Some Things Are Better Left Over

 

I meet Brad Cook in a bar

on Blount Street in Raleigh. Despite the fact that it’s one o’clock in the afternoon, I can’t see or hear a thing. All Tiny Creatures is bursting the speakers, and given the normal hours of operation, the Pour House has never felt the need to invest in proper lighting.  I receive a friendly handshake and a,  “Hi! I’m Brad!” from a towering man dressed in black. I can’t see, but I can feel that there is a substantial beard involved.

Brad leads me out the back door where we climb a rickety fire escape. Despite his stature and beard, not to mention his tremendous talent, Cook is not the least bit intimidating—genially chatting about the weekend and his excitement about Bear In Heaven’s set the night before. Upstairs, he grabs band mate Joe Westerlund and the three of us settle into a tiny room crowded with Goodwill reject sofas and graffitied with disembodied anatomy. “So what’s your story?” Joe asks me, pulling his long hair into a ponytail. I am distracted by his thick, orange beard. I’m sorry?“Tell us about you, what’s your story?” Phil wanders in the room in a blue t-shirt and jeans. “Phil Cook,” he says with a smile. “So, what are we talking about?”

I guess these guys don’t realize how intimidating they should be.

Remember DeYarmond Edison? Yeah, me neither. Know Bon Iver? For Emma is still my go-to album when I suffer writer’s block—it’s just one of those wholly atmospheric pieces. I like to think it was written for me, or at least with me in mind, Emma being my name to only those closest to me. The three that make up Megafaun plus Bon Iver’s front man, Justin Vernon, were once DeYarmond Edison.

But since 2008, Joe, Phil, and Brad have been releasing albums as Megafaun, landing thumbs up from both Rolling Stone and Pitchfork on multiple occasions, not to mention a dedicated following of fans that pack out venues on a consistent basis. But that’s just it. Mentioning Bon Iver might be great context in which to place these guys, and a chance for me to gush emotionally, but they’ve more than legs to stand on. With three solid albums under their belts, a successful headlining European tour, and crowds that know every word to their songs, I’d say these fellas have made a name for themselves. I caught two of their sets at Hopscotch where the bars were so packed you couldn’t slide a skinny hipster in between, and watching Phil and Brad draw out the enthusiasm of the crowd is a lesson in stage presence. They even roped me in, and I hate the gang clap.

To help you hear them, I’m going to mention Horse Feathers and Bowerbirds, but I don’t want to cop out on musical comparisons. Here’s another picture:

 

rtm//What does your music taste like?

Brad// I’d say it tastes like a mid-west pot luck.

Phil// A pot-luck or a really big stew.

rtm//Well I’m going to make that stew, so what am I going to put in it?

Brad// Definitely a lot of spice. You’re gonna put in a nice traditional stock, then we’re going to go French.

Phil// We’ll start with the bone, and we want to put the marrow in. That’ll be the delicacy.

Brad// We’re going to do celery, carrots, all the good stuff, but let it sauce for an entire day. Well probably boil it until it all falls off the bone.  And don’t forget peppers.

rtm// Am I going to be able to eat the leftovers?

Phil// Oh, we’ll make it in a way that you can.

Brad// It’ll thicken up in the fridge but you’ll still be able to eat it.

Phil// Reheating is very important with our music, a lot of reheating and a lot of leftovers.

Here’s something we don’t see very often:

A six song “mini-album.” Heretofore, their latest release on Hometapes, is a thirty four minute masterpiece in which music that is arguably rooted in south eastern folk tradition gets plugged in, jazzed up, turned around, stretched out, and nailed down into what would visually translate a brilliantly colored quilt stretched across the hot pavement of a busy city street.

Brad// We’re calling it a mini album because it’s only six tracks, but really it’s longer than most peoples’ full-length albums, and just as developed.

Phil// I think this will work towards reformatting the way people think about songs and albums as a whole.

rtm//Tell me about what’s gone into the new record.

Brad// I think everyone has their most definitive tune, individually, to bring out, but it’s one of our most collaborative pieces at the same time. We’re starting to realize while at first it was something to keep us busy, it’s turned into a real statement, to really showcase highlights of our working environment.

Phil// It all has to do with context, and what we are really concerned with is putting a lot of thought into what we’re doing—our process, us negotiating out how we’re going to do things. We’re want to create an experience that is really natural.

rtm//What do you think has happened to the album as an entity?

Brad// I think the CD f*ed up the albums more than itunes, because the CD increased the capacity of information that you could put on a disc. All of a sudden people started writing music that fit into fifty to seventy minutes, because the notion was that if you’re going to be spending this money, let’s give as much information as possible, whereas with the vinyl record, it sounds best at seventeen or thirty-four minutes a side. And for fidelity purposes, you have about thirty-four minutes to deliver a good album. Now we’re selling songs for 99 cents per song, so an album easily translates to ten dollars. Ten songs, ten dollars

Phil// But I think that things are beginning to change now, because people are becoming okay with fewer songs.

rtm// What is an album then?

Phil// I think a band just deciding it is. And that’s what we’re calling this. I call it an album because we wrote it all in one shot, made it all in one shot.

Brad// We’re either really bad at making albums or we’re really bad at making EPs.

Red Thought Media would like to thank Jon Polk and the Pour House. Tag photo, #1 and #3 courtesy D.L. Anderson, others copyright Red Thought Media 2010.