assigned to you guys.
Eric: Yeah, but all of that stuff is writers though. What I’ve learned on this record the last two tours is that there’s a big difference between writers and the fans. You know, and the fans just hear the music and they connect with it, whether it’s classified a certain way or not, it’s unimportant. But you need the writers to communicate to people about the music too.
Marty: I mean, it’s human nature to want to classify stuff. I definitely think that, yeah, if we had been a more focused band maybe, and we’d just said, we’re gonna be a straight country folk act and we’re all going to wear cowboy hats in our photo shoots….we might have been able to penetrate the marketplace a lot earlier because it’s a sharper instrument that people can comprehend a lot easier.
Eric: But you know, I think the way that we’re going though will have more lasting value, as opposed to being sort of like, “Well, you got your year.” I’d rather be able to make 5 or 6 records that will all last, or at least all contain songs that can stand the test of time.
All photos by special arrangement, from a little fly-by-night session we did shortly before the interview with the amazing Todd Roeth.
Following a long ride on the El last night (is that how natives call it?) out to the far reaches of Chicago, accompanied by a lovely homeless man who kept trying to touch my shoulder without dropping his can of malt beverage, I saw John Vanderslice and John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats on their “Gone Primitive” tour at Chicago’s grand old Portage Theater.
The last time I saw the Mountain Goats, I proclaimed an earnest declaration of permanent affection for the way that show made me feel and the literate, stabbing richness of John Darnielle’s music. After last night, yeah, I feel the same plus some.
The 1,100 seat ornate old theater (which still screens old films and has a Wurlitzer organ) was packed to the gills with fans last night. Since the last time I saw Darnielle was in a small rock club venue with sticky floors, all of us packed tightly and dancing side by side, it felt oddly sterile to be sitting 14 inches apart in velvety chairs, so quiet you could hear a pin drop. Therefore what happened next felt especially excellent.
After three or four songs of well-behaved silence, one brave fan walked right up to the edge of the stage and stood there in appreciation to enjoy the show. Warily, a few other folks eyed the door guards, watching to see what they would do, and then walked forward to join Brave Superfan as well. I jumped to my feet. Within 30 seconds, a stream of kids ran down the aisles to pool against the stage, smiles on their face, ready to sing and jump along.
Darnielle beamed, and suddenly the show felt much more right. With perfect timing and furious strumming, the next song he launched into was “Up The Wolves,” an absolute favorite of mine.
“There’s bound to be a ghost in the back of your closet, no matter where you live. There’s gonna be a few things, maybe several things, you’re gonna find really difficult to forgive. There’s gonna come a day when you feel better, you’ll rise up free and easy on that day…and float from branch to branch, lighter than the air, when that day is coming, who can say, who can say?”
Whereas last year’s anthem for me was the song “This Year,” and when I saw them in October it took all my ferocious determination to yell those words, “I am gonna make it through this year if it kills me…” — last night I resonated much more with the words of rising up free and easy. And thank God.
The solo acoustic setlist included some rarer gems (like “Beach House” about how you don’t want to toy with wily seals) and the gut-wrenching spectrum of tunes like “Woke Up New,” “You Or Your Memory,” and “Surrounded.” He closed with “This Year,” and encored with the divorce epic “No Children.” Walking out on the wooden box over the Wurlitzer, I watched the crowd jump and yell and pump their fists in catharsis, finding some sort of common meaning in those terribly depressing lyrics (“I hope it stays dark forever, I hope the worst isn’t over, and I hope you blink before I do, and I hope I never get sober“). Everything about his music resonates so strongly with me, and he puts on one of the most intelligent, challenging, passionate shows I’ve seen.
John Vanderslice opened the night with stripped down, beautifully rendered versions of his densely orchestrated songs, and then played alongside Darnielle for several songs at the end of the night. Vanderslice is an artist that I have always esteemed and enjoyed, but never seen live or explored deeply. I found myself wondering last night why that is so. Armed only with his acoustic guitar and harmonies, he reminded me very much of another favorite artist of mine, Matthew Caws of Nada Surf. Since I love his music, there is no good reason why I am not equally passionate about Vanderslice. I’m on it.
I remember a book from when I was about ten years old, something like A Wrinkle In Time or one of those fascinating imaginative visions of other worlds and things unseen.
My brain stretches hard to recall a passage about tapping into a current of singing that existed outside of normal time, these pulsing jetstreams of melody and poetry and all the human longing – timeless and universal. Always there. Not always heard.
When I listen to “The Trapeze Swinger” by Iron & Wine, that’s the closest I can come to expressing its perfection. Opening with the tinkle of a windchime, it sounds like waking from a dream on your front porch in the late afternoon in springtime, or maybe not waking at all but being suspended. Somewhere where –for once– you can hear the currents.
“Please remember me, happily, by the rosebush laughing, with bruises on my chin….” the song begins, with golden beauty and purplish contusions from the first lines. The song weaves those two threads of our sweetest joys and our saddest failings over and under for the next ten minutes, with a feel of looking back from a distance. The things we carry with us, the strange variance of memory. Sam Beam crafts a stunning, endless, hypnotically rhythmic masterpiece that feels like it has always existed, and you just walked somewhere into the middle.
It’s about death and the pearly gates and how we might feel when we get there, and the eloquent graffiti that might greet us on the walls outside. “Lost and found.” “Don’t look down.” “Tell my mother not to worry.”
It’s about dreams among the fallen trees of our babies that may have never been born. It’s about uphill clawing, colored birds, and remembering the time in the car behind the carnival with your hand between my knees. “Please remember me, my misery, and how it lost me all I wanted.” It is, in a word, perfect.
Nothing compares to the original recording (from the In Good Company soundtrack), but this live version is humble and as unaffected as they come.
Name: Heather Browne Location: Colorado, originally by way of California Giving context to the torrent since 2005.
"I love the relationship that anyone has with music: because there's something in us that is beyond the reach of words, something that eludes and defies our best attempts to spit it out. It's the best part of us, probably, the richest and strangest part..."
—Nick Hornby, Songbook
"Music has always been a matter of energy to me, a question of Fuel. Sentimental people call it Inspiration, but what they really mean is Fuel." —Hunter S. Thompson
Mp3s are for sampling purposes, kinda like when they give you the cheese cube at Costco, knowing that you'll often go home with having bought the whole 7 lb. spiced Brie log. They are left up for a limited time. If you LIKE the music, go and support these artists, buy their schwag, go to their concerts, purchase their CDs/records and tell all your friends. Rock on.
Name: Heather Browne
