http://www.crazybobbles.org/2008/11/30/shearwater-play-cheeky-gig-in-church/
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
more travis
http://www.thedailypage.com/isthmus/article.php?article=23736
Okkervil River's Madison roots
Drummer Travis Nelson recalls the '90s scene
Rich Albertoni on Friday 09/12/2008 , (11) Recommendations
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Recommend This Article The Austin-based folk-rock band Okkervil River, revered by indie rock fans, released a new album this week and will be in Madison this weekend to play songs from it. The show will be a homecoming for drummer Travis Nelson, who lived here from 1993 to 1999. I spoke with Nelson by telephone last week.
Were you born in Wisconsin?
My family moved to Waukesha when I was 7 years old, and I went to high school there. I moved to Madison in 1993 to attend the UW. I started in computer engineering, and then I got the whole idea to become an elementary education teacher. Then I just decided that I wanted to do something different, so I dropped out to pursue music.
What local bands did you play in during your years in Madison?
I was in [a pop punk band] called the Coolhand Band that my brother Troy started. I joined them when I moved to Madison. Coolhand Band got the ultimate shaft from an Elektra Records A&R guy, who told us we'd have a big hit single. That never happened.
Another Madison band I was in for about six months before I moved to Austin was Heavy Balls & the Flipoffs. They were meant to be a joke band. The guys in that band lived in a house at 10 South Bassett. We played shows in the basement there.
I was always amazed by the amount of live music in Madison, but it seemed like none of the bands wanted to tour. It seemed like they were content to be Madison bands.
Did you collaborate with any other Madison musicians at that time?
Pete Kaesberg has been a longtime friend of mine. He works at B-Side Records. He was my drumming mentor when I first came to Madison. I was 18 and he was 30, and I remember thinking, how cool that this old guy is into drumming. I'm 32 now.
What else do you remember about living here?
I had a lot of different jobs. I was a doorman at O'Cayz Corral. I worked at Pizza Extreme on East Washington, and then at the Glass Nickel. I also worked at the printing press above Club de Wash (in the former Hotel Washington building). They say it was a cigarette that burned down the Hotel Washington. Knowing the guys that I worked with, it must have been a marijuana cigarette.
Okkervil River
Okkervil River's Madison roots
Drummer Travis Nelson recalls the '90s scene
Rich Albertoni on Friday 09/12/2008 , (11) Recommendations
Article Tools:
Read more Tour Stop items
Email this article
Print this article
Email the author
Recommend This Article The Austin-based folk-rock band Okkervil River, revered by indie rock fans, released a new album this week and will be in Madison this weekend to play songs from it. The show will be a homecoming for drummer Travis Nelson, who lived here from 1993 to 1999. I spoke with Nelson by telephone last week.
Were you born in Wisconsin?
My family moved to Waukesha when I was 7 years old, and I went to high school there. I moved to Madison in 1993 to attend the UW. I started in computer engineering, and then I got the whole idea to become an elementary education teacher. Then I just decided that I wanted to do something different, so I dropped out to pursue music.
What local bands did you play in during your years in Madison?
I was in [a pop punk band] called the Coolhand Band that my brother Troy started. I joined them when I moved to Madison. Coolhand Band got the ultimate shaft from an Elektra Records A&R guy, who told us we'd have a big hit single. That never happened.
Another Madison band I was in for about six months before I moved to Austin was Heavy Balls & the Flipoffs. They were meant to be a joke band. The guys in that band lived in a house at 10 South Bassett. We played shows in the basement there.
I was always amazed by the amount of live music in Madison, but it seemed like none of the bands wanted to tour. It seemed like they were content to be Madison bands.
Did you collaborate with any other Madison musicians at that time?
Pete Kaesberg has been a longtime friend of mine. He works at B-Side Records. He was my drumming mentor when I first came to Madison. I was 18 and he was 30, and I remember thinking, how cool that this old guy is into drumming. I'm 32 now.
What else do you remember about living here?
I had a lot of different jobs. I was a doorman at O'Cayz Corral. I worked at Pizza Extreme on East Washington, and then at the Glass Nickel. I also worked at the printing press above Club de Wash (in the former Hotel Washington building). They say it was a cigarette that burned down the Hotel Washington. Knowing the guys that I worked with, it must have been a marijuana cigarette.
Okkervil River
old interview with Will
http://panacherock.com/magazine.php?area=interview&page_id=68&issue_id=24
Okkervil River
Okkervil River sounds like what we'll be playing on the back porch after a nuclear holocaust, trying to pass on to the new, post-fallout generations the old tales of heatbreak and broken family dynamics that existed in a much more complicated time. I sat down with Will Schaff, the main creative force behind Okkervil River (he's also credited with the cover art on the band's albums). He seemed to get hungry when we spoke of breakfast Tacos, a Texas phenomenon, frustrated when asked about the tour, irritated at the mention of sadness in his songs, and suprisingly magnanimous when I mentioned Bright Eyes, the most overrated thing to happen to indie music since Elliot Smith.
Someone in the room: We’re gonna turn Earlimart’s room into a fucking cloud, aren’t we?
Ian: Have you ever eaten breakfast tacos at Mi Madre’s?
Will Schaff: That was one of the first places I ever had breakfast tacos.
Are you serious? They’re the fucking best.
Will: That’s my neighborhood.
Have you had one as good since?
Will: I love all kinds of breakfast tacos; the Mi Madre’s ones as I recall are real unpretentious, sort of down home-style, but then Kuro’s is a little more fancy; they’ll do red corn tortillas and they have really good coffee from Oaxacca. But there’s also a Tex-mexy place on the east side call Juan in a Million and they’ll put a shit-ton of cheddar cheese and potatoes and there’s…there’s all sorts of great taco places in Austin. But Mi Madres is in my neighborhood, I just moved to that part of town. The East side is cool, I love the east side.
(Drummer Travis Nelson enters)
Travis Nelson: Does anyone have a light?
Will: 's that got marijuana in it? Can I hit it? I always like to get real stoned before I do an interview where I’m supposed to sound smart.
By the way, how was the art show?
Travis: The Will Schaff show?
The Will Schaff show.
Will: I had this idea that art is really stale when it’s in an institution and part of academia. It’s cool, the immediacy of pop stuff and art made for the ordinary people, but what I didn’t realize is that ordinary people can’t afford art and that’s why the institutions exist. So there were all these kids that said “This stuff is great! Oh, I don’t have $300 dollars, $500 dollars.” The funnest thing about getting to any kind of limited success, is you get to the point where you’re able to help out your friends.
Is there tobacco in this?
Travis: Yes. This is the only band I’ve ever been in where everyone we deal with--our booking agency, our record label, the woman who does press for us--it’s not just that we have a good business deal. Carrie Kline, who does press for us--
Will: Carrie Kline and I cried together.
Travis: Yeah, I’ve called up Chris Swanson, our record label guy and said “We need some more records shipped down here, and how’s this doing, and my girlfriend dumped me!
Will: Every person we’ve done business with has heard us cry about our love lives.
Travis: It’s a group of friends; everybody’s helping each other out.
It’s the rocker’s secondary dream. Once you get over wanting to be huge and famous and shit--
Will: I want to be rich. I don’t want to be famous, but I’d love to be rich. That’d be so rad.
But I’ll bet a big part of that is the ability to help your friends.
Will: Yeah. I want all my friends to be rich too, ‘cause it’s not fun if they’re not--
Travis: I just don’t want to go back to Austin and flip hamburgers.
Will: I work at a video store and he flips hamburgers.
Travis: I cook food and then I have to deliver it and yell people’s names. I deliver some guy’s food and he goes, “Holy shit, you’re the drummer from Okkervil River. I can’t believe the drummer from one of my favorite bands works this super shitty job.” I didn’t know how to take that.
Will: I went there once on my break from the video store--I was having a bad day--Travis was working and he was going to hook me up with some free beer. This guy behind me in line goes “Hey, I know who you are.” And I’m like yeah, you probably know me from the band and he says “No, you work at the video store. You’re the really loud, opinionated guy.”
Why are you excited about ‘Black Sheep Boy’, in succession with your other records?
Will: I always wanted to make a record that felt really thematically unified, and it was always hard to just make a record, period. There’s a lot of scrambling around to get even the simplest shit done sometimes in the budget-rock world. We did it Brian Beattie's house (producer of Daniel Johnston and Okkervil's second record). He’s really the unsung hero of the Austin music scene. We worked up a lot of the songs at the last minute so they would feel sloppy and fresh. Down the River of Golden Dreams, which we did here is San Francisco--I’m really happy with that record--but it’s a little too clean sometimes, and I like Black Sheep Boy because it’s dirty. It’s dirty and stinky.
Travis: There’s so many clams. I screwed up so many times.
Was there a lot of live recording?
Will: Yeah, all of the basics were tracked live, and the basics is pretty much everything. There was no real way to fix things too much, so you had to sort of go with what you did. We were using a lot of nice gear, mixed with a lot of crappy, cheap gear that nobody in their right minds would ever use. We wanted things to feel like they had some dirt.
It strikes me as a relatively upbeat album.
Will: Is that how it strikes you?
That may just be on the surface--the presence of electric guitars and faster, more upbeat rhythms.
Will: A lot of people think it’s real sad, that Okkervil is depressing and mopey. I get sad when I hear that because that’s not what we’re going for; we’re trying to be ecstatic, like all your synapses are firing at the same time. It was an intense time for us, and it’s a painful album in some ways, but we wanted to make it feel like a party at the same time. I think that’s the key with the fast rockers and the pop touches. A lot of that album sounds severe to people, but we were laughing and joking and thought that some of the stuff we were doing was hilarious. Like “The Latest Toughs.” I think there’s a lot of joy on the record, like trying to do a wake. Like “everything’s fucked, let’s get a bit more drunk” kind of record.
The thing I’ve found out about people is that they’ll say anything meditative at all is sad. Anything more lyrically-driven and downbeat is a sad sort of song. But the fact of the matter is that there are a lot of songs that are contemplative and meditative, and it’s not like they’re trying to bum you out, it’s just a certain method of trying to burrow through a thought you have.
(Drummer Travis Nelson exits)
This isn’t a good interview question, this is more like praise. I feel like your music, your songwriting is more like taking these little everyday moments--little snapshots and making them something holy, something profound.
WS: That’s a really sweet thing to say, because I think that music should be holy. I don’t think we’ve ever accomplished that once, but every time that’s what we’re going for. I think of music like it’s a magical or as an alchemical act and not just where you’re making a pop song, but where you would actually stand in front of a train for what you’re doing. You should be stupid enough to think you’re moving heaven and earth. It’s not like you can, but you’ve got to be stupid enough to try. I like the idea of a song that sends a shiver down someone’s spine, or that makes them want something so bad--bad enough to steal it.
That’s a nice way to put it. That’s bumper-sticker material. I’d like to talk a bit about your songwriting. You’ve got a unique way of storytelling; you’ve got some incredible characters that come out. I’m wondering how those manifest in your brain.
WS: I’m always a bit skeptical when people tell me that I write differently. But if I had to pinpoint a different thing that I maybe do, is that I start thinking who these people are and then start over-thinking who they are, like what were their parents like or where are they from and when is this song taking place. Who are these people and what do they have at stake? Instead of writing about Will Schaff, to split myself into little pieces--take what bothers me and turn it into an entire personality and think about who he is and write from that guy’s point of view. It’s very liberating for me, much better than trying to write a diary entry.
That’s what fiction writers are supposed to do, it’s funny that you say that.
WS: I wrote a lot of fiction until I got decided that I was really dissatisfied with that whole scene. I guess that it got drilled into my brain that if you’re going to care about somebody you have to feel like you know who they are and you have to feel like they have something at stake, and you have to feel like you want them to get what they want, but something’s going to keep them from getting it. I think that’s what tension comes from and that’s what keeps people reading a story. But first and foremost, these songs are songs, they’re not short stories, they’re not poems, they’re not prose poems and the song form is really different. When you listen to a lot of old folks songs, they’re telling stories too and you get a really good idea of who the characters are. I feel like that’s something we’ve lost as people started to misinterpret folk music as confessional.
What are you looking forward to?
WS: We’re about to start recording again. We had this idea on the road, we have all these tracks that we didn’t finish from Black Sheep Boy and I had this idea that we were going to finish them and do a record called Black Sheep Boy Appendix that’ll be an EP.
Here’s a good one, who are you sick of being compared to?
WS: You just asked me that because you want me to say Bright Eyes.
That’s exactly why.
WS: Yeah, I’m fucking sick of being compared to Bright Eyes.
Another version of that question would have been, does it make you mad that (a certain local are paper) recently compared you to Bright Eyes?
WS: No, because I’m used to it. But you know, the guy has a shitty voice, I have a shitty voice; that’s the similarity. Our voices are in the same range and we both seem to be challenged when it comes to staying on pitch. I feel like the similarities are pretty superficial. But you know what? I’m broke and Bright Eyes sells a lot of records. If they want to say that I sound like Bright Eyes and some kids who like Bright Eyes buy our record too and it gives me a little more money, then yeah--Bright Eyes--awesome. That’s the only one that bugs me.
Are there any others?
WS: Bright Eyes and Alt/Country. And then people go, oh, it’s Emo-Alt-Country and I’m like, fuck you.
How many buzzwords can we combine by hyphen?
WS: It’s like someone going “Yeah, you know, you remind me of a mix between Gallager and Carrot Top.” But I don’t even want to bitch, because people keep giving me money to do records. I know a lot of fucking super talented songwriters who can’t even say that. So people compare me to Bright Eyes, fuck it. I get to play shows and get money to do it. I’m not going to look that gift horse in the mouth.
You handled that well.
interviews from issue #24 - these are only a few - there are more in the the hard copy of the issue
Album Reviews
reviews from issue #24 - these are only a few - there are more in the the hard copy of the issue
Okkervil River
Okkervil River sounds like what we'll be playing on the back porch after a nuclear holocaust, trying to pass on to the new, post-fallout generations the old tales of heatbreak and broken family dynamics that existed in a much more complicated time. I sat down with Will Schaff, the main creative force behind Okkervil River (he's also credited with the cover art on the band's albums). He seemed to get hungry when we spoke of breakfast Tacos, a Texas phenomenon, frustrated when asked about the tour, irritated at the mention of sadness in his songs, and suprisingly magnanimous when I mentioned Bright Eyes, the most overrated thing to happen to indie music since Elliot Smith.
Someone in the room: We’re gonna turn Earlimart’s room into a fucking cloud, aren’t we?
Ian: Have you ever eaten breakfast tacos at Mi Madre’s?
Will Schaff: That was one of the first places I ever had breakfast tacos.
Are you serious? They’re the fucking best.
Will: That’s my neighborhood.
Have you had one as good since?
Will: I love all kinds of breakfast tacos; the Mi Madre’s ones as I recall are real unpretentious, sort of down home-style, but then Kuro’s is a little more fancy; they’ll do red corn tortillas and they have really good coffee from Oaxacca. But there’s also a Tex-mexy place on the east side call Juan in a Million and they’ll put a shit-ton of cheddar cheese and potatoes and there’s…there’s all sorts of great taco places in Austin. But Mi Madres is in my neighborhood, I just moved to that part of town. The East side is cool, I love the east side.
(Drummer Travis Nelson enters)
Travis Nelson: Does anyone have a light?
Will: 's that got marijuana in it? Can I hit it? I always like to get real stoned before I do an interview where I’m supposed to sound smart.
By the way, how was the art show?
Travis: The Will Schaff show?
The Will Schaff show.
Will: I had this idea that art is really stale when it’s in an institution and part of academia. It’s cool, the immediacy of pop stuff and art made for the ordinary people, but what I didn’t realize is that ordinary people can’t afford art and that’s why the institutions exist. So there were all these kids that said “This stuff is great! Oh, I don’t have $300 dollars, $500 dollars.” The funnest thing about getting to any kind of limited success, is you get to the point where you’re able to help out your friends.
Is there tobacco in this?
Travis: Yes. This is the only band I’ve ever been in where everyone we deal with--our booking agency, our record label, the woman who does press for us--it’s not just that we have a good business deal. Carrie Kline, who does press for us--
Will: Carrie Kline and I cried together.
Travis: Yeah, I’ve called up Chris Swanson, our record label guy and said “We need some more records shipped down here, and how’s this doing, and my girlfriend dumped me!
Will: Every person we’ve done business with has heard us cry about our love lives.
Travis: It’s a group of friends; everybody’s helping each other out.
It’s the rocker’s secondary dream. Once you get over wanting to be huge and famous and shit--
Will: I want to be rich. I don’t want to be famous, but I’d love to be rich. That’d be so rad.
But I’ll bet a big part of that is the ability to help your friends.
Will: Yeah. I want all my friends to be rich too, ‘cause it’s not fun if they’re not--
Travis: I just don’t want to go back to Austin and flip hamburgers.
Will: I work at a video store and he flips hamburgers.
Travis: I cook food and then I have to deliver it and yell people’s names. I deliver some guy’s food and he goes, “Holy shit, you’re the drummer from Okkervil River. I can’t believe the drummer from one of my favorite bands works this super shitty job.” I didn’t know how to take that.
Will: I went there once on my break from the video store--I was having a bad day--Travis was working and he was going to hook me up with some free beer. This guy behind me in line goes “Hey, I know who you are.” And I’m like yeah, you probably know me from the band and he says “No, you work at the video store. You’re the really loud, opinionated guy.”
Why are you excited about ‘Black Sheep Boy’, in succession with your other records?
Will: I always wanted to make a record that felt really thematically unified, and it was always hard to just make a record, period. There’s a lot of scrambling around to get even the simplest shit done sometimes in the budget-rock world. We did it Brian Beattie's house (producer of Daniel Johnston and Okkervil's second record). He’s really the unsung hero of the Austin music scene. We worked up a lot of the songs at the last minute so they would feel sloppy and fresh. Down the River of Golden Dreams, which we did here is San Francisco--I’m really happy with that record--but it’s a little too clean sometimes, and I like Black Sheep Boy because it’s dirty. It’s dirty and stinky.
Travis: There’s so many clams. I screwed up so many times.
Was there a lot of live recording?
Will: Yeah, all of the basics were tracked live, and the basics is pretty much everything. There was no real way to fix things too much, so you had to sort of go with what you did. We were using a lot of nice gear, mixed with a lot of crappy, cheap gear that nobody in their right minds would ever use. We wanted things to feel like they had some dirt.
It strikes me as a relatively upbeat album.
Will: Is that how it strikes you?
That may just be on the surface--the presence of electric guitars and faster, more upbeat rhythms.
Will: A lot of people think it’s real sad, that Okkervil is depressing and mopey. I get sad when I hear that because that’s not what we’re going for; we’re trying to be ecstatic, like all your synapses are firing at the same time. It was an intense time for us, and it’s a painful album in some ways, but we wanted to make it feel like a party at the same time. I think that’s the key with the fast rockers and the pop touches. A lot of that album sounds severe to people, but we were laughing and joking and thought that some of the stuff we were doing was hilarious. Like “The Latest Toughs.” I think there’s a lot of joy on the record, like trying to do a wake. Like “everything’s fucked, let’s get a bit more drunk” kind of record.
The thing I’ve found out about people is that they’ll say anything meditative at all is sad. Anything more lyrically-driven and downbeat is a sad sort of song. But the fact of the matter is that there are a lot of songs that are contemplative and meditative, and it’s not like they’re trying to bum you out, it’s just a certain method of trying to burrow through a thought you have.
(Drummer Travis Nelson exits)
This isn’t a good interview question, this is more like praise. I feel like your music, your songwriting is more like taking these little everyday moments--little snapshots and making them something holy, something profound.
WS: That’s a really sweet thing to say, because I think that music should be holy. I don’t think we’ve ever accomplished that once, but every time that’s what we’re going for. I think of music like it’s a magical or as an alchemical act and not just where you’re making a pop song, but where you would actually stand in front of a train for what you’re doing. You should be stupid enough to think you’re moving heaven and earth. It’s not like you can, but you’ve got to be stupid enough to try. I like the idea of a song that sends a shiver down someone’s spine, or that makes them want something so bad--bad enough to steal it.
That’s a nice way to put it. That’s bumper-sticker material. I’d like to talk a bit about your songwriting. You’ve got a unique way of storytelling; you’ve got some incredible characters that come out. I’m wondering how those manifest in your brain.
WS: I’m always a bit skeptical when people tell me that I write differently. But if I had to pinpoint a different thing that I maybe do, is that I start thinking who these people are and then start over-thinking who they are, like what were their parents like or where are they from and when is this song taking place. Who are these people and what do they have at stake? Instead of writing about Will Schaff, to split myself into little pieces--take what bothers me and turn it into an entire personality and think about who he is and write from that guy’s point of view. It’s very liberating for me, much better than trying to write a diary entry.
That’s what fiction writers are supposed to do, it’s funny that you say that.
WS: I wrote a lot of fiction until I got decided that I was really dissatisfied with that whole scene. I guess that it got drilled into my brain that if you’re going to care about somebody you have to feel like you know who they are and you have to feel like they have something at stake, and you have to feel like you want them to get what they want, but something’s going to keep them from getting it. I think that’s what tension comes from and that’s what keeps people reading a story. But first and foremost, these songs are songs, they’re not short stories, they’re not poems, they’re not prose poems and the song form is really different. When you listen to a lot of old folks songs, they’re telling stories too and you get a really good idea of who the characters are. I feel like that’s something we’ve lost as people started to misinterpret folk music as confessional.
What are you looking forward to?
WS: We’re about to start recording again. We had this idea on the road, we have all these tracks that we didn’t finish from Black Sheep Boy and I had this idea that we were going to finish them and do a record called Black Sheep Boy Appendix that’ll be an EP.
Here’s a good one, who are you sick of being compared to?
WS: You just asked me that because you want me to say Bright Eyes.
That’s exactly why.
WS: Yeah, I’m fucking sick of being compared to Bright Eyes.
Another version of that question would have been, does it make you mad that (a certain local are paper) recently compared you to Bright Eyes?
WS: No, because I’m used to it. But you know, the guy has a shitty voice, I have a shitty voice; that’s the similarity. Our voices are in the same range and we both seem to be challenged when it comes to staying on pitch. I feel like the similarities are pretty superficial. But you know what? I’m broke and Bright Eyes sells a lot of records. If they want to say that I sound like Bright Eyes and some kids who like Bright Eyes buy our record too and it gives me a little more money, then yeah--Bright Eyes--awesome. That’s the only one that bugs me.
Are there any others?
WS: Bright Eyes and Alt/Country. And then people go, oh, it’s Emo-Alt-Country and I’m like, fuck you.
How many buzzwords can we combine by hyphen?
WS: It’s like someone going “Yeah, you know, you remind me of a mix between Gallager and Carrot Top.” But I don’t even want to bitch, because people keep giving me money to do records. I know a lot of fucking super talented songwriters who can’t even say that. So people compare me to Bright Eyes, fuck it. I get to play shows and get money to do it. I’m not going to look that gift horse in the mouth.
You handled that well.
interviews from issue #24 - these are only a few - there are more in the the hard copy of the issue
Album Reviews
reviews from issue #24 - these are only a few - there are more in the the hard copy of the issue
Holy Crap Travis Speaks!!!
FALL 2007
http://www.ascap.com/playback/2007/fall/radar/okkervil_river.aspx
Radar Report
Okkervil River
Rolling on the River The members of indie folk's newest wondergroup OKKERVIL RIVER come to terms with the success they're (maybe) having When Okkervil River asked Travis Nelson to fill in on drums for them at the 2003 South by Southwest festival, he was skeptical, as his experience ran more towards punk rock. But he reluctantly agreed to the gig and later became a full-on member of the then largely-unknown alternative country act. He had no idea they would go on to release a pair of critically- adored albums and play in front of mammoth crowds. "When I joined I thought they were the biggest group of nerds I'd ever met in my life," says Nelson, speaking from his Austin, Texas home, having just returned from a six-week North American tour which kicked off with the band performing on Late Night with Conan O'Brien. "I had played in punk bar bands, and these were guys who stayed home reading books on Friday nights. I don't think anyone imagined we'd play for more than a couple hundred people a night." But with 2005's Black Sheep Boy – a dramatic, sometimes-desperate peek into the psyche of lead singer and songwriter Will Sheff – the group graduated from break-even tours to filling 800-1400 person capacity clubs around the world. The band's newfound fame is a focus of its latest disc, The Stage Names, a less tortured effort than its predecessor. "Black Sheep Boy was so popular, I thought people would think Stage Names was a joke," Nelson says. "I thought they would say we were trying to make a pop record that was going to sell a lot of albums. But I haven't read a single review, I don't think, that talks about us selling out." The band's spike in popularity has lent a peculiar ring of prophecy to its name, which is borrowed from the title of a short story written by Leo Tolstoy's great-grandniece, Tatyana Tolstaya. The story focuses on a Russian bureaucrat's fixation on a past-her-prime singer, and a main theme is the separation between fan and artist – the same theme that informs the band's new album. "Everything came full circle with Stage Names," says Nelson. "It's interesting to see real life copy a fictional story." That's not to say that Nelson and Sheff – the primary members of the regularly-rotating sextet which also includes Scott Brackett, Brian Cassidy, Patrick Pastorius, and Jonathan Meiburg– are expecting to fall from grace any time soon. But they are clearly feeling the burden of high expectations. On "Our Life Is Not A Movie Or Maybe," the first song on The Stage Names, Sheff's emotive, fragile cry conveys a need to unburden himself:
From the speakers your fake masterpiece is serenely dribbling.When the air around your chair fills with heat, that's the flames licking. Nelson is a former booking agent who handles the majority of the band's business. Though he's less concerned with the creative side of Okkervil's records, he regularly wrestles with fan issues and complaints. "On a message board I read that people were angry that we were playing larger venues on this tour," he notes. "People were saying, ‘It's not all about me any more. It doesn't feel special any more.' To that, I would say, ‘Would you prefer it if some people couldn't get into our shows?'" Outgrowing small venues, of course, is a desirable problem to have. Yet, two years into their run of success, Nelson still maintains the mentality of an unknown, and is amazed when he's recognized on the street. At an Okkervil show in Washington D.C. not too long ago, one of his second cousins came to see the band without realizing she had kin manning the drum kit. "She was like, ‘What are you doing here? You guys are like my favorite band!'" There have been celebrity admirers, as well. A year ago or so Sheff received a call from Lou Reed's manager. The king of downtown was a huge fan of Black Sheep Boy, it turns out, and arranged for the group to open for him at a New York show. The guys got to meet him afterwards. "He said, ‘You're a great drummer. You guys are one of the best bands around,'" Nelson remembers. Okkervil River may be on top of its game, but its members are vividly conscious of the perils of fame. Two of The Stage Names' standout tracks are fall-from-grace stories. "Savannah Smiles" focuses on a former rock groupie and porn star who committed suicide after she was disfigured in a car accident, while "John Allyn Smith Sails" details the plight of poet John Berryman, who jumped off a Minneapolis bridge in 1972. Though critics tend to go for such bleak themes, Nelson worries that the band's fans might eventually tire of them. "It does seem kind of a natural progression to write more poppy and accessible songs," he says. "Most people don't want to be depressed. It's hard to be a popular band and do really depressing music." Yet somehow – to its credit — Okkervil River seems to have found a way to maintain its vision and do exactly that. — Ben Westhoff TOP
http://www.ascap.com/playback/2007/fall/radar/okkervil_river.aspx
Radar Report
Okkervil River
Rolling on the River The members of indie folk's newest wondergroup OKKERVIL RIVER come to terms with the success they're (maybe) having When Okkervil River asked Travis Nelson to fill in on drums for them at the 2003 South by Southwest festival, he was skeptical, as his experience ran more towards punk rock. But he reluctantly agreed to the gig and later became a full-on member of the then largely-unknown alternative country act. He had no idea they would go on to release a pair of critically- adored albums and play in front of mammoth crowds. "When I joined I thought they were the biggest group of nerds I'd ever met in my life," says Nelson, speaking from his Austin, Texas home, having just returned from a six-week North American tour which kicked off with the band performing on Late Night with Conan O'Brien. "I had played in punk bar bands, and these were guys who stayed home reading books on Friday nights. I don't think anyone imagined we'd play for more than a couple hundred people a night." But with 2005's Black Sheep Boy – a dramatic, sometimes-desperate peek into the psyche of lead singer and songwriter Will Sheff – the group graduated from break-even tours to filling 800-1400 person capacity clubs around the world. The band's newfound fame is a focus of its latest disc, The Stage Names, a less tortured effort than its predecessor. "Black Sheep Boy was so popular, I thought people would think Stage Names was a joke," Nelson says. "I thought they would say we were trying to make a pop record that was going to sell a lot of albums. But I haven't read a single review, I don't think, that talks about us selling out." The band's spike in popularity has lent a peculiar ring of prophecy to its name, which is borrowed from the title of a short story written by Leo Tolstoy's great-grandniece, Tatyana Tolstaya. The story focuses on a Russian bureaucrat's fixation on a past-her-prime singer, and a main theme is the separation between fan and artist – the same theme that informs the band's new album. "Everything came full circle with Stage Names," says Nelson. "It's interesting to see real life copy a fictional story." That's not to say that Nelson and Sheff – the primary members of the regularly-rotating sextet which also includes Scott Brackett, Brian Cassidy, Patrick Pastorius, and Jonathan Meiburg– are expecting to fall from grace any time soon. But they are clearly feeling the burden of high expectations. On "Our Life Is Not A Movie Or Maybe," the first song on The Stage Names, Sheff's emotive, fragile cry conveys a need to unburden himself:
From the speakers your fake masterpiece is serenely dribbling.When the air around your chair fills with heat, that's the flames licking. Nelson is a former booking agent who handles the majority of the band's business. Though he's less concerned with the creative side of Okkervil's records, he regularly wrestles with fan issues and complaints. "On a message board I read that people were angry that we were playing larger venues on this tour," he notes. "People were saying, ‘It's not all about me any more. It doesn't feel special any more.' To that, I would say, ‘Would you prefer it if some people couldn't get into our shows?'" Outgrowing small venues, of course, is a desirable problem to have. Yet, two years into their run of success, Nelson still maintains the mentality of an unknown, and is amazed when he's recognized on the street. At an Okkervil show in Washington D.C. not too long ago, one of his second cousins came to see the band without realizing she had kin manning the drum kit. "She was like, ‘What are you doing here? You guys are like my favorite band!'" There have been celebrity admirers, as well. A year ago or so Sheff received a call from Lou Reed's manager. The king of downtown was a huge fan of Black Sheep Boy, it turns out, and arranged for the group to open for him at a New York show. The guys got to meet him afterwards. "He said, ‘You're a great drummer. You guys are one of the best bands around,'" Nelson remembers. Okkervil River may be on top of its game, but its members are vividly conscious of the perils of fame. Two of The Stage Names' standout tracks are fall-from-grace stories. "Savannah Smiles" focuses on a former rock groupie and porn star who committed suicide after she was disfigured in a car accident, while "John Allyn Smith Sails" details the plight of poet John Berryman, who jumped off a Minneapolis bridge in 1972. Though critics tend to go for such bleak themes, Nelson worries that the band's fans might eventually tire of them. "It does seem kind of a natural progression to write more poppy and accessible songs," he says. "Most people don't want to be depressed. It's hard to be a popular band and do really depressing music." Yet somehow – to its credit — Okkervil River seems to have found a way to maintain its vision and do exactly that. — Ben Westhoff TOP
PUBLISHED ON NOVEMBER 20, 2003:
A River Runs Through It
Austin's Okkervil River travels 'Down The River of Golden Dreams.'
A River Runs Through It
Austin's Okkervil River travels 'Down The River of Golden Dreams.'
By ANNIE HOLUB
R. Farley
Okkervil River
Okkervil River flows through St. Petersburg, Russia. Tatyana Tolstaya, the great-granddaughter of Leo Tolstoy, wrote a short story named after it.
The real Okkervil River could have gone on enjoying its life as just another Russian river, with some literary weight to it, as many rivers do, but fate had something else in store for the Okkervil. One day, while Will Sheff and childhood friends Seth Warren and Zach Thomas were trying to name their new musical project, Sheff threw out "Okkervil River." It stuck.
Rivers are often the arteries of civilizations; like burglars and blood, they run through something, bringing things in and taking things away. If you live near a river, it is a constant presence in your life. There is a reason cities are built on rivers; you can go for days without food but not without water. There is a reason why, when you Google "Okkervil River," you get 10 pages of people praising their music.
The river's presence works in much the same pervasive way for the band Okkervil River, who call Austin, Texas home. Their third and most recent record, Down the River of Golden Dreams (Jagjaguwar), was recorded at John Vanderslice's Tiny Telephone studio in San Francisco by Scott Solter. The record was inspired, explained Sheff, a little by the water surrounding San Francisco, and a little by the first-ever tour that Okkervil River had gone on before recording the record.
"It's a real leap of faith," said Sheff of touring. "You create this bunch of songs, and you go out on the road, and you have to really believe in them. ... John Vanderslice says 'It's like a whaling ship, being on tour.'"
After forging their own river of songs through America, sweeping up rave reviews with their lyrical story-songs that ebb and swell and meander, Okkervil River knew they wanted to make a "nautical record."
"Our last record was conceived as a more earthy record, kind of dirty, and then with the new record, we wanted to do a more watery, more glassy, pristine record," explained Sheff. "It all sounds a lot cleaner, and a lot of the songs are sort of about sailing away and washing things and leaving things behind."
On the first listen, Down the River of Golden Dreams seems a bit chilly; the record opens with a some women talking. It's inaccessibly strange, until you learn that one of the women is Warren's great aunt, and that she's the one playing the piano piece that follows.
Wading further in, the record begins to warm up, or you begin to warm up to it; either way, this is one of those records that gets better after every listen. The first song, "It Ends With a Fall," builds, with the help of organs and strings, into dramatic orchestral music Americana; the songs flow into each other and the water images rise to the surface.
Songs like "The War Criminal Rises and Speaks" reveal why so many critics are quick to draw correlations between Okkervil River and Bright Eyes and Will Oldham. The comparisons aren't far off base; Sheff notes that he sings in the same register as Will Oldham, and there is an element of gothic alt.country to Sheff's songs. Okkervil River, like Bright Eyes, don't rely on a straightforward verse-chorus-verse formula; the songs usually end in an entirely different place than where they began. And Sheff's lyrics, like Conor Oberst's, are in complete sentences.
But the similarities end there.
"For a while I was like, grrr, I'm sick of people bringing up the same bands. For the record, I don't try to write songs about myself. I think that's the big difference between me and Bright Eyes; he does a lot of autobiographical stuff. I like to tell stories, fictional things that are real," said Sheff. "I'm just glad that people are listening to songs that people put a lot of effort into."
The effort that Okkervil River puts into their songs spills out everywhere; listen closely at any given moment, and several instruments are present (mandolin, Mellotron, banjo, piano, different organs creating different sounds) all playing something simple and sweet.
"We wanted to make a record that would really twinkle and gleam," said Sheff.
Sheff's songs read like narratives; the lyrics are printed out in text blocks on the CD insert, with titles like "The Velocity of Saul at the Time of His Confession." Sheff also writes film reviews for the Austin Chronicle, and used to write about music for Audiogalaxy and the Chronicle before he decided that writing about music was affecting his writing of music.
"I find writing about music to be detrimental to making music, which is why I got out of it," said Sheff. "I felt like I was learning too much and I was approaching it from a cerebral space ... . I was becoming too cynical and too analytical about music, and I really love doing it, and I'm sort of a nerdy record collector. ... Somebody told me critics are to artists like ornithologists are to birds ... it's two different processes, the taking apart and the putting together in the first place."
Okkervil River's songs benefit, though, from careful articulation of thoughts through words and instruments, telling stories of relationships in landscapes like living rooms and suburban thoroughfares, on rivers of towns and traffic.
"I tend to write in a way that's a little more literary, I get a lot of inspiration from reading," said Sheff.
Sheff's said he often returns to similar themes because he finds them provocative.
"As I've been doing it for a while I guess I do start to see things that I'm more and more obsessed with and I start to sort them into categories," said Sheff. "... I'm very obsessed with death and dying. I've probably written more murder ballads than is permissible by law, but we left those off the record."
There are still murders and deaths in the songs on Down the River of Golden Dreams, but it's more causal, accidental death, the kind of death that all love eventually ends in. Okkervil River's songs seep in desperation, in surrender, in the sheer effort that goes into good art, into just getting up and getting through another day, in the ability of indirection of natural imagery to better communicate these kinds of sentiments.
"The natural world is a real continual source of inspiration--I like that alchemical approach," said Sheff. "It's nice to have a writing concept, but who knows where I'll be when I wanna record again."
Okkervil River with ZykosWhen: Thursday, Nov. 27, 9 p.m.Where: Plush, 340 E. 6th St.Cost: $4Info: 798-1302
January 8, 2009
Music Review Okkervil River
On That Bumpy Road to Stardom, Insight in a Trail of Dashed Illusions
Music Review Okkervil River
On That Bumpy Road to Stardom, Insight in a Trail of Dashed Illusions
By NATE CHINEN
Self-awareness has always been a life-giving force in the reedier marshes of indie-rock. For Okkervil River, from Austin, Tex., it also borders on an obsession. Song after song on Tuesday night at the Bell House, near the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn, involved aspects of band life: stardom or fandom, perceptions and pretensions, the steady pulse of buildups and letdowns.
Will Sheff, the band’s lead singer and sole songwriter, carried these themes with conspicuous confidence. A mediocre guitarist and a messy vocalist — his quavering delivery often seemed to stop just short of a breakdown — he bristled with manic energy, squaring himself against his fastidious lyrics. At one point in the opener, “Plus Ones,” he warned that he was “not above letting a love song disappear before it’s written.” The final encore, “Another Radio Song,” began on a similar note: “Sit back, no song is written.”
Mr. Sheff was drawing from a pair of recent Okkervil River albums, “The Stage Names” and “The Stand Ins,” which were created in the same stretch of time but released (on Jagjaguwar) a year apart. Heard together, as they were originally intended, the albums present a layered take on fame and disillusionment. They also underscore Mr. Sheff’s reputation as one of the cleverest and most literary songwriters in a crowded field.
Of course he’s acutely conscious of this. The show’s second tune was “Singer-Songwriter,” an acerbically comic attack on privileged posturing. In the spirit of a youthful Bob Dylan tirade like “Positively Fourth Street,” its lyrics point an accusatory finger — “You’ve got taste,” Mr. Sheff sang in the chorus, spitting out “taste” like a curse word — before taking a meaningful turn. Here the closing tag “And your world is going to change nothing” became “And our world is going to change nothing,” and with that shift Mr. Sheff was suddenly implicating himself, along with his audience.
The deft allusions, haunting imagery and feinting rhymes in Mr. Sheff’s songs might seem to eliminate the need for a band. In fact they did, during a few acoustic stretches. But it was only after one such moment — a lethargic “Get Big,” with guest vocals by Beth Wawerna of the Brooklyn band Bird of Youth — that the show found its strongest groove.
“They’re waiting to hate you,” Mr. Sheff cried, alone at first with his guitar, “so give them an excuse.” Gradually the song, “Blue Tulip,” assumed more weight, as the band lurched into gear. Lauren Gurgiolo fashioned a slow but searing solo on guitar, and the others bashed hard around her. For a moment even Mr. Sheff seemed to forget himself.
He returned to form on “Pop Lie,” which he said Okkervil River would soon perform on “Late Show With David Letterman.” Here the beat was driving, but the tone was conflicted: “He’s the liar who lied in his pop song /And you’re lying when you sing along.” The crowd appeared distinctly unfazed by this charge: the next song, “Lost Coastlines,” ended with a rousing refrain of la-la-la-las, and you hardly need to guess what everyone did.
Self-awareness has always been a life-giving force in the reedier marshes of indie-rock. For Okkervil River, from Austin, Tex., it also borders on an obsession. Song after song on Tuesday night at the Bell House, near the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn, involved aspects of band life: stardom or fandom, perceptions and pretensions, the steady pulse of buildups and letdowns.
Will Sheff, the band’s lead singer and sole songwriter, carried these themes with conspicuous confidence. A mediocre guitarist and a messy vocalist — his quavering delivery often seemed to stop just short of a breakdown — he bristled with manic energy, squaring himself against his fastidious lyrics. At one point in the opener, “Plus Ones,” he warned that he was “not above letting a love song disappear before it’s written.” The final encore, “Another Radio Song,” began on a similar note: “Sit back, no song is written.”
Mr. Sheff was drawing from a pair of recent Okkervil River albums, “The Stage Names” and “The Stand Ins,” which were created in the same stretch of time but released (on Jagjaguwar) a year apart. Heard together, as they were originally intended, the albums present a layered take on fame and disillusionment. They also underscore Mr. Sheff’s reputation as one of the cleverest and most literary songwriters in a crowded field.
Of course he’s acutely conscious of this. The show’s second tune was “Singer-Songwriter,” an acerbically comic attack on privileged posturing. In the spirit of a youthful Bob Dylan tirade like “Positively Fourth Street,” its lyrics point an accusatory finger — “You’ve got taste,” Mr. Sheff sang in the chorus, spitting out “taste” like a curse word — before taking a meaningful turn. Here the closing tag “And your world is going to change nothing” became “And our world is going to change nothing,” and with that shift Mr. Sheff was suddenly implicating himself, along with his audience.
The deft allusions, haunting imagery and feinting rhymes in Mr. Sheff’s songs might seem to eliminate the need for a band. In fact they did, during a few acoustic stretches. But it was only after one such moment — a lethargic “Get Big,” with guest vocals by Beth Wawerna of the Brooklyn band Bird of Youth — that the show found its strongest groove.
“They’re waiting to hate you,” Mr. Sheff cried, alone at first with his guitar, “so give them an excuse.” Gradually the song, “Blue Tulip,” assumed more weight, as the band lurched into gear. Lauren Gurgiolo fashioned a slow but searing solo on guitar, and the others bashed hard around her. For a moment even Mr. Sheff seemed to forget himself.
He returned to form on “Pop Lie,” which he said Okkervil River would soon perform on “Late Show With David Letterman.” Here the beat was driving, but the tone was conflicted: “He’s the liar who lied in his pop song /And you’re lying when you sing along.” The crowd appeared distinctly unfazed by this charge: the next song, “Lost Coastlines,” ended with a rousing refrain of la-la-la-las, and you hardly need to guess what everyone did.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
A jonathan Meiburg Movie ....?
Fall to Grace - 2005
Narritive Feature directed by Mari Marchbanks
Three individual stories intersect and collide. Fall to Grace reminds us of the invisible threads connecting us to one another. In collaboration with Jonathan Meiburg
Narritive Feature directed by Mari Marchbanks
Three individual stories intersect and collide. Fall to Grace reminds us of the invisible threads connecting us to one another. In collaboration with Jonathan Meiburg
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Busy Work
I put your name in quotes
I look for the "real" you
I find traces on the screen, like a panner finding gold
I deserve a reward for looking harder than the others
I put your name in quotes
I look for the "real" you
I find traces on the screen, like a panner finding gold
I deserve a reward for looking harder than the others
I put your name in quotes
Here is a Shearwater gem ... Meiburg dishes on where he works
Shearwater/Okkervil River's Jonathan Meiburg is disarmed by the POINTLESS QUESTIONS
You can choose to have one -- and only one -- super power. Other than gaining that power, you remain exactly the same as you are now. What super power would you pick, and why?
Jonathan Meiburg: I want to be able to talk to animals. Interviews will make field work take much less time.
What was your favorite day job, and why? If you hated them all, what was the best (meaning most interesting) way you ever quit a job?
Jonathan Meiburg: I still have my favorite day job, amazingly -- I work for a wonderful map distributor called Treaty Oak, which sells and distributes travel maps from all over the world. Need a map of the Titanic? Or a tango-themed map of Buenos Aires? Or a map of shipwrecks off of Isla de los Estados, Tierra del Fuego? Or of the moon? Or the definitive road atlas of Mexico? They've got it. And they have dachshunds.
We've all heard variations on the phrase "there are two kinds of people in the world... Those who (do or think something) and those who (do or think something else)". What are the two kinds of people in the world for you?
Jonathan Meiburg: People who hear birdsong as noise, and people who hear it as music. And people who hear it as a bunch of male birds telling all the other male birds to fuck off. Three kinds.
If money/ambition/significant others/et cetera were all non-issues, where would you choose to live and why?
Jonathan Meiburg: Northwest Georgia. The southern Appalachians, wild rivers, endless rainfall, tiger butterflies, red clay, hemlock trees.
Summarize your driving ability in 25 words or less.
Jonathan Meiburg: Competent when unanxious. Anxious pretty much all the time.
You've just entered a contest in which the prize is an MP3 player loaded with the complete, exhaustive recorded output of any artist you choose. You win. Who do you choose?
Jonathan Meiburg: Nina Simone.
What are you carrying on your person -- in your pockets, purse, et cetera -- right now?
Jonathan Meiburg: I am in Quito, Ecuador. I am carrying a small black daypack containing a National 407 field book, my passport, airline tickets, a pair of smartwool socks, Jonathan Franzen's novel The Corrections, a pair of small Pentax field binoculars, fifty dollars and 75 cents, my driver's license, a permit to conduct scientific research in the Galapagos, a spare pair of eyeglasses, seven ballpoint pens (red, blue, black), six rolls of 400 ASA color film, two rolls of black and white Tri-X, a cheap Pentax point-and-shoot 35mm camera, and a toothbrush.
You're on tour, you're in an unfamiliar city, you haven't eaten in 24 hours, and due to some poor financial decisions, you have only a single unit of the local currency -- one dollar, one pound, or thereabouts. What do you eat?
Jonathan Meiburg: Oats.
What was the last song you danced to? Who, if anyone, did you dance with?
Jonathan Meiburg: I only dance by myself, pretty much as a rule. But I do get down. The other night I did the indie rock blissed-out head-bob at a Baptist Generals show. And I swooned at a Joanna Newsom show. Does that count?
When did you last make a mountain out of a molehill?
Jonathan Meiburg: Yesterday. A friend was late in meeting me at the airport and I had concocted an elaborate scheme for his tragic death and believed in it by the time he arrived. I was only slightly annoyed that he showed up.
Post-Schwarzenegger, are there any high-profile people you'd like to see run for governor or other high office? Who and why?
Jonathan Meiburg: I heard an interview the other day with Christopher Walken that made him sound like a pretty level-headed fellow. Why not him?
Apart from cheeseburgers, what is the cornerstone of any nutritious breakfast?
Jonathan Meiburg: Coffee, hand-pressed by Thor Harris.
Have you ever seen a ghost? Or a dead body? Tell us about it.
Jonathan Meiburg: I saw a guy pass out and die of a heart attack at a concert. A friend of mine attempted CPR. A few years earlier, I'm pretty sure I saw my dead grandfather setting a table at a cabin in the mountains.
Everyone can do at least a couple of decent imitations -- of celebrities, maybe, or associates, friends and family. Who can you "do"?
Jonathan Meiburg: Jackass Penguin, Spheniscus magellanicus. Also Gentoo Penguin, Pygoscelis papua, and Striated Caracara, Phalconboenus australis.
What was the last book you read and hated? Why did you hate it?
Jonathan Meiburg: The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kozinski. He seemed to be getting off on all the sexual sadism he has his imaginary villagers and soldiers commit while wanting you to revere him.
Who was your favourite teacher in high school? Why?
Jonathan Meiburg: Alanna Paterson, theater, LD Bell High School. She treated us like peers. Sometimes a little too much like peers, but I'd rather that than the opposite.
What is your favorite "comfort food" when you're on tour?
Jonathan Meiburg: A McDonald's hot fudge ice cream sundae, with the plastic package of peanuts. Since I'm aware of the fundamental evil of this, I restrict myself to eating them when my mood is absolutely dire and other tricks haven't worked. Also Valium.
Tell us about the least likely place you ever sent a CD/demo. Why did you send it? What happened?
Jonathan Meiburg: The Falkland Island Tourist Board. I have a dream of playing there and having the entire population turn out to see us. No luck so far, but a letter acknowledging receipt sent On Her Majesty's Service.
What essential item are you most likely to leave at home when you're heading out on tour? What do you do about it?
Jonathan Meiburg: Shampoo. Borrow from band members until good will and morale erode. Repeat.
Aliens have just landed, and you get to select the earth's goodwill ambassador. Who do you pick, and why?
Jonathan Meiburg: A tag team of EO Wilson and Mark Hollis. I think they could make a pretty spirited, if realistic, defense of the human race. Wilson does the talking, Hollis provides the soundtrack.
You wake up one morning and discover that you have dolphin telepathy. What do you do with it?
Jonathan Meiburg: I just want to know where they've hidden the good stuff. Also, how's the sex?
You've just been hit in the face with a large chocolate cream pie. How do you react?
Jonathan Meiburg: Is it a good pie? I think my reaction depends on that.
Assuming that you must choose one, which would you rather listen to for an hour: Christian rock, mainstream country or Jessica Simpson?
Jonathan Meiburg: Christian rock, all the way. Religion, as my friend Tom Banjo once said, is just kind of creepy.
What's the deal with those damn raccoons?
Jonathan Meiburg: They have hands. They're smart. They will be here after we're gone.
Where do you think Osama Bin Laden is hiding and what would it take to get him to come out?
Jonathan Meiburg: I think Osama is mostly hiding in our collective imagination, and there's no way to blast him out of there.
You're sitting in a pub when an errant dart from the games area strikes you in the leg. With the dart pointing out of your body, do you pull it out, shout for help or attack the jackass who hit you?
Jonathan Meiburg: Attack, full on. If the dart's poisoned, I might not have much time for revenge!
What would you consider to be the worst fate imaginable for your music, and which contemporary artist would you most wish this terrible end upon?
Jonathan Meiburg: Mediocre (but not hostile) reviews and poor sales. Oh, wait, that is what's happened to my music! I'm kidding, mostly.
What is sexy?
Jonathan Meiburg: Secretarybirds. Caracaras. Keas. Blueberry pancakes. Cheerful obsession. Gracefulness of mind and speech. Wrist tattoos. Mountaintops hidden in clouds.
What is the strangest thing you've ever had for breakfast?
Jonathan Meiburg: The skin of a beluga whale, dipped in soy sauce.
Which non-music related product (i.e. -- no instruments, microphones, etc.) would you most like to be a celebrity spokesperson for?
Jonathan Meiburg: National 407 Field Books. They're waterproof, sturdy, and have a friendly yellow cover that makes them hard to lose. There's something sort of reassuring about having one in your pack and jotting notes, sketches, phone numbers, etc. in it every day. Makes me feel like I'm always "on assignment". And they come with a formula for calculating the probable error of a single observation!
· · · · · · ·
Shearwater's Winged Life, their third, is now available on Misra Records, and has been for about six months. We didn't get one for review. We're still a little hurt about that.
-- George Zahora
Jonanthan works here:
The Hair, the shirt and vest ... Mercy! A Shearwater concert review
decent gathering had assembled for Shearwater’s free day-after-the-night-before show at Bush Hall, and as the band retreated from their own CD browsing to compose themselves before the big entrance onto the little stage, Thor Harris asked “Are we doing casual?” For him this meant t-shirt rather than the previous night’s polka dot shirt and furry jerkin, and he thus lost some of his berserker aura – though anyone who has ever spoken to him will know what a calm and friendly sort of berserker he is (until those moments when the drums need a good seeing to that is). The rest of the group were similarly relaxed. Jonathan Meiburg however decided to grace us with his best, i.e. only, stage outfit, which he claims was still splattered with Dorset mud from their End Of The Road festival appearance. I wonder what Thomas Hardy would have made of current album Rooks’s pastoral take on prog rock. Insert pun based on famous novel title here: I’ve got nothing.
We were treated to a rare full and album order run through of Rook, except for the mood piece ‘South Col’ - though the mystery instrument that provides the metallic squeaking was fully used elsewhere for atmospheric effect. And if you want to know what it is you’ll just have to go and see Shearwater in action for yourself. Suffice to say, there was an initial hold up to the whole set when Thor realised it had not been primed with water. Mysterious eh?
Everyone was careful with elbows and guitar necks, and the between song instrument changes had to be well choreographed in the tiny space available. The temparary perfoming set-up and low roof meant that the sound was not quite up to the standard of Bush Hall, but Shearwater themselves were as vibrant and emotive as ever and the obvious intimacy of the event made it a memorable fifty minutes.
We were treated to a rare full and album order run through of Rook, except for the mood piece ‘South Col’ - though the mystery instrument that provides the metallic squeaking was fully used elsewhere for atmospheric effect. And if you want to know what it is you’ll just have to go and see Shearwater in action for yourself. Suffice to say, there was an initial hold up to the whole set when Thor realised it had not been primed with water. Mysterious eh?
Everyone was careful with elbows and guitar necks, and the between song instrument changes had to be well choreographed in the tiny space available. The temparary perfoming set-up and low roof meant that the sound was not quite up to the standard of Bush Hall, but Shearwater themselves were as vibrant and emotive as ever and the obvious intimacy of the event made it a memorable fifty minutes.
I found one of Thor Harris's Paintings Today
Thor is a brilliant painter, drummer, bicycle mechanic and more. I spent a lot of time at the Pharm in Austin, where Thor was living along with my dear friend Patrice Sullivan. Every morning for a week we'd have breakfast and then go off to our projects. About midday we'd meet back in the kitchen...I'd show him a new song and he'd show me a new painting...one of which graces the Boxes of Bones CD insert and disc which is available in the DonCon Music section.
LINK: maryt.home.texas.net…
There is something hidden here:
I Found This Today: Esopus Magazine
Look at this magazine with the free music sampler:
http://www.esopusmag.com/archivesubright.php?Id=3693&pID=3681
http://www.esopusmag.com/archivesubright.php?Id=3693&pID=3681
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
I found a new video
... I like this :
Ukulélé Session Okkervil River
Uploaded by cplesoir
Ukulélé Session Okkervil River
Uploaded by cplesoir
">
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4afvq_ukulele-session-okkervil-river_music
Friday, January 16, 2009
May 10, 2005
Shearwater and the Striated Caracara
Interview by Monte Holman
Shearwater (Puffinus gravis) hail from Austin and are blood relatives of folk-rock band Okkervil River. Jonathan Meiburg and Will Sheff share song-writing duties in both bands, though lately it seems they've branched off from one another. Sheff assumed more of a lead role in Okkervil, and Meiburg claimed Shearwater, enlisting the help of Travis Weller (violin), Thor Harris (drums, thunder), Kim Burke (upright bass), and Howard Draper (everything), all of whom were present on past Shearwater recordings.
"Theives" (EP—Misra), their latest recording, explores dynamics. It's both delicately soft and surprisingly noisy, all the while haunting. Employing folksy standbys, such as banjos and lap-steels, the band attempts to build lush new backdrops for instrumental presentations listeners may expect from a Texas-based band. Meiburg's sober vocals ring out beautifully and ghostly.
Shearwater is currently on tour with the Mountain Goats, and Jonathan Meiburg (pictured front and center) was kind enough to speak with me before the show at North Six. The man loves birds.
-----------------------------------------------
FREEwilliamsburg: I read on your website that you consider yourself, for the time being, "more of a musician than a scientist rather than the other way around." So you've been studying a while then?
JM:(laughs) I'm nearly finished with my Master's thesis, which I returned to with some vigor and determination a couple months ago and found that I still really loved it and was really interested in it. I'm going to finish it up in a month or two and stop there for now because while I'm interested in moving on and getting a Ph.D., it would mean six years of school and I'd have to quit music. I'm just not ready to quit music right now.
But today I went to the Natural History Museum. I spent time up in the collection there working with the guy I worked with in the Falklands, and it's so cool to get to go back in there. Today I just spent time in the exhibits, and ah, I love that place. It's like a maze — it's so alive — it's got this sort of scientific veneer but it's really all about art. It's all about the presentation, the beautiful and strange dioramas and the way everything is laid out—it's very whimsical, and some of it's almost nonsensical. There are parts of it that you get the feeling they're almost embarrassed are still there, but they can't get rid of them now; it's so permanent.
It's like a microcosm—parts of it are always sealed off with no explanation. Parts of it they're always working on. There are new things opening up; it's never going to be finished. Parts of it are becoming outdated just as new parts of it are coming online, you might say. Some incredible things are getting glossed over and left to get dusty. There are cabinets in the basement that haven't been looked at — I think some of them are albatross cabinets — and they have hundreds of thousands of birds in the collection, most of them in these big metal cabinets with these drawers you slide out. Some of them you pull out and think "nobody's looked at this in forty years."
FREEwilliamsburg: And you were able to go down and see some of those collections?
JM: Yeah, yeah. Some of them — well the building has shifted on its foundation since the cabinets were shut last, and they don't open. (laughs)
FREEwilliamsburg: They're trapped in there?
JM: Well, you'd have to get a welder down there—it's wild. There are probably about five people managing the entire bird collection. Most of the time the stuff just sits there.
FREEwilliamsburg: Who was the guy you studied with in the Falklands?
JM: Robin Woods — he's a British ornithologist who works for Falklands Conservation. He's retired, but you wouldn't know it from his schedule. He's a really incredible fellow, very patient with me. He introduced me to the world of birds. I met him in a boarding house down in the Falklands, and he needed an assistant for this bird survey he was about to do, so I said "take me." I pestered him enough that he took me along. It was a seven week trip to the outer islands of the Falklands to look at this one bird, which is the bird I ended up studying for my thesis.
FREEwilliamsburg: Which bird?
JM: The Striated Caracara — you know that picture of that weird — looking bird [on the Shearwater website]? That's it.
FREEwilliamsburg: Misra's site says you're the world's leading expert on the Striated Caracara.
JM: I don't like that tag. I'm not the world's leading expert on anything. I mean, I know about as much about it, I guess, as anybody, but expert is not the right word. It's just that nobody's really looking at it. I'm not an expert, though. It makes me nervous seeing that because I don't want Robin or any of those people seeing that and going "oh, ok..." I don't have a publication to my name about that thing. I should—I've got all the stuff, but... when I left the aboriginal settlement I lived in...
FREEwilliamsburg: When was that?
JM: The same year. It was that weird Watson fellowship thing. The guy I'd been staying with, one of the last things he said to me was "Don't become an expert!" (laughs)
FREEwilliamsburg: What's the Watson Fellowship?
JM: The Watson Fellowship sends about sixty students a year from different small liberal arts colleges to do projects you design yourself in one or more foreign countries. For a year. You can't come back until the year's over.
It was called Community Life at the Ends of the Earth. I'd never really left the United States before that. So the first thing I did was get on a plane to Tiera del Fuego when I was twenty-one years old. (laughs) It was a different experience, really wild. But I lived. I came back with an interest in birds and with my mind thoroughly blown by that experience. It was really hard to settle back down in the U.S. I was living at my parents' house in suburban Atlanta for a little while working at Mailboxes, Etc., and I would just come home and cry. I couldn't believe out of all the things I had just witnessed, out of all these wonders I just saw — I can barely communicate them to you — it doesn't matter at all unless you have some artful way to communicate it.
Let me tell you one more thing about the Natural History Museum, sorry. The thing I really wanted to see, and which was right where I saw it last when I was working with Robin there. I say working — I was really just tagging along and helping him out. They have this case on the third floor, or maybe the fourth floor. It's at the end of one of those long L-shaped corridors. There's nothing leading to it. It's just a couple of glass display cases. There's another case pressed up against them, so you can't even see part of it. But it's a little bird exhibit. They have all these mounted birds from all over the world completely out of context. They're listed by their family and their range, but not in any habitat context. I think they've been trying to rearrange it so you see things more in the context of a habitat rather than just a bunch of birds together. One of the cases is woodpeckers, and they have just right there in this little thing an Imperial Woodpecker, which is THE largest woodpecker on earth. It's probably extinct, very likely extinct.
FREEwilliamsburg: Where is its natural habitat?
JM: Pine forests of northwestern Mexico in a very poorly known region. It's really backwoods. But I don't think that bird's been sighted in a very long time. The other ones they've got at the museum are up in a vault, basically, in the rare bird room. I wouldn't want to speculate about the value of it — it's an extinct species. It's this giant fucking woodpecker! (laughs) Looking at it is like looking at a holy relic. It's the size of a raven. It's huge. It's very closely related to the Ivory-Billed, which was just rediscovered last week in Arkansas, praise be.
FREEwilliamsburg: Really?
JM: You didn't know about this? It's been missing for fifty years, and they'd written it off. They published sightings of at least one in this area in Arkansas. I have an Ivory-Billed woodpeckers on my banjo. I'm obsessed with them. We were going to write a whole album about the ivory-bill woodpecker, which now I don't know if I can do since it's been found. (laughs) I didn't want to do a dirge for it. I like the mystery of it-people would see it every now and again.
FREEwilliamsburg: Who finally found it again?
JM: This is for real — the Nature Conservancy. They'd been sitting on it for fourteen months, and then they published it in Science, and there's some video of it, and it's for real. It was a Campephilus woodpecker-Campephilus is a genus. It was Campephilus principalis, the ivory-billed woodpecker. The imperial woodpecker is the Campephilus imperialis (laughs), and it looks just like the ivory-bill, just a size larger. So it's a spectacular bird. And it was just sitting there right in the case. I mean you could've shown me the bones of St. Peter, and I wouldn't have been more impressed. I'm just in awe of this thing. It's right next to some of my other favorites like the Crimson Fruit Crow, which is still alive. It's a South American species. And a couple of extinct birds from North America — the Heath Hen, which is sort of an eastern grouse-and an extinct bird from New Zealand called the Huia that had, well the male had this big curved beak, and the female had this little stubby beak. They've been extinct since like the forties, I think.
FREEwilliamsburg: So this has been a very productive trip to New York for you?
JM: Well, that's where I get my jollies. It doesn't do anybody any good, but god, it sends me — I'm still buzzing from that. I can't see it anywhere else. I had a friend with me, and I was like, "Look, look, look at this!" It was like a secret that was hidden in the Natural History Museum. All this other stuff is there to distract you, like the dinosaurs and everything, but look at this!
But we can move on now, or else we'll stay here forever.
FREEwilliamsburg: What about the new EP? Wasn't it recorded in the same session as the last album, Winged Life?
JM: Oh Thieves. It was recorded at the same time and same place as Winged Life at the Echo Lab with Matt Pence. We didn't want to do a seventy-minute record; I don't like seventy-minute records. I thought Winged Life was almost a little long as it was because the previous two records had been thirty-three minutes. That's what I'm aiming for, the perfect thirty-five minute record. I actually like "Thieves" a little more than Winged Life. I thought it was a little more cohesive, and I think it swings between extremes more. It shows a little more somehow what the band is doing more now.
FREEwilliamsburg: And how would you characterize that? Here's a quote from your website, "otherworldly, lovely, and a little bit evil."
JM: (laughs) Yeah, that's the idea.
FREEwilliamsburg: How so compared to Winged Life?
JM: Well it's a little less poppy, little less folky, and a little more of its own thing. I like strange textures and more abstract songwriting and song forms, and we're going to be working with that a little more on the next record, which we'll be playing a couple songs from tonight.
FREEwilliamsburg: Have you started recording that yet?
JM: Haven't started yet, but we're going to start in August.
FREEwilliamsburg: Will it be with the same lineup as the folks touring with you right now?
JM: Yep, this is the lineup.
FREEwilliamsburg: No Will Sheff?
JM: I'm sure Will will be involved in some capacity. He's not on this tour because Okkervil is touring right now as well.
FREEwilliamsburg: I know you play the keys in Okkervil River, and you and Will are the primary songwriters in both Okkervil and Shearwater. How does it work with both of you playing significant roles in both bands?
JM: At the time we started Shearwater, neither Will nor I had any outlet. Okkervil was a little bit stuck for some reason right then-Will had more songs than they were doing, and I was in a band that didn't quite fit with what I wanted. So we seized on Shearwater as an opportunity to do that, and since that time, Okkervil has really taken off for Will as his expressive outlet. It does pretty much everything that he wants it to do. I think the new Okkervil record is great. I'm really proud of it, Black Sheep Boy. I'm representing (laughs and points to his Okkervil River t-shirt), partly as a kind of "I still like Okkervil" thing (laughs). I got up and played with them a little last night at the show (they played at the Bowery the previous night). It was weird because it was the first time I had seen an Okkervil River show since 1999 before I joined the band.
It's been really friendly, and they're really supportive of Shearwater and what we're doing. It was too bad we couldn't all be on the tours, but at the same time, it's kind of a good problem to have. Okkervil's on a great tour; we're on an amazing tour. This is like a dream come true, to get to play to these audiences. Bear in mind, we're used to playing for like five, ten people. To play for two hundred, three hundred, four hundred people is incredible for us. But I also think we're finally ready to do it. We had a great SXSW, we've honed the set a lot over the tours and have really gotten it tighter.
With Okkervil and Shearwater, there sort of is a split happening, but it's an incredibly amicable split. I mean to keep playing with Okkervil. Will's going to keep playing with Shearwater when he can. In general, though, Shearwater's become more of my thing, and Okkervil's Will's.
FREEwilliamsburg: Austin is a big place for music, obviously. You've got all kinds of music there, from bands like Trail of Dead to a large Tejano presence to country. How do you feel Shearwater fits into all that?
JM: There are a lot of different ways to be a musician in Austin. For us, it's sort of like Austin is home base. We live there; we like being there. We don't play there all the time, a couple times a year.
FREEwilliamsburg: Do you feel a part of a community?
JM: I feel like I know a lot of musicians. And we don't have to worry too much about that "are people going to come to my party?" feeling when we play a show. There will be at least some people that you know are going to come and see you, and you feel ok about playing on a Friday night. So it's a little less fraught with anxiety. Now that's displaced to other places. It's like "are people going to come see us in St. Louis?"
FREEwilliamsburg: Here's our favorite question: what was the first concert you went to?
JM: It was in North Carolina. Man, it was James Taylor. It was in the UNC Dean Dome.
FREEwilliamsburg: How old were you?
JM: Fourteen? I thought it was awesome. I was so into it. Even then, I thought this is a little bit slick or something. And I loved Pink Floyd then too, but you couldn't go see them. They had come through Raleigh a couple years previous, but they weren't coming through again anytime soon. I was learning to play acoustic guitar at the time, so I liked James Taylor. It was funny-I remember seeing the guitarist doing volume swells and thinking "how's he doing that?" It all seemed very miraculous in a way. I was like "wow, look at all those purple and green lights!" (laughs)
FREEwilliamsburg: What's next for Shearwater?
JM: Shearwater is almost ready to make a new record. We're going to start in August, and hopefully it will come out in the winter.
FREEwilliamsburg: Are you recording at the Echo Lab again?
JM: I don't think so this time. I think we're going to be working with a guy Craig Ross in Austin, who Thor used to play with. He's done records for Lisa Germano. He's got a really good ear, and he lives right across the street from me. So we won't have to decamp to another part of the state. But I loved working at the Echo Lab — those guys are great, and we'd definitely work with them again.
May 09, 2005
Shearwater and the Striated Caracara
Interview by Monte Holman
Shearwater (Puffinus gravis) hail from Austin and are blood relatives of folk-rock band Okkervil River. Jonathan Meiburg and Will Sheff share song-writing duties in both bands, though lately it seems they've branched off from one another. Sheff assumed more of a lead role in Okkervil, and Meiburg claimed Shearwater, enlisting the help of Travis Weller (violin), Thor Harris (drums, thunder), Kim Burke (upright bass), and Howard Draper (everything), all of whom were present on past Shearwater recordings.
"Theives" (EP—Misra), their latest recording, explores dynamics. It's both delicately soft and surprisingly noisy, all the while haunting. Employing folksy standbys, such as banjos and lap-steels, the band attempts to build lush new backdrops for instrumental presentations listeners may expect from a Texas-based band. Meiburg's sober vocals ring out beautifully and ghostly.
Shearwater is currently on tour with the Mountain Goats, and Jonathan Meiburg (pictured front and center) was kind enough to speak with me before the show at North Six. The man loves birds.
-----------------------------------------------
FREEwilliamsburg: I read on your website that you consider yourself, for the time being, "more of a musician than a scientist rather than the other way around." So you've been studying a while then?
JM:(laughs) I'm nearly finished with my Master's thesis, which I returned to with some vigor and determination a couple months ago and found that I still really loved it and was really interested in it. I'm going to finish it up in a month or two and stop there for now because while I'm interested in moving on and getting a Ph.D., it would mean six years of school and I'd have to quit music. I'm just not ready to quit music right now.
But today I went to the Natural History Museum. I spent time up in the collection there working with the guy I worked with in the Falklands, and it's so cool to get to go back in there. Today I just spent time in the exhibits, and ah, I love that place. It's like a maze — it's so alive — it's got this sort of scientific veneer but it's really all about art. It's all about the presentation, the beautiful and strange dioramas and the way everything is laid out—it's very whimsical, and some of it's almost nonsensical. There are parts of it that you get the feeling they're almost embarrassed are still there, but they can't get rid of them now; it's so permanent.
It's like a microcosm—parts of it are always sealed off with no explanation. Parts of it they're always working on. There are new things opening up; it's never going to be finished. Parts of it are becoming outdated just as new parts of it are coming online, you might say. Some incredible things are getting glossed over and left to get dusty. There are cabinets in the basement that haven't been looked at — I think some of them are albatross cabinets — and they have hundreds of thousands of birds in the collection, most of them in these big metal cabinets with these drawers you slide out. Some of them you pull out and think "nobody's looked at this in forty years."
FREEwilliamsburg: And you were able to go down and see some of those collections?
JM: Yeah, yeah. Some of them — well the building has shifted on its foundation since the cabinets were shut last, and they don't open. (laughs)
FREEwilliamsburg: They're trapped in there?
JM: Well, you'd have to get a welder down there—it's wild. There are probably about five people managing the entire bird collection. Most of the time the stuff just sits there.
FREEwilliamsburg: Who was the guy you studied with in the Falklands?
JM: Robin Woods — he's a British ornithologist who works for Falklands Conservation. He's retired, but you wouldn't know it from his schedule. He's a really incredible fellow, very patient with me. He introduced me to the world of birds. I met him in a boarding house down in the Falklands, and he needed an assistant for this bird survey he was about to do, so I said "take me." I pestered him enough that he took me along. It was a seven week trip to the outer islands of the Falklands to look at this one bird, which is the bird I ended up studying for my thesis.
FREEwilliamsburg: Which bird?
JM: The Striated Caracara — you know that picture of that weird — looking bird [on the Shearwater website]? That's it.
FREEwilliamsburg: Misra's site says you're the world's leading expert on the Striated Caracara.
JM: I don't like that tag. I'm not the world's leading expert on anything. I mean, I know about as much about it, I guess, as anybody, but expert is not the right word. It's just that nobody's really looking at it. I'm not an expert, though. It makes me nervous seeing that because I don't want Robin or any of those people seeing that and going "oh, ok..." I don't have a publication to my name about that thing. I should—I've got all the stuff, but... when I left the aboriginal settlement I lived in...
FREEwilliamsburg: When was that?
JM: The same year. It was that weird Watson fellowship thing. The guy I'd been staying with, one of the last things he said to me was "Don't become an expert!" (laughs)
FREEwilliamsburg: What's the Watson Fellowship?
JM: The Watson Fellowship sends about sixty students a year from different small liberal arts colleges to do projects you design yourself in one or more foreign countries. For a year. You can't come back until the year's over.
It was called Community Life at the Ends of the Earth. I'd never really left the United States before that. So the first thing I did was get on a plane to Tiera del Fuego when I was twenty-one years old. (laughs) It was a different experience, really wild. But I lived. I came back with an interest in birds and with my mind thoroughly blown by that experience. It was really hard to settle back down in the U.S. I was living at my parents' house in suburban Atlanta for a little while working at Mailboxes, Etc., and I would just come home and cry. I couldn't believe out of all the things I had just witnessed, out of all these wonders I just saw — I can barely communicate them to you — it doesn't matter at all unless you have some artful way to communicate it.
Let me tell you one more thing about the Natural History Museum, sorry. The thing I really wanted to see, and which was right where I saw it last when I was working with Robin there. I say working — I was really just tagging along and helping him out. They have this case on the third floor, or maybe the fourth floor. It's at the end of one of those long L-shaped corridors. There's nothing leading to it. It's just a couple of glass display cases. There's another case pressed up against them, so you can't even see part of it. But it's a little bird exhibit. They have all these mounted birds from all over the world completely out of context. They're listed by their family and their range, but not in any habitat context. I think they've been trying to rearrange it so you see things more in the context of a habitat rather than just a bunch of birds together. One of the cases is woodpeckers, and they have just right there in this little thing an Imperial Woodpecker, which is THE largest woodpecker on earth. It's probably extinct, very likely extinct.
FREEwilliamsburg: Where is its natural habitat?
JM: Pine forests of northwestern Mexico in a very poorly known region. It's really backwoods. But I don't think that bird's been sighted in a very long time. The other ones they've got at the museum are up in a vault, basically, in the rare bird room. I wouldn't want to speculate about the value of it — it's an extinct species. It's this giant fucking woodpecker! (laughs) Looking at it is like looking at a holy relic. It's the size of a raven. It's huge. It's very closely related to the Ivory-Billed, which was just rediscovered last week in Arkansas, praise be.
FREEwilliamsburg: Really?
JM: You didn't know about this? It's been missing for fifty years, and they'd written it off. They published sightings of at least one in this area in Arkansas. I have an Ivory-Billed woodpeckers on my banjo. I'm obsessed with them. We were going to write a whole album about the ivory-bill woodpecker, which now I don't know if I can do since it's been found. (laughs) I didn't want to do a dirge for it. I like the mystery of it-people would see it every now and again.
FREEwilliamsburg: Who finally found it again?
JM: This is for real — the Nature Conservancy. They'd been sitting on it for fourteen months, and then they published it in Science, and there's some video of it, and it's for real. It was a Campephilus woodpecker-Campephilus is a genus. It was Campephilus principalis, the ivory-billed woodpecker. The imperial woodpecker is the Campephilus imperialis (laughs), and it looks just like the ivory-bill, just a size larger. So it's a spectacular bird. And it was just sitting there right in the case. I mean you could've shown me the bones of St. Peter, and I wouldn't have been more impressed. I'm just in awe of this thing. It's right next to some of my other favorites like the Crimson Fruit Crow, which is still alive. It's a South American species. And a couple of extinct birds from North America — the Heath Hen, which is sort of an eastern grouse-and an extinct bird from New Zealand called the Huia that had, well the male had this big curved beak, and the female had this little stubby beak. They've been extinct since like the forties, I think.
FREEwilliamsburg: So this has been a very productive trip to New York for you?
JM: Well, that's where I get my jollies. It doesn't do anybody any good, but god, it sends me — I'm still buzzing from that. I can't see it anywhere else. I had a friend with me, and I was like, "Look, look, look at this!" It was like a secret that was hidden in the Natural History Museum. All this other stuff is there to distract you, like the dinosaurs and everything, but look at this!
But we can move on now, or else we'll stay here forever.
FREEwilliamsburg: What about the new EP? Wasn't it recorded in the same session as the last album, Winged Life?
JM: Oh Thieves. It was recorded at the same time and same place as Winged Life at the Echo Lab with Matt Pence. We didn't want to do a seventy-minute record; I don't like seventy-minute records. I thought Winged Life was almost a little long as it was because the previous two records had been thirty-three minutes. That's what I'm aiming for, the perfect thirty-five minute record. I actually like "Thieves" a little more than Winged Life. I thought it was a little more cohesive, and I think it swings between extremes more. It shows a little more somehow what the band is doing more now.
FREEwilliamsburg: And how would you characterize that? Here's a quote from your website, "otherworldly, lovely, and a little bit evil."
JM: (laughs) Yeah, that's the idea.
FREEwilliamsburg: How so compared to Winged Life?
JM: Well it's a little less poppy, little less folky, and a little more of its own thing. I like strange textures and more abstract songwriting and song forms, and we're going to be working with that a little more on the next record, which we'll be playing a couple songs from tonight.
FREEwilliamsburg: Have you started recording that yet?
JM: Haven't started yet, but we're going to start in August.
FREEwilliamsburg: Will it be with the same lineup as the folks touring with you right now?
JM: Yep, this is the lineup.
FREEwilliamsburg: No Will Sheff?
JM: I'm sure Will will be involved in some capacity. He's not on this tour because Okkervil is touring right now as well.
FREEwilliamsburg: I know you play the keys in Okkervil River, and you and Will are the primary songwriters in both Okkervil and Shearwater. How does it work with both of you playing significant roles in both bands?
JM: At the time we started Shearwater, neither Will nor I had any outlet. Okkervil was a little bit stuck for some reason right then-Will had more songs than they were doing, and I was in a band that didn't quite fit with what I wanted. So we seized on Shearwater as an opportunity to do that, and since that time, Okkervil has really taken off for Will as his expressive outlet. It does pretty much everything that he wants it to do. I think the new Okkervil record is great. I'm really proud of it, Black Sheep Boy. I'm representing (laughs and points to his Okkervil River t-shirt), partly as a kind of "I still like Okkervil" thing (laughs). I got up and played with them a little last night at the show (they played at the Bowery the previous night). It was weird because it was the first time I had seen an Okkervil River show since 1999 before I joined the band.
It's been really friendly, and they're really supportive of Shearwater and what we're doing. It was too bad we couldn't all be on the tours, but at the same time, it's kind of a good problem to have. Okkervil's on a great tour; we're on an amazing tour. This is like a dream come true, to get to play to these audiences. Bear in mind, we're used to playing for like five, ten people. To play for two hundred, three hundred, four hundred people is incredible for us. But I also think we're finally ready to do it. We had a great SXSW, we've honed the set a lot over the tours and have really gotten it tighter.
With Okkervil and Shearwater, there sort of is a split happening, but it's an incredibly amicable split. I mean to keep playing with Okkervil. Will's going to keep playing with Shearwater when he can. In general, though, Shearwater's become more of my thing, and Okkervil's Will's.
FREEwilliamsburg: Austin is a big place for music, obviously. You've got all kinds of music there, from bands like Trail of Dead to a large Tejano presence to country. How do you feel Shearwater fits into all that?
JM: There are a lot of different ways to be a musician in Austin. For us, it's sort of like Austin is home base. We live there; we like being there. We don't play there all the time, a couple times a year.
FREEwilliamsburg: Do you feel a part of a community?
JM: I feel like I know a lot of musicians. And we don't have to worry too much about that "are people going to come to my party?" feeling when we play a show. There will be at least some people that you know are going to come and see you, and you feel ok about playing on a Friday night. So it's a little less fraught with anxiety. Now that's displaced to other places. It's like "are people going to come see us in St. Louis?"
FREEwilliamsburg: Here's our favorite question: what was the first concert you went to?
JM: It was in North Carolina. Man, it was James Taylor. It was in the UNC Dean Dome.
FREEwilliamsburg: How old were you?
JM: Fourteen? I thought it was awesome. I was so into it. Even then, I thought this is a little bit slick or something. And I loved Pink Floyd then too, but you couldn't go see them. They had come through Raleigh a couple years previous, but they weren't coming through again anytime soon. I was learning to play acoustic guitar at the time, so I liked James Taylor. It was funny-I remember seeing the guitarist doing volume swells and thinking "how's he doing that?" It all seemed very miraculous in a way. I was like "wow, look at all those purple and green lights!" (laughs)
FREEwilliamsburg: What's next for Shearwater?
JM: Shearwater is almost ready to make a new record. We're going to start in August, and hopefully it will come out in the winter.
FREEwilliamsburg: Are you recording at the Echo Lab again?
JM: I don't think so this time. I think we're going to be working with a guy Craig Ross in Austin, who Thor used to play with. He's done records for Lisa Germano. He's got a really good ear, and he lives right across the street from me. So we won't have to decamp to another part of the state. But I loved working at the Echo Lab — those guys are great, and we'd definitely work with them again.
May 09, 2005
Thursday, January 15, 2009
"Is it too much?" said the drunken bitch...
... nasty ol' cunt, quote from January 6, 2009. Why can't that be-otch behave herself?
If passive aggresiveness had a face it would look like the saggy jowled, dark eyed, giant fingered monster that can't behave herself when she has a few too many. Or even just a few. Any excuse to be an arse will do!!
If passive aggresiveness had a face it would look like the saggy jowled, dark eyed, giant fingered monster that can't behave herself when she has a few too many. Or even just a few. Any excuse to be an arse will do!!
Well here is a better girl ...
Thoroughly modern milliner
>> Canadian cabaret diva Sarah Slean speaks of past lives, alter egos and absinthe
January 23, 2003>> Canadian cabaret diva Sarah Slean speaks of past lives, alter egos and absinthe
by LORRAINE CARPENTER
“In songs, you have to marry the beauty of sound and poetry and try to use language like a paintbrush,” says Sarah Slean. “All that other stuff, the veneer of now, I’m not interested in, and if that’s my financial downfall, so be it.” At only 25, this Toronto-based, classically trained musician and self-taught torch singer has released two albums on her own indie label, which will soon resurface as a vehicle for side-projects, before signing to Warner, whom she convinced to let her peer, Hawksley Workman, produce her major-label debut Night Bugs. The Mirror spoke to the accomplished Miss Slean about personality crises and enchanted forests.
Mirror: I’ve read that your album was deeply affected by the environment in which it was recorded, complete with insects.
Sarah Slean: They were so loud, I couldn’t sleep the first two nights! It was this massive studio in the middle of the forest in New York state, we stayed in cottages there for a whole month. We had friends and family come down and we would have parties and go to Woodstock to see the locals, but at the same time it was so secluded and so quiet. You felt magic twirling around you all the time, drifting through the trees at night and in and around the corners of the studio during the day. It was sublime. And Hawksley is fantastic. The moment I saw him I had this weird feeling, like maybe we were in a circus together in another life.
M: You believe in reincarnation?
SS: Well, I’m a big science geek, and the thing about energy is that it never dies, it simply changes form, and that’s also true of life energy. I think we’re made of stardust, if I may quote Joni Mitchell. Everybody’s made of stuff that’s been here forever, so you can’t help but pick up some crazy, drunken French lady’s ideas along the way.
M: Okay, so what about this “Emily and Vincent” side-project? Who’s Emily?
SS: Emily is an alter ego of mine, a bit of a depressive who drinks too much and stumbles through the alleys of Paris. She lives in a really tiny room and works in a hat store. She comes from this book called Good Morning Midnight by Jean Rhys, one of the French writers from the golden age of Parisian literature, and as I was reading the book, I felt like I knew this person. Something about her was so real to me. On stage sometimes, I feel like she takes over and screams all the stuff that she’s always wanted to scream, all of that tragedy and ridiculous hope, so I thought I should write a record to thank her for that.
M: How about Vincent?
SS: He’s the guy who perhaps lives in the tiny studio apartment next door - that has mice - and he’s got one good suit, but it’s kinda ratty. He’s in love with Emily and she’s having none of it, but they go out for absinthe sometimes.
M: Have you ever tried absinthe?
SS: I have a bottle of it in my apartment, the real stuff. It’s pretty dangerous, you gotta go slow. :
With Danny Michel at Petit Campus on Saturday, January 25, 8pm, $10
For me
User Comments (Comment on this title)
2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful:- unconventional, hilarious, riveting., 16 April 1999
Author: Will Robinson Sheff (wsheff@hotmail.com) from Austin, TX
This movie is totally amazing, one long, mind-blowing story that is by turns riotously funny and utterly chilling. It will restore your faith in the power of a single human being to transport the audience to a whole new place, time, and mind using just WORDS.
Was the above comment useful to you?
More reviews by Sheff:
http://www.imdb.com/user/ur0304223/comments
Comments written by registered userWill-84
Send an IMDb private message to this author or view their message board profile.
7 comments in total Index Alphabetical Chronological Useful
The Ugly (1997)1 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-Pure brilliance in filmaking and editing, 5 July 1999
Wow! This film is strange in format in that the first time you view it, it can leave you a little confused or flustered and can come off as just another horror film. But the beauty is...it isn't. This film was designed to be watched multiple times with the use of the pause button. As odd as it seems, Scott Reynolds has left numerous clues (read easter eggs) throughout that completely explain the ending and all the events that lead up to it. Between subliminal images hidden in the rapid cuts and well placed scenes that seem extraneous at first, The Ugly delivers with a brilliant storyline that makes perfect sense as long as you devote the time to a second or third viewing. It's well worth it, every time.
8MM (1999)Joel Schumacher is redeemed!, 5 July 1999
Now this is brilliant. A dark movie that delves into the evil of mens souls and the gut wrenching horror of a seedy, disgusting underworld that exists right under your very nose. This film was not well received at all, mostly due to the fact that Shumacher does such a great job at taking us right along with Nick Cage into the deep, rancorous pits of hell. Never in the history of film has a film been so dark, so moody and so terrifying just over the details of one single murder. Many have compared this to Seven, but what Seven does with six grisly, very graphic murders, 8MM does with just one you never see. This film also attacks American cinema at its very roots. Most plots now a days run in formulaic fashion: Bad guys kill/maim/harm the loved ones/property/way of life of our hero, the hero loses something, then gets back who S/he is by finding said bad guys and killing them. The concept of vigilantism is rampant in most of todays movies and America has been desensitized to it, this movie is a wake up call. See this, but not on a date. You just won't get any.
Irma Vep (1996)5 out of 5 people found the following comment useful :-Sexy, funny, smart, sad, EXCELLENT., 22 May 1999
Unlike Scoopy, I say this movie is WELL worth the effort and time, especially if you're familiar with the French New Wave. Jean-Pierre Leaud, one of the biggest stars of the period (he was the little boy in Francois Truffaut's seminal "The 400 Blows" [no pun intended]) is hilarious as a caricature of Godard in particular and French filmmakers in general, and the rooftop interview with (the stunning) Maggie Cheung refers to both Godard's "Breathless" and, indirectly, Fellini's "8 1/2." Though it pokes good fun at the pretentiousness of the French New Wave, "Irma Vep" is also a tender elegy to a time in which movies were actually viewed as art, as something that really MATTERED. Add to the humor and intelligence some really witty direction, superstylish cinematography, and a slew of beautiful people, and you got yerself a postmodern masterpiece and just maybe one last, great film of the New Wave.
Mary Jane's Not a Virgin Anymore (1997)6 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-Punk-rock coming-of-age story. Great., 21 April 1999
A sex-positive feminist punk-rock coming-of-age story. Way lo-fi and very charming. The performances are uneven at times but the script is really funny and rings very true. It's the most unsentimental and realistic portrayal of sexual awakening that I've ever seen. Like a low-budget "Slums of Beverly Hills," only far better.
Swimming to Cambodia (1987)2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-unconventional, hilarious, riveting., 16 April 1999
This movie is totally amazing, one long, mind-blowing story that is by turns riotously funny and utterly chilling. It will restore your faith in the power of a single human being to transport the audience to a whole new place, time, and mind using just WORDS.
Careful (1992)1 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-Perversely original, 16 April 1999
Best described as a combination of "The Wizard of Oz" and "Eraserhead," "Careful" is a wacked-out tale of repression and unnatural desires, set in an alpine village where no one can speak too loudly for fear of starting an avalanche. Hilarious and sinister, "Careful" is also one of the most visually arresting films I've ever seen, with impossibly rosy-cheeked characters inhabiting a hallucinatory dream world of intentionally fake sets and intense easter-egg pastels. Watching it you will feel like you've stepped into the middle of a Ricola ad gone horribly, horribly wrong.
Faust (1994)16 out of 19 people found the following comment useful :-The best film of one of the world's best filmmakers., 16 April 1999
Jan Svankmajer is one of the best animators of all time and one of the best artists of the 20th century. There is simply no one else making animation like this: disturbing, hilarious, dreamlike. "Faust" is one of the best films I have ever seen, combining the visual sensibility of Salvador Dali with the philosophical sensibility of Mikhail Bulgakov. Powerful, surreal, and more intelligent than any animation anywhere.
Comments written by registered userWill-84
Send an IMDb private message to this author or view their message board profile.
7 comments in total Index Alphabetical Chronological Useful
The Ugly (1997)1 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-Pure brilliance in filmaking and editing, 5 July 1999
Wow! This film is strange in format in that the first time you view it, it can leave you a little confused or flustered and can come off as just another horror film. But the beauty is...it isn't. This film was designed to be watched multiple times with the use of the pause button. As odd as it seems, Scott Reynolds has left numerous clues (read easter eggs) throughout that completely explain the ending and all the events that lead up to it. Between subliminal images hidden in the rapid cuts and well placed scenes that seem extraneous at first, The Ugly delivers with a brilliant storyline that makes perfect sense as long as you devote the time to a second or third viewing. It's well worth it, every time.
8MM (1999)Joel Schumacher is redeemed!, 5 July 1999
Now this is brilliant. A dark movie that delves into the evil of mens souls and the gut wrenching horror of a seedy, disgusting underworld that exists right under your very nose. This film was not well received at all, mostly due to the fact that Shumacher does such a great job at taking us right along with Nick Cage into the deep, rancorous pits of hell. Never in the history of film has a film been so dark, so moody and so terrifying just over the details of one single murder. Many have compared this to Seven, but what Seven does with six grisly, very graphic murders, 8MM does with just one you never see. This film also attacks American cinema at its very roots. Most plots now a days run in formulaic fashion: Bad guys kill/maim/harm the loved ones/property/way of life of our hero, the hero loses something, then gets back who S/he is by finding said bad guys and killing them. The concept of vigilantism is rampant in most of todays movies and America has been desensitized to it, this movie is a wake up call. See this, but not on a date. You just won't get any.
Irma Vep (1996)5 out of 5 people found the following comment useful :-Sexy, funny, smart, sad, EXCELLENT., 22 May 1999
Unlike Scoopy, I say this movie is WELL worth the effort and time, especially if you're familiar with the French New Wave. Jean-Pierre Leaud, one of the biggest stars of the period (he was the little boy in Francois Truffaut's seminal "The 400 Blows" [no pun intended]) is hilarious as a caricature of Godard in particular and French filmmakers in general, and the rooftop interview with (the stunning) Maggie Cheung refers to both Godard's "Breathless" and, indirectly, Fellini's "8 1/2." Though it pokes good fun at the pretentiousness of the French New Wave, "Irma Vep" is also a tender elegy to a time in which movies were actually viewed as art, as something that really MATTERED. Add to the humor and intelligence some really witty direction, superstylish cinematography, and a slew of beautiful people, and you got yerself a postmodern masterpiece and just maybe one last, great film of the New Wave.
Mary Jane's Not a Virgin Anymore (1997)6 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-Punk-rock coming-of-age story. Great., 21 April 1999
A sex-positive feminist punk-rock coming-of-age story. Way lo-fi and very charming. The performances are uneven at times but the script is really funny and rings very true. It's the most unsentimental and realistic portrayal of sexual awakening that I've ever seen. Like a low-budget "Slums of Beverly Hills," only far better.
Swimming to Cambodia (1987)2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-unconventional, hilarious, riveting., 16 April 1999
This movie is totally amazing, one long, mind-blowing story that is by turns riotously funny and utterly chilling. It will restore your faith in the power of a single human being to transport the audience to a whole new place, time, and mind using just WORDS.
Careful (1992)1 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-Perversely original, 16 April 1999
Best described as a combination of "The Wizard of Oz" and "Eraserhead," "Careful" is a wacked-out tale of repression and unnatural desires, set in an alpine village where no one can speak too loudly for fear of starting an avalanche. Hilarious and sinister, "Careful" is also one of the most visually arresting films I've ever seen, with impossibly rosy-cheeked characters inhabiting a hallucinatory dream world of intentionally fake sets and intense easter-egg pastels. Watching it you will feel like you've stepped into the middle of a Ricola ad gone horribly, horribly wrong.
Faust (1994)16 out of 19 people found the following comment useful :-The best film of one of the world's best filmmakers., 16 April 1999
Jan Svankmajer is one of the best animators of all time and one of the best artists of the 20th century. There is simply no one else making animation like this: disturbing, hilarious, dreamlike. "Faust" is one of the best films I have ever seen, combining the visual sensibility of Salvador Dali with the philosophical sensibility of Mikhail Bulgakov. Powerful, surreal, and more intelligent than any animation anywhere.
Review by Sheff
BACK TO LIST Artist: Sorry About Dresden Album: LBJ-39 The Convenience of Indecision Publication: Audiogalaxy.com Reviewed By: Will Robinson Sheff Date: 2/4/2002 Website: www.audiogalaxy.comSorry About Dresden Don't worry about it.Sorry about Dresden' s primary claim to fame is that their frontman, Matt Oberst, is the brother of Conor Oberst of the extremely popular chamber-indie outfit Bright Eyes. This state of affairs may seem somewhat backassward considering that the older Matt has been playing music for much longer than his better-known kid brother, but Sorry about Dresden's fine sophomore effort The Convenience of Indecision (Saddle Creek) could finally remedy this wide disparity in indie repute between the two Obersts. If not, at least there'll be no confusion between the two bands: on The Convenience of Indecision, Sorry about Dresden's earnest yearning and loose-limbed rockisms display more in common with the general Saddle Creek vibe than with Bright Eyes' frantic, folk-wreck attack. Saddle Creek represents the young indie world's closest modern analogue to 4AD in their storied glory days; over the last few years, the label's releases have established a clear aesthetic that is consistent from release to release in both packaging (Saddle Creek's designs are artily attractive, fussy, and frequently use unconventional high-quality paper stocks) and musical feel (Saddle Creek's bands are precocious, earnest, and largely irony-free). Sorry about Dresden not only exhibit the Saddle Creek aesthetic, they seem to embody it in a particularly distilled form, blending the emotional dynamics of Cursive with the poetics of Bright Eyes and the immaculate acoustic touches of Lullaby for the Working Class (nearly all of whom are represented in the album's guest credits). From outside of this mix, Sorry about Dresden import some fresh influences, all indie-rock royalty. "Deadship, Darkship," for example, is delivered by Oberst with a nasal-drip insouciance that echoes Spoon's Britt Daniel. Meanwhile, "It's Morning Again in America" could have been an outtake from Eric Bachmann's Bring on the Snakes Crooked Fingers record. This is not to say that Sorry about Dresden is merely rehashing, though; that same track, for example, does the best example I've ever heard of integrating a banjo and piano seamlessly in a way that's both immediately intuitive and weirdly poppy, and even prettier is "On Contradiction," which ornaments its hairpin dynamic changes with delicious cascades of vibraphone and breathy "oohs." This skill at making dissimilar instruments similarly gorgeous, and of mixing energetic drive with moments of unrushed expression, is what gives The Convenience of Indecision its particular charm, and what proves that Matt Oberst is no Livingston Taylor.
Interview with Sheff:
New on Nerve, 9.18.07: "It's my duty to talk about sex."
This morning we have an interview with Will Sheff, lead singer of Okkervil River by Sarah Hepola. The Nerve Insider is a huge fan of Okkervil River, and the interview does not disappoint. Sheff is thoughtful, insightful and extremely appealing.
At the beginning of the piece Sheff orders a sandwich from Subway. Sarah didn't put this in the article, but he told her, “I want this interview to be really good, let me finish this sandwich and call you back.”
Other tidbits that didn't make it in the piece:"One thing about will is that he's a movie fanatic, and he's pretty encyclopedic in his knowledge. I used to write about film for The Austin Chronicle, and we actually asked him to contribute to the film section. The articles are published under his full name, Will Robinson Sheff. Here's a link to the archive of his work.
Also, during the interview, we had a funny conversation about his working at video stores. He told me he'd been fired from his job at I Love Video, another famous indie movie enclave in Austin, and I asked why. This is what he said:
WS: Because I was incompetent. I forgot to open the store one day. What can you do? Musicians. But this one girl was really gunning to get me fired, too. She wanted to see me go down.
ME: Do you think she just wanted your space on the employee pick's wall?
WS: Yeah, she wanted to fill it up with vampire movies.'" -- Sarah Hepola
From the interview, Will Sheff on...
Trashy TV:I think low culture is all culture. Rock and roll is low culture that has been elevated to high culture. There is something so boring about the idea that something must be an opera or an etching to matter. It's all human beings trying to connect, trying to understand one another.
Porn:It's the most simple art imaginable: It's people and sex. You might throw in costumes and a storyline, but that's not what people rented it for, or downloaded it for. They downloaded the porn to see people fucking. There's so much debate about what it means. All it means is what it is.
I think rock and roll is supposed to be about sex. It's my duty to talk about sex, just a little bit. Especially in indie rock, because there's this trend toward kind of fetishizing childishness and being freaking out by sex. But the songs that I loved, the David Bowie and Iggy Pop, those songs were all about sex.Groupies:That was a big theme, yeah. I guess I'm trying to look at people who are such big fans of art that they would throw their lives away. And they're such big fans that art becomes sexual. This is your way to interact with this person, that you want to have sex with them.
His sad songs:I don't think of the songs as being sad. I think of them as being ecstatic. Like having a blended sadness and happiness and poured on in enormous quanities. I like the idea of these strong emotional states, for those things to be present at once, that there is something jumbled in the way they co-exist.
This morning we have an interview with Will Sheff, lead singer of Okkervil River by Sarah Hepola. The Nerve Insider is a huge fan of Okkervil River, and the interview does not disappoint. Sheff is thoughtful, insightful and extremely appealing.
At the beginning of the piece Sheff orders a sandwich from Subway. Sarah didn't put this in the article, but he told her, “I want this interview to be really good, let me finish this sandwich and call you back.”
Other tidbits that didn't make it in the piece:"One thing about will is that he's a movie fanatic, and he's pretty encyclopedic in his knowledge. I used to write about film for The Austin Chronicle, and we actually asked him to contribute to the film section. The articles are published under his full name, Will Robinson Sheff. Here's a link to the archive of his work.
Also, during the interview, we had a funny conversation about his working at video stores. He told me he'd been fired from his job at I Love Video, another famous indie movie enclave in Austin, and I asked why. This is what he said:
WS: Because I was incompetent. I forgot to open the store one day. What can you do? Musicians. But this one girl was really gunning to get me fired, too. She wanted to see me go down.
ME: Do you think she just wanted your space on the employee pick's wall?
WS: Yeah, she wanted to fill it up with vampire movies.'" -- Sarah Hepola
From the interview, Will Sheff on...
Trashy TV:I think low culture is all culture. Rock and roll is low culture that has been elevated to high culture. There is something so boring about the idea that something must be an opera or an etching to matter. It's all human beings trying to connect, trying to understand one another.
Porn:It's the most simple art imaginable: It's people and sex. You might throw in costumes and a storyline, but that's not what people rented it for, or downloaded it for. They downloaded the porn to see people fucking. There's so much debate about what it means. All it means is what it is.
I think rock and roll is supposed to be about sex. It's my duty to talk about sex, just a little bit. Especially in indie rock, because there's this trend toward kind of fetishizing childishness and being freaking out by sex. But the songs that I loved, the David Bowie and Iggy Pop, those songs were all about sex.Groupies:That was a big theme, yeah. I guess I'm trying to look at people who are such big fans of art that they would throw their lives away. And they're such big fans that art becomes sexual. This is your way to interact with this person, that you want to have sex with them.
His sad songs:I don't think of the songs as being sad. I think of them as being ecstatic. Like having a blended sadness and happiness and poured on in enormous quanities. I like the idea of these strong emotional states, for those things to be present at once, that there is something jumbled in the way they co-exist.
Okkervil River Concert
http://www.fabchannel.com/okkervil_river_concert/2008-02-09
other links:
http://www.timmcmahan.com/2005/11/live-review-okkervil-river-minus-story.html
http://slcphoenix.com/2005/11/28/despite-illness-and-injury-okkervil-river-in-concert
a little piece written by Sheff:
Smothered in Aliases: Did you tire of Guided by Voices shortly after they leapt from the twisted track that had given the world Bee Thousand onto a straighter, brighter, more boring track Robert Pollard hoped would take him (guided by Cars) into the top-40 metropolis? I did. That, together with my love of Beck’s Mellow Gold and Ween’s The Pod, gave me cause for rejoicing when I cued up Meet Yr Acres, the first release by The Capitol Years, which is cut from the same unwashed cloth. Capitol Years frontman Shai, Son of Eli (true to indie tradition, this band is buried in a layer of facetious monikers roughly a mile thick) has either listened closely to the aformentioned records or consumed a lot of the same substances as their makers, because Meet Yr Acres is a grimy, mellow, utterly likeable record that stands proudly, if a bit unsteadily, with the best and most lo-fi work of Mssrs. Hansen, Ween, Pollard, and John Frusciante. This is not to say that the music of the Capitol Years is excessively derivative – Shai, Son of Eli (I’m already getting tired of writing that name – it makes me feel a discomfort akin to having to tell a Denny’s waitress in my best grown-man voice that I’d like to order “Moons Over My Hammy”) brings to the table a twisted twang and a wicked melodic sense all his own. Never sounding exactly like Pollard or the brothers Ween, SSOE is just as likely to channel Paul McCartney’s gift for instantly hummable pop, Tom Petty’s reedy vocals, or the lycergic dreamscapes of Syd Barrett. This kind of lo-fi psych pop is so likeable – both super-arty and utterly unpretentious – that it has a long way to go before it overstays its welcome. - Will Robinson Sheff 5.30.2001
other links:
http://www.timmcmahan.com/2005/11/live-review-okkervil-river-minus-story.html
http://slcphoenix.com/2005/11/28/despite-illness-and-injury-okkervil-river-in-concert
a little piece written by Sheff:
Smothered in Aliases: Did you tire of Guided by Voices shortly after they leapt from the twisted track that had given the world Bee Thousand onto a straighter, brighter, more boring track Robert Pollard hoped would take him (guided by Cars) into the top-40 metropolis? I did. That, together with my love of Beck’s Mellow Gold and Ween’s The Pod, gave me cause for rejoicing when I cued up Meet Yr Acres, the first release by The Capitol Years, which is cut from the same unwashed cloth. Capitol Years frontman Shai, Son of Eli (true to indie tradition, this band is buried in a layer of facetious monikers roughly a mile thick) has either listened closely to the aformentioned records or consumed a lot of the same substances as their makers, because Meet Yr Acres is a grimy, mellow, utterly likeable record that stands proudly, if a bit unsteadily, with the best and most lo-fi work of Mssrs. Hansen, Ween, Pollard, and John Frusciante. This is not to say that the music of the Capitol Years is excessively derivative – Shai, Son of Eli (I’m already getting tired of writing that name – it makes me feel a discomfort akin to having to tell a Denny’s waitress in my best grown-man voice that I’d like to order “Moons Over My Hammy”) brings to the table a twisted twang and a wicked melodic sense all his own. Never sounding exactly like Pollard or the brothers Ween, SSOE is just as likely to channel Paul McCartney’s gift for instantly hummable pop, Tom Petty’s reedy vocals, or the lycergic dreamscapes of Syd Barrett. This kind of lo-fi psych pop is so likeable – both super-arty and utterly unpretentious – that it has a long way to go before it overstays its welcome. - Will Robinson Sheff 5.30.2001
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
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http://www.pelhamtack.co.uk/cart.php?target=category&category_id=64
http://www.skylineequine.com/products/681_bucas.html
http://www.skylineequine.com/products/682_bucas.html
https://www.ravenwoodtack.com/cart/product_info.php?products_id=1837{1}590{2}6&osCsid=bf8a7c9c685db454117a53f37492f2a7
Monday, January 12, 2009
The Story Needs to Come Out (soon) ....
There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.Maya Angelou
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Monday, January 5, 2009
In the things I like department, here is the link to the Joules Collection
See the tweed coats and those cute polo shirts, they finally stopped using pink on every shirt so that I could buy one:
http://http://www.joulesclothing.com/pages/home/default.asp
I just ordered the tweed field coat which is similar to the Dubarry of Ireland tweed coat but much nicer:
http://dubarry.us/catalogue/34
I still want these Dubarry boots though:
http://http://dubarry.us/product/219
http://http://www.joulesclothing.com/pages/home/default.asp
I just ordered the tweed field coat which is similar to the Dubarry of Ireland tweed coat but much nicer:
http://dubarry.us/catalogue/34
I still want these Dubarry boots though:
http://http://dubarry.us/product/219
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