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 Click for music events Bizarre Pop Scientist Charting Andrew Bird's unconventional path toward rock stardom
Andrew Bird's back hurts.
He's just spent nine days in Jamaica with his girlfriend--a vacation
gift to himself before the four months of heavy-duty touring he's about
to endure--and he tried body surfing for the first time. It bent his
back backwards and he heard a pop. And now it hurts.
The multi-dimensional, shape-shifting musician, who's by now
established his name fairly high on Chicago's long list of current
artists, has a new record due Tuesday, "Armchair Apocrypha," and it
could easily be his best put to tape. Of course, most Bird fans cite his
live show first and foremost as his gateway to his audience--either they
caught him by accident a few years back or friends had tirelessly pimped
him until they gave in--as his stellar, florescent violin playing takes
his indie-pop/jazz/gypsy into new realms.
Bird, born to a print-artist mother and a financial-analyst father,
grew up, in the beginning, in Evanston, until the family moved to Lake
Bluff. "It wasn't the friendliest place to grow up," Bird says,
arching his back, over coffee at Logan Square's No Friction Café.
"Evanston was cool--it's still a little bit funky, with kind of a more
neighborhood feel. We always kind of regretted moving to Lake Bluff.
There were block parties in Evanston, it was more like a neighborhood in
Chicago. Lake Bluff was a bit more white-picket fence."
He kept to his family. "I'm just glad my family was... cool," he
says. "They were good company, and there really wasn't much good
company. If I didn't have my family I would've been pretty screwed."
Born in the lower middle of four children--technically in the
middle, he says, because his oldest brother suffers from autism, and
didn't live with the family for much of the time--his mother put him in
music lessons at 4. "My mom had this romantic notion of having all her
kids play," he says, "so she put me in Suzuki when I was 4."
The Suzuki method of musical learning puts emphasis on education
through nurturing--with no rigid timetables, it works on the principle
that a young child could learn a musical instrument just as he or she
could learn a new language. It doesn't stress the study of reading
music, but rather playing by ear, which, traditionally, strains the
musician's sight-reading ability. In any case, it worked for Bird.
"You're like 4, you're like, `Sure!'" he says of his early musical
training. "It's all games and you don't really know what the objective
is. It's really methodical and repetitive--but by the time you're 8 you
can play pretty well. I credit all that with developing a good ear. I
didn't learn how to read music--well, I did, but later, reluctantly--but
my ear was always faster than my brain or eyes, as far as music goes, so
I would learn very complicated pieces just by ear."
At 13, Bird transitioned to the more typical classical-music
schooling, which he didn't respond to as well. "There's this whole
attitude," he says, "where it's preparing you for the harsh world, the
culture of classical music. There was this seriousness to the whole
thing. It wasn't fun at all. Playing in orchestras--it's
super-competitive, mean-spirited."
Despite the strictness of his "serious" studies, Bird insists he
was a well-rounded kid. He was active in sports--skiing and soccer--and
it wasn't until he was 16 that he started, himself, getting serious
about the music.
"My friends were listening to 4AD bands, Goth, the beginnings of
indie rock. I was listening to Mozart's `Requiem.' Lighting candles,
getting hyper romantic about it. I really wasn't at all interested in
pop music. I had kind of an adverse physical reaction. There was stuff I
liked--like the Pixies. I liked them for some reason."
But more predominant were the bands he detested. "The Cure I didn't
like. I just remember being sick in the back of my friend's Camaro,
going to soccer practice and feeling sick. He had The Cure on, driving
like a maniac. All that herky-jerkyness. I thought it was really
repetitive, uncreative. Now I hear it and I'm like, `OK, I can see it
now.' I have no nostalgia for it, so I can see when a song's really well
put together."
After high school he was on to more music study at Northwestern,
where he would frequent the university's music library, dig through
records. In that way, he educated himself--on jazz, gypsy, music from
Sweden, Indian music. All this, of course, when he wasn't in the
practice room. He says he knew early on that he wasn't the right fit for
orchestra work, so he started looking for other ways to use his craft as
a living. He taught classes at Old Town School of Folk Music, played
traditional Irish music at fairs and festivals.
"I kind of burned myself out," he says. "I went from practicing
eight hours a day to teaching and playing eight hours a day. By the time
I was 22 I completely burned out my arm. I couldn't play. That's when I
really started writing. I had to imagine a future in music where I
couldn't always play my instrument."
Near the end of his academic career Bird took an independent study
on how to make a record. He learned from the ground up--he interned for
local label Waterbug, ended up making a record, which, eventually,
became his first release, "Music of Hair." This was in 1996.
"I was preparing for the DIY [lifestyle]," he says. "I didn't
really need to be paying that much tuition for that education, but once
I came out I was determined to prove I could make a living as a
musician."
He started playing on more rock and swing records--including with
Chapel Hill's swing-jazz throwback Squirrel Nut Zippers, whose 1997
record "Hot" went platinum--until he put together his Bowl of Fire
band, which released its first record in 1998. "Thrills"--and its
follow-up, "Oh! The Grandeur," both on Rykodisc--were heavily based in
folk, jazz and swing, and featured Bird using a new instrument--his
voice.
"It hadn't occurred to me before to sing," he says. "It's still
the most elusive. For the first couple records early on, I got my
confidence by modeling my singing after my favorite singers, old blues
and jazz singers. I was trying to sing like women with big voices, like
Diana Washington or Ella Fitzgerald, trying to blow out the microphone
with this huge sound."
He says he truly enjoyed the new live experience, playing in
rock clubs and bars instead of symphony halls. "I was getting a kick
out of being as entertaining as possible--[it's different from] playing
Shostakovich fifty times...I was interested in putting on an energetic,
exciting show, something theatrical."
His next full-length record was "Weather Systems," which featured
more rock-influenced songwriting as well as his by-then-patented jazzy,
genius violin work, and then, two years after that, his first work
without the Bowl, "The Mysterious Production of Eggs," on Ani
DiFranco's Righteous Babe (he had also begun his self-released live EP
series, "Fingerlings"). By this time, Bird had inched closer and
closer to an indie-folk sound, picked up the guitar, and had fine-tuned
his, of all things, whistling ability, which in effect is so unfettered
that it creates the sound of a flute.
He says that his move into rock music wasn't jagged, that he just
writes "what pops into my head when I have my coffee in the morning."
His arm only hurts on occasion. "If I found myself in a jam session
that went on for hours, there was always this futility alarm that would
go off when I felt like the music was being devalued. My arm started
hurting. It still happens. I get physically uncomfortable when music
isn't being fully valued. That's part of the reason why I have to be in
control of the [live] show."
His live show has garnered him the most attention throughout his
career, whether he was tackling a violin solo with the Bowl of Fire or
playing alone, a feat that includes using sampling devices to loop
sequences and progressions as he's playing, creating a full-band sound.
In essence, he's re-writing each song every night. "The writing process
never stops," he says. "If I play a show where I'm just going through
the motions, I get really depressed. I know if I hadn't stretched myself
out. The live shows get really ecstatic, fevered. I really enjoy that."
One could imagine it would be a bit frightening to depend on new
samples and loops each night, and how it could all come crashing down.
That may be part of what attracts the audience. "What makes it
interesting is that they are engaged in the possibility of failure,"
Bird says. "They can see that at shows, they can see that if I don't
nail one turn, I'll maybe get three tries, and people start to root for
you. But after that, it's like, `C'mon.'"
The new incarnation of Bird's live act includes a bass player and
Minnesota indie-electronica artist Martin Dosh on drums. It's not a
straightforward rock band though--he's still using loops and samples,
complicating the process just enough to scare the shit out of him.
"Those first couple shows at Logan Square [Auditorium, two sold-out
nights the band played last November], I was a nervous wreck. Before,
when I was playing solo, that was part of the fun of it. Because I know
things can only go so wrong. I could drop my violin and smash it--which
I have done--and bring the show to a screeching halt. But that becomes
part of the energy of the show."
That energy hasn't been put to tape as well as it has on "Armchair
Apocrypha," Bird's newest record, on Fat Possum. Absolutely the most
indie-rock-inspired of his catalogue, Bird uses more guitar and less
violin, less whistling and darker subject matter. Cathartic, lovely
choruses make way for--when he uses them--beautiful violin parts, some
scientific study in the lyrics (see: decomposition) and yes, images of
the apocalypse (this may come through the media). The quieter, subdued
songs balance out bits of electronics (compliments of Dosh), an
instrumental closer puts you to sleep and, in between, one of the year's
best new records, with memorable tracks "Fiery Crash,"
"Plasticities," "Heretics" and "Dark Matter" resonating profoundly
as the new weather finally approaches in Chicago.
"There's still a pop science there," he says of the new record's
themes. "`Dark Matter' deals with a kind of bizarre pop science.
`Spare-Ohs' deals with the remains of animals or humans, and that
getting into your food or skin or hair. Themes of mortality. Three or
four other songs have the theme of being vigilant against the media and
unwanted influences."
He cites "Plasticities" as the record's "battle cry," reciting
the hook, "We'll fight we'll fight/ We'll fight for your music halls/
and dying cities/ They'll fight they'll fight/ for your neural walls/
your plasticities."
"Every time I'm working on a song," he says, "I'll go into a
public place and have this delicate thing going on in my head. Then
something comes by and obliterates it. Advertising companies and
corporations buy into how the brain works--like an indiscriminate
sponge. And they'll just pummel you until you give in." He gives an
example: "It's like when all these people that I thought had better
taste started saying, `Well, Dave Matthews isn't that bad.'"
The absence of the violin--not entirely, mind you--is somewhat
obvious to a listener well-versed in Bird's history. "It just kind of
happened," he says. "It's so easy to use strings that sound lovely.
Does the world need to hear this right now? Part of me [feels] it's kind
of too easy to prettify the song with strings. I look at it like, do we
really need to hear this right now? Am I pushing myself?"
Bird lives in Logan Square now, where he's been for about two years,
when he's not at his barn, out near Galena. A family farm he acquired a
few years ago, Bird spent much time there as a kid, and now uses it to
get away, write, think. He says that Chicago has become a place "to
disappear and get my shit together," and that its familiarity is
comforting. While the city may have inspired him in the past--like the
few years he lived in Pilsen--it's ceased now, as he finds more
inspiration from being out on the road or at his barn, in solitude. "To
be honest with you," he says, "if I didn't travel so much, I'm not
sure I'd live here."
He's working with non-profit group Reverb for the tour--started by
Boston band Guster, the organization promotes environmentally friendly
touring, including using biodiesel fuel for the tour bus and giant jugs
of water that can be refilled in lieu of countless unnecessary bottles.
"It's something," he says, "something we can do. I hope we can
keep it going. I wouldn't want to do it and let it go."
He also acknowledges his growing audience--which, and this may come
to some surprise, is getting younger. "I'm really blown away by how
young the audience is," he says. "Like, high-school kids. We have to
have all-ages shows now, and I'm really happy about that. I really
wanted that to happen. When I was younger, we were mostly playing to a
Bloodshot crowd, an older crowd...maybe it's time for the Chili Peppers
to stop captivating our youth."
Also by Tom Lynch Soundcheck
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Sea Dogs
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The Unreal World
Syked Out
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