2011-05-10 - Spectrum Culture

Interview: Kevin Barnes from Of Montreal

May 10, 2011 3:35 PM

Whether he's exorcizing personal demons on the harrowing, yet poppy Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? or putting on a stage show with skull masks and people dressed as imaginary creatures, Kevin Barnes and Of Montreal continue to push up against the confines of indie rock. From breaking down traditional song structures on Skeletal Lamping to getting his best Bootsy Collins on with False Priest, Barnes may just make the most fun music about personal trauma and sexual desire. I was fortunate to spend 45 minutes speaking with Barnes about the creative process, Sufjan Stevens, his influences and selling out. I am proud to present the Spectrum Culture interview with Kevin Barnes from Of Montreal.

Your new EP Thecontrollersphere seems like a departure from what you were doing with False Priest.

Well, the songs were written and recorded around that same time period. It's very much a sister release to False Priest. There were songs that could have been on False Priest, but for whatever reason didn't make the cut.

I read an interview with you that said when you were making False Priest you were consciously trying to keep the length of the album down. Were these the songs that got cut off or a different batch of songs?

I only briefly toyed with putting "Black Lion Massacre" on False Priest but "L'age D'or" and "Slave Translator" were definitely intended for False Priest, but I cut them at the last minute.

I feel like the music on False Priest is more traditionally constructed pop songs while these break down the structure of traditional songs, especially the first track.

Yeah, definitely. On False Priest I was trying to make something that was a bit more accessible. Just a really well put together pop record without asking too much from the listener. Some of the Controllersphere songs are a bit more esoteric and not really for everyone.

Was that decision for the format of False Priest a reaction to Skeletal Lamping? That one definitely demands more from the listener.

Maybe to some degree, instead of making another Skeletal Lamping. I was excited to make something different than that.

You mention all of these titles on Hissing Fauna near the end. Was there a conscious trilogy in your mind at that point or did it come after you wrote the lyrics?

It just sort of happened organically. I didn't have a real vision of how the records would sound. I just knew those would be the titles for the next three records that followed Hissing Fauna.

Did those titles play on any obsessions of yours or were they free association?

They are definitely more free associations. At the time, I was just trying to come up with interesting song titles and that was part of the process. I got three album titles out of it.

Speaking of titles, the song titles on this new EP are less esoteric, to use your word, than many of your past ones.

I kind of go back and forth on that. You can name it anything you want to. You can give it a name people recognize and would make sense or give it a name that has a connected meaning with the song or maybe it doesn't. Sometimes I feel like giving it a totally sensible title and sometimes I feel like giving it some other kind of title. Like "L'age D'or," for example, I could have easily called it "She's My Party Drug" or something stupid like that. I guess a lot of times when you think a lyric is powerful or interesting then you can put more of a focus on it by titling the song that way. If you don't really care or don't really feel that strongly about any of the lyrics or you don't really want to put a spotlight on them then you give it some other title.

Traditionally bands title their songs after the chorus because it's the hook. Where with "Heimdalsgate Like a Promethean Curse," most people would probably call it the "chemicals" song.

Exactly. Especially with Hissing Fauna there's so many Norwegian words that nobody can really pronounce. It's not like I would even know how to say it either and I lived there for that time period. Titling songs is a slippery slope sometimes.

Is "L'Age d'Or" a direct reference to the Buñuel film?

Yeah.

It seems to me a lot of your music practices the same principles as of Surrealism. Two major hallmarks of Surrealism are sexuality and savage desire. Those are things you are not shy about putting into your music.

Definitely not. I think we share the same spirit. The same excitement about life and its potential and being broad-minded and open to new experiences. Exploring different aspects of the psyche.

Do you notice a difference in reaction between American and European audiences when it comes to the sexual and violent parts of the stage show?

Not really. It's pretty much the same when we go to Europe or other countries. I think we appeal to a certain kind of person all over the world. That kind of person is definitely in the minority as far as human beings go. But there's a good contingent of them all over the world. We're pretty much playing to same species of human or whatever you want to call it.

We have a pretty puritanical country here and if you played a show for non-Of Montreal fans they would definitely be more upset about you taking a person in a pig costume from behind than people shooting at one another on the stage.

Yeah, but I think it's always very cartoony. Unless you have no sense of humor you will probably find most of the theatrics entertaining. You might find it juvenile. All of it is really tongue-in-cheek. We hardly ever have a serious agenda that we're trying to push or try to make people uncomfortable. We're just having fun. We feel so free. We feel so liberated physically and emotionally and intellectually that there aren't really any taboos that we're afraid of.

Are a lot of the sexual lyrics tongue-in-cheek also?

I don't know. It depends on what specific lyrics. There's definitely songs that are more personal to me and they come from a darker place. Those aren't necessarily that fun. But they can help me resolve certain issues. It's always better to talk about something and get it out in the open. It's not always fun but it's therapeutic.

Yeah, Hissing Fauna felt more confessional than the albums that followed it.

That record is out of necessity. I was going through such a difficult time and I was using music as something to help me heal. It's not like I set out to make a really personal, confessional record, I just needed to make that. If that makes sense. It wasn't a premeditated thing, "Well, this record is going to be very confessional." I was going through such a terrible time and I was using music as therapy in a way.

Now that the dust has settled, is looking back on that record and that period harder for you to re-experience? Do you feel the same pain? Are those songs closer to you because they spring from a more personal space rather than a persona?

I like that record. I like playing those songs. It's funny because we have so many songs that we haven't touched live. We haven't played anything from any of the records that came before Satanic Panic in the Attic in forever. I can't remember the last time we played any of those songs. It's kind of weird, like my mind turned around Satanic Panic in the Attic and these last couple of records. We seem almost like a different band. I just feel so disconnected from those other records but I feel really connected to Hissing Fauna, Sunlandic Twins and Satanic Panic in the Attic. I definitely feel really connected to them but some songs are harder to perform night after night. Like "The Past is a Grotesque Animal," we've played that many, many times. But it's not something I'm really feeling right now and don't want to do it. But it's cool to have songs like that. If you are in a certain mood you can exorcize those demons with a song. If all you had was really happy songs, you'd be kind of fucked if you're in a shitty mood (laughs).

"The Past is a Grotesque Animal" has to be hell to play, especially on your voice.

I'm a weird vocalist. I'm really taking chances because I am not trained at all. I have no idea really how to protect my voice or even how to warm up. I have some really rudimentary techniques I use to warm up but a lot of times I don't even warm up. A lot of times I just
take the stage and realize, "Oh shit, I'm not warmed up yet! I can't sing this yet!" Then you just have to work your way through it.

I know that as a fan singing "Past" it wears me out.

Yeah, that song is super wordy. There are songs on Icons, Abstract Thee EP that came out right after Hissing Fauna that we've never played and I can't even listen to them because it still hurts me. It's way too sad still. But I guess there is a form of detachment that happens with songs. It's detaching from the source or inspiration and taking it somewhere else. Then I can deal with it. I've played "The Past is a Grotesque Animal" so many times and it doesn't really hurt me in that way. It just felt good to do it. But with those other songs I would just feel bad (laughs). I don't even want to sing them or think about them.

I'd like to back up for a moment about the longevity of the band and not playing the old stuff. Every time I see Of Montreal I feel like the audience gets younger and younger which is pretty fantastic for a band that has been around for so long. Is it hard to attract new fans without alienating the old ones?

To be honest, I don't think it's that healthy to think about your fans because you could be a fan of one record or one song. It could change. You don't really have to be beholden to some concept of the fan's perception of you or what they want from you. What one specific person wants from you or what a majority of people want from you. I don't think it's healthy for an artist to even consider that. So, I don't really think about that when I'm writing and recording. I'm not really worried about alienating people or pleasing people. I don't really think it would help the process at all. It's very important to me when I'm creating something to not let anybody else into my little bubble. I feel like that makes it impure and takes it out of this place it needs to be for it to happen organically.

So what is it about your music that attracts the 16-year-old? There is a sophistication about it that's different than what is on the radio these days or lack thereof radio.

I'm not sure really. I can't really say. Maybe because it's liberating. Maybe seeing people wearing interesting outfits and dressing up. I think it appeals to the side of people's personality that is in a hibernating state most of the time. Then they get a chance to cut loose because it's like Halloween or a costume party. It's always fun to go to a costume party when Halloween rolls around because everyone gets into it. Pretty much everybody has that side to their personality but most of the time it's in this hibernating state.

Back to the breaking down of song structures - another artist I feel is doing similar things is Sufjan Stevens with his newest record The Age of Adz.

Yeah, I love that record.

Someone was telling me that you do. I do see some similarities between his music and yours. I know that record, like Hissing Fauna, came out of personal strife.

That record has really meant a lot to me. It is probably the record I have connected with the most over the last five years or so. Not only because of its emotional content but also musically I feel like I've never heard music like that before. It's one of the most groundbreaking records we've ever had as humans. It is weird to me that it hasn't gotten more acclaim. I mean, it has gotten a lot of critical acclaim but I saw the records making critics' album of the year lists and I just couldn't believe that record wasn't on top of all the lists. Anybody who really loves music and loves the art form should see that it was the most fantastic, most exceptional record made that year.

I think one of the problems was that people were expecting another Illinois and it's completely different than that.

With artists, all of their records are held up against each other. If that was his first record and there was no other reference of what Sufjan does and what he is capable of it probably would have had a completely different impact on people. I was thinking about a review I read of the new Deerhoof record. I love Deerhoof and I think they're incredibly creative and extremely wonderful and important. I couldn't believe this writer was giving them such a mediocre review. I was thinking about all the other records that were getting good reviews that were so much more derivative and so meaningless. Well, not meaningless but I can't imagine them having any sort of value 10 years from now. It's weird that certain records that are more adventurous, more cutting edge and more valuable....

Not everyone wants to be challenged when they listen to music.

Yeah, that's true.

Have you seen Sufjan play those songs live?

No, I haven't seen him yet but I think we're playing a festival together this summer so hopefully I will get a chance to see it. I can't imagine how he'd do it live.

Speaking of stage shows, the last time I saw Of Montreal, it seemed to be more Kevin Barnes-centric than ever before. The band surrounded you in a horseshoe shape and you had the entire stage to roam around. Will we be seeing less and less of the other band members?

That was just an idea for the last tour because we wanted to do something different from the previous tours where we had a lot of action with the performance artists. We'd done tours before where we had this room where most of the theatrics took place but that was an insanely heavy stage and it broke everyone's backs (laughs). So we decided to make it a little easier on ourselves so we created that horseshoe shape. I wasn't playing guitar on that tour. It was fun for me to be a front man and dancing around and have that sort of persona. On this new tour, it's kind of similar to that but we're getting more people involved with singing songs. We're getting band members involved in different ways. We kind of felt it was weird to have the band so displaced in a way and have them pushed into the shadows. We want to get people more involved this summer.

Is there a line where theatrics can overshadow the music?

I never really felt that because the music doesn't change just because something is happening on the stage. It doesn't get quieter. If people are really trying to focus on the lyrics but they're getting distracted is one thing, but I don't think you could ever have too much going on on stage for me. If I go see a concert 99% of the bands that really have any sort of theatrical elements to their shows, they might have some video stuff but I would never think that. It's obvious if you've seen our shows that we wouldn't think that. I wouldn't feel that way about theatrics. I always loved what George Clinton did. I always loved the theatrical side of Parliament and how they had so many different layers to what they were about. We view ourselves in that vein. We think of ourselves as the grandchildren of Parliament.

On your last tour it seems like you found a great foil for yourself in Janelle Monae.

She's amazing. She has become a really close friend of mine. It's amazing to develop new friendships, especially artistic relationship like that. It's something I treasure and hold very close to my heart.

Did she help you come up with that Michael Jackson tribute at the end of the show?

No, that was our idea. We wanted to come up with something we could all do together. We didn't really think of the tour as Janelle Monae and Of Montreal. We wanted there to be a lot of integration between the two groups. We just wanted to have a lot of cross-pollination. The Michael Jackson thing at the end was a really great way to close the evening together, holding hands.

I also saw you do a Franz Ferdinand cover and a Nirvana cover once to end your show.

It's kind of hard to pick them though. That's the tricky thing. It's always fun. The Nirvana was great. It seemed like the right time and it had been long enough for people to get back into Nirvana. It was around the time of the anniversary of Nevermind. That record meant a lot to me at one point so it was great to do that one again. It's a great song. The most badass rock song ever.

Which cover song ideas have been floated around that will never see the light of day?

We tried a number of things we felt like we couldn't do. It's hard to do a Marvin Gaye song or Al Green. If you don't have that voice, it's going to sound kind of weird. I guess you could always do it. We were listening to the Slits version of "Heard it Through the Grapevine" yesterday and realized how incredible that version is. In a lot of ways, it's just as good as all the other versions out there but it's not Marvin.

Speaking of your voice, I feel like your vocal style has been moving closer and closer to Prince. I know you referenced '70s musicians such as Parliament and Stevie Wonder but has Prince been a direct influence on your songwriting as well?

Yeah, definitely. Without question. I adore him and I adore everything about him. He's an incredible professional.
He's an incredible musician and incredible vocalist and dancer. You couldn't really ask for a better human (laughs). I mean on an artistic level. Especially his earlier records like Sign O' the Times, Parade and basically everything up until Diamond and Pearls is, I think, the most incredible pop writing we have.

I remember reading somewhere they floated doing a Prince and Bob Marley duo at one point. But Bob Marley wouldn't do it because Prince was too effeminate. I should probably Google it to be sure. That would have been pretty interesting.

I guess Stevie Wonder did some stuff with Bob. I was doing some Googling about that. That's awesome but I don't think there is any footage of it. There's a recording of a show Stevie did in Jamaica maybe, and Bob Marley played and they played some songs together. It was pretty amazing. Yeah, Prince and Bob Marley would have been pretty great.

Stevie Wonder is another guy who had an amazing run of albums.

Yeah, it's insane. I was listening to a lot of Stevie Wonder when I was doing False Priest and rediscovering Songs in the Key of Life and Innervisions and Music of My Mind and that whole period. Songs in the Key of Life is one of those records that really inspires you and you really love it but at the same time it can make you feel like, "Why do I even bother?" I'm never going to make anything that great (chuckles).

Is it reasonable to hold yourself to a standard like that?

No, definitely not. That's why I have to be like, "Fine, I'm not Stevie Wonder. I'll never be that great." But I'm not going to not make music because I'm not Stevie Wonder. There is that little voice sometimes that's like, "God, man. I wish I was that good" (laughs). You know, that's all right. I'm sure he probably felt that way about other people too. I'm sure he probably felt that way about James Brown or Otis Redding or whoever. Everyone has that insecurity. Jimi Hendrix didn't like his own voice. Things like that. How could Jimi Hendrix not like his own voice? He sounds great!

You have definitely mined the funkier side of Stevie Wonder but have you ever thought of doing something as heartbreaking like "All In Love Is Fair" or something like that?

Those kind of ballads are actually my least favorite Stevie stuff, even though it's great. I can appreciate it but I don't know. Writing about love like that is kind of tricky. If it really comes from the heart, that's one thing. But so many times people will sit down and write a song and they just write about love because it's the conventional thing to do. But I'm not really that into love ballads at all. They just don't seem that genuine most of the time.

You don't feel like something like "Let's Get It On" isn't genuine?

No, that's genuine, for sure. Sexuality is a real, natural thing. If I thought about it I'm sure there's some love songs that really touch me. I feel like John Lennon's songs for Yoko seem genuine. There has to be a rawness too. If it's just super flowery and sentimental it doesn't really have much impact.

What songs in your lifetime have meant the most to you?

Definitely the first two John Lennon solo records.

Plastic Ono Band and Imagine?

Yeah, Plastic Ono Band plus Imagine. Definitely Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. There is always an emotional impact and potency in those records. All the Beatles records. All the '60s Kinks records, Os Mutantes, Sly and the Family Stone with everything up until Fresh. Curtis Mayfield's first couple solo records. There's just so many.

It's pretty amazing that we get to experience this stuff, isn't it?

Yeah, it's great. I was talking to someone yesterday about as an artist it's kind of incredible that in 2011 that you have Stevie Wonder, Parliament, Prince but you also have Sufjan Stevens and Animal Collective and Caribou and other people like that. There's so much incredible music from earlier times and even world music. Especially now, everything is so accessible. All this incredible stuff from the '60s like Ethiopian funk. You can get your hands on that. Like Cambodian music. It's crazy how much access we have to so much incredible stuff.

How do you find time to listen to music?

I like listening to music when I'm doing little things around the house like cooking or chilling out. I always want to have music on when I'm doing something non-musical. It's not going to be a distraction. A lot of times if I come into the studio before I start work on something, I will listen to something to get into the spirit of it and let that inspire something out of me.

Let's talk about the music industry. I just watched Morgan Spurlock's movie about advertising. The whole conceit of the film is selling out vs. buying in. This is about the Outback thing. I feel like the whole attitude of the country has changed lately. Back when Of Montreal started out, people would have been pissed off about a band jumping from an indie label to a major. Now there is no radio or MTV and people don't care about a Wilco song on a Volkswagen ad or your song on an Outback commercial. Was it hard for you to make that decision? Is that the only way to get your music out?

It's kind of a tricky thing. As an indie artist, everyone is always so broke all the time. They've been broke their whole lives probably. When these big companies come to you with a check for more money than you've ever seen at one time, more money than you'd probably make all year, it's really, really difficult to say no to that. But then there's that dilemma because you know there's going to be a bad backlash. I think it still exists in the community. Not with everybody but there's definitely a punk rock attitude still prevalent in the scene where you don't lip synch or do certain things. There's these unwritten rules as far as maintaining your credibility. If you put a song in a commercial and it's pitching some stupid product and your song gets associated with that stupid product it's kind of terrible because the song has been ruined for people. You just throw trash on the song in a way which is not respectful to your own art. But at the same time, you need that money to keep going and to keep putting out records.

People would say, "Well, R.E.M. wouldn't do that and Radiohead wouldn't do that," but they are not in the same financial position as a lot of indie acts.

Totally. For them, there is no reason to do it because they don't really benefit, necessarily, from having a song in a Volkswagen commercial. It depends who you are. I think what you're saying is true. People aren't as critical as they used to be and it probably wouldn't be death to band. There would probably be a handful of people that would be like, "Fuck that band. They're sell outs, blah blah." You don't really hear "sell out" that much anymore. It doesn't seem like it really comes into the conversation that much anymore.

Right, the attitude has changed.

I'm sure if you're a punk rock band and that was your whole thing , anti-corporation, then you'd lose everything if you did that. For most people, you gain people who are like, "Oh, actually that song was really cool."

What was your experience with it? Did you gain more fans or was there backlash?

I think we had both. Definitely there was major backlash. We had people coming to the shows....There was one show we played in Austin, Texas where these people brought a big Outback Steakhouse banner. They went so far out of their way. They got napkins from Outback Steakhouse and were throwing them in the air (laughs). It was something they had to spend money on actually and that's a lot of time. That was like next level backlash. But we had people still come to the show and stuff. It wasn't like nobody was supporting us anymore.

No one threw a Bloomin' Onion at you?

I think they had a Bloomin' Onion that they wanted to throw but then someone somehow caught it beforehand (laughs).

Would Kevin Barnes circa Cherry Peel feel the same way?

About selling out?

If you got approached with that sum of money.

I think it would be the same situation. It hasn't really changed. During Cherry Peel I had this telemarketing job. All of us had these terrible jobs so I think if I had got offered a way out of that even in spite of losing some credibility in some people's eyes, I don't think I would be able to refuse it. You have to really sacrifice a lot to maintain that level of anti-corporate whatever. You can't really get around it. Everybody shops in the same places. Everybody is supporting these corporations anyway. What difference does it make if you have a song in a commercial or you go there and buy their hamburger? It's the same thing in a way. At least if you sell a song for a commercial, you're getting something out of it. I could see it both ways. I can see how it's potentially damaging
to a song, at least, and to some degree people's perception of you and your commitment to your art. There are other hard realities you have to accept as an adult.

I interviewed one indie artist who said the goal nowadays is not to be rich but not have to work a day job anymore.

That's pretty much it. You just want to be able to make your music. No one is really trying to get yachts and Mercedes Benz. We're just trying to stay afloat and be in a situation where we can focus as much as possible on our art.

Do you self-finance all your own records?

I have a deal with Polyvinyl where we split all the expenses. But I have my own studio where I record. With the exception of False Priest everything I have ever recorded was recorded in my home studio. Studio might give you an exaggerated concept of what it was, especially back in the day. It was basically a 4-track and a $100 mike. Slowly, with each record, it has gotten a little bit better. I have understood how to get better sound, slowly, over time, by just learning little things, little engineering tricks and little mixing tricks. Pretty much everything is done on a shoestring budget or no budget at all.

You seem to have a lot of ideas circling around your work. Where are you headed next?

I started working on a new record. I'm basically done, actually. All of the songs are a lot longer. Much of the songs are about eight minutes long. It's a little bit like I was doing with Skeletal Lamping, having these longer, slightly fragmented songs. These ones are less fragmented. They feel more like one composition and not a bunch of different compositions pieced together. I've incorporated a lot more symphonic instruments. There are a lot of woodwinds and strings and brass. Things I haven't really used in the past very much.

Are you playing these or do you have people coming in?

Yeah, I can't play those instruments. K Ishibashi, who plays in the band now, plays violin and is doing all the string arrangements. He's turned me onto a bunch of his friends that are really talented and also excited about experimental arrangements. Which is important because a lot of people can play an instrument, but they don't have much imagination. They have all these rules in their heads, especially classical musicians. They have all these rules in their heads about what you can do and what you can't do. They are a bit robotic about it. Then you get that great combination of virtuosity and imagination. I feel really fortunate that I've met a couple people that fit that description.

Is there a thematic preoccupation in your new songs?

It's definitely more intimate. It's more personal. It's not really as sexual. There are a couple of funkier moments but I wanted to make something that sounded more intimate just because I was going through some different things as of late. Similar to Hissing Fauna, I was using music as therapy to get over these things and resolve them.

Do these songs have movements and tempo switches like the Sufjan songs?

Each one is different. The Sufjan record definitely feels almost like a through composition. You could listen to the whole thing and think about them as different suites because it definitely feels consistent throughout, which I can't even imagine how he was able to sustain that focus on something, to my ears and to my mind, that seems so complex. To have that complexity sustained throughout the 70 minutes or however long it is, that was something I was extremely inspired by. There is a lot more repetition on his record than there is on my stuff. I don't repeat very many sections. I create these expansive soundtracks. A lot of the songs go into these weird, less lyric-based and more music-based moments. There are definitely moments of heavy lyricism but there's really, really moments of instrumental periods. That's really different for me because I haven't really worked much with instrumental music.

I know Sufjan used a visual artist as his inspiration. Do you use any external stimuli when it comes to writing or does it all come from within?

There are definitely a lot of outside influences, especially musically. I hear something like Stevie Wonder for example or I hear something like "Boogie on Reggae Woman" and I listen to what he's doing on the keys and I think, "I want to do something like that. That's so incredible." So then I'll make something like that. It won't sound like Stevie. Nobody can sound like him, anyway. But often, Parliament and Prince and Sly, all these people influence me greatly.

by David Harris

2011-01-11 - Creative Loafing

A Q&A with of Montreal visionary frontman Kevin Barnes; the Athens psyche pop group plays The Ritz Ybor on Saturday (with videos)

Posted by Leilani Polk on Tue, Jan 11, 2011 at 12:57 PM

Kevin Barnes [pictured below] is the high priest of intellectually stimulating, cleverly cheeky pop culture-infused lyricism, an idiosyncratic self-trained musical genius who serves as the visionary frontman of Athens, Ga. electro-lush glam rock and psyche pop outfit, of Montreal. The band released a Top-10-of-the-year worthy LP in 2010, False Priest, which found them fully exploring their funkadelic and R&B tendencies along with pumping up the richness of their sound with help from producer Jon Brion (Kanye West, Fiona Apple).

I had the pleasure of chatting with Barnes several weeks back while he was taking a break before gearing up for the next leg of the band’s False Priest tour. Check out our lengthy conversation below along with various videos for songs off the new album.

Leilani: So how are you doing? You enjoying some time off? Or is there really any such thing as time off for Kevin Barnes?

KB: Yeah, I’ve been getting some recording done. It’s been good. I feel lazy if I don’t do anything, just sitting around seems like a waste of time.

How have the False Priest tour dates been so far? I know you played some international dates ...

Yeah, it was great, it was definitely one of the most successful tours we’ve ever done, on every level. We also recently went to Mexico and we went to Brazil, before that we went to Europe. We’ve kind of been all over the place.

Were these your first dates in Mexico and Brazil? What’s it like playing down there?

It was our first date in Brazil, but we'd played one other show in Mexico. The first time we went down there, actually, it was sort of under dubious circumstances because we were playing this festival — it was a massive festival [Corona Music Fest] — but we were playing a smaller stage. And the festival was actually in a soccer stadium that was, if it’s not the biggest, then definitely one of the top five largest soccer stadiums in the world. Just massive. But we weren’t there, we were in the parking lot, one of the side stages in the parking lot of the giant soccer stadium.

Most of the kids were there to see NOFX. So they didn’t want to see us at all, you know? And they were really insane and it was crazy weather, pouring down rain, and these kids were really into the whole punk rock thing and the role-playing of “Oh, we’re so punk rock, we hate everything,” so they were spitting at us and throwing shit at us. It didn’t bother me because it was so surreal and so cinematic in a way, you know? It was definitely an extraordinary experience.

We went back a couple weeks ago and played a proper show in a venue, and we were the headliners. And that was great. We got to really connect with people who were on our side. So that was nice.

Do you find that your overseas fans respond differently to your music, or are there certain songs they respond to more enthusiastically?

I think we’ve been sort of spoiled because our U.S. fans are really amazing, it’s not like we're coming from this uptight place and then going to these other places where people are less uptight.

But sometimes we feel like, in a weird way, we are an American band that seems to make sense more to Americans than we do to people in other countries. But one thing that does seem true is when you go to other countries, people don’t have to know the material to get into it, they’re naturally inclined to dance and they want to dance and celebrate and have fun. When they see a band, as long as the band is giving them something that they can work with, they will be very supportive and vocal about it.

I guess if you put on a good show people will like it regardless of what you’re doing as long as the music is good and the entertainment matches the quality of music…

It’s kind of cool to go places where maybe you haven’t been before, and maybe your records aren’t really available or widely available, and you have to really sort of get by on the talent, or the presentation, or whatever it is you’re putting forward. You really have to have your shit together in order to put something across that’s positive for people.

Sometimes it’s easy, if the fans are there to see you and they know the material. You can’t really lose unless you’re just completely wasted and can’t even function or can’t stand up or whatever (laughs). As long as you can, like, do your thing, then people are going to like it and it’s fine. But it’s kind of an interesting challenge to go places where you don’t really know if they know you, and they don’t really have the context to understand you, but they can still get into it.

Let’s talk a little about False Priest. I know you’ve said in interviews that it was pretty much complete when you brought it to producer Jon Brion. What motivated you to work with him?

I had only worked in my home studio and I’ve only worked in bedroom studios my whole life, so I’ve never really been to a real classic studio and worked with anyone who had a track record like Jon’s. So it was really me wanting to go and see how real records are made, rather than what I considered my little bedroom project. And I was really intrigued by going to Ocean Way, where Frank Sinatra used to record, and all sorts of other crazy people over the years, and then working with Jon, who’s a genius, a total icon. I knew I’d learn a lot and I did. So it was great.

[Video below for "Famine Affair" off False Priest]

What ultimately convinced you to incorporate more live instrumentation on this album?

The live drums was sort a of a semi-new thing – the last couple years have been more drum programming and loops. I’ve kept a lot of the drum programming, then also integrated live drumming onto the tracks as well. But the main thing is instead of using the software versions of synthesizers, using the actual synthesizers.

Jon has an incredible collection of vintage synthesizers, vibraphones and the most incredible collection of musical instruments you could ever imagine. We had so much at our disposal. He’d listen to something I made just using my computer software, piecing it together myself like that, and he’d go, “Oh, you want to use a Mellotron sound, or that Chamberlin sound? I have an actual Chamberlin. We can just plug it in and replace it with that.”

We did that a lot, replacing software versions with their actual physical instrument. And then the big thing, too, was mixing, ’cause I’d always just mix it myself, but Jon has an engineer that he works with and he pretty much mixed the whole thing. I was there with him and made some suggestions, but he was the one moving the faders and turning the knobs. That was cool, too. To have someone else I respected mixing it, after it was all said and done, was really great for me. I kinda just looked at it as an education …

It seems like you go through a different stage of creativity with each album. How did your creative process work and evolve into what became False Priest?

A big thing for we was meeting the Wondaland Arts Society, which is the art collective that Janelle Monáe is part of. I met them in Atlanta after a Skeletal Lamping show and we started hanging out. One of the guy’s in the collective, Chuck Lightning, he and I became really good friends and he turned me on to a bunch of different things I hadn’t really explored very much, like the whole P-funk scene and a lot of science fiction writing and things like that. I owe a lot of that inspiration, that spark, to Chuck and meeting those guys. It was great because they were working on the Arch Android, Janelle’s record, at the same time and we would kind of email each other, works in progress. Getting their feedback and support was very important to me.

I know she’s on the album, specifically one of the songs I wanted to talk to you about, “Enemy Gene” – how did that song come about?

The creative process has always been a bit of mystery to me, it’s sort of this unconscious evolution. I just sort of sit down at piano or guitar or whatever it is, and it sort of happens in this organic way, and I just sort of let it happen, and whatever it is, if I’m laying down the music first, I’ll listen to it a bunch of times and figure out what I want to sing about here. I have a journal that I keep all my lyrical ideas in, so I’ll go through the journal and see if I find something that seems to fit or that has some sort of glow to it, like, oh, that’s the direction I should be going in. You know? And then I sort of piece it together. All of this really happens very organically and very mysteriously.

But getting Janelle to sing on it … once I discovered what an incredible vocalist she was and how versatile she was, I got to a point where I wanted her just to sing on every track – basically I wanted make a Janelle Monáe record. But you know, I couldn’t be too greedy.

We actually wrote that song “Our Riotous Defects” as a duet. It was sort of like a he-said she-said – she took the second verse, and we had a whole separate verse that she sang that was more from the female perspective. But it kind of became too campy, so we shelved it. It might be available via iTunes [it is on the Deluxe Version of False Priest]. That was the original idea. But after we shelved that, we ended up getting her to sing on “Enemy Gene.”

[Kevin Barnes performing "Enemy Gene" solo acoustic on piano below.]

You’ve been known to take autobiographical experiences and incorporate them into your songs. How much would you say what you’re writing these days is inspired by things that have happened to you as opposed to things you’ve made up or things that have inspired things you’ve made up?

It’s definitely something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. I think, maybe about 50 percent, it’s sort of split. A lot of the stuff, maybe it didn’t actually happen, but I don’t really differentiate that much between what physically happens or what just happens in my mind. In a way, it like, if it happens in my mind then it’s just as real as if it happens in real life.

Also, I think about music and I think about the things I sort of identify with and writers I identify and the writers a lot of other people identify with, are the ones that speak, for the most part, from personal experience, and it just feels more real and more emotive and in a way, more fulfilling to hear stuff like that because it has a universal appeal to it. Someone like John Lennon, for example, and the Plastic Ono Band, it’s one of the best examples of that, just completely raw and coming straight from his heart, straight from his soul. That’s something you can’t really do on every record, necessarily, but those are magical moments in music, and we’re lucky to have a few. It’s something I’d like to do more and I think I’m getting in a state of mind where I can do it a little bit more. Because you do have to put yourself in this vulnerable position and really not think about the outside world – at least for me, anyway, it would definitely throw me off. If I think about someone writing about it, commenting on, hearing it, even, then it takes me about of that space that you need to be in where you’re just unconsciously doing this thing, stripping it directly from your psyche and not conscious of it. Otherwise, you might just become too self-conscious to even do it. I think you have to be unconscious in that in that way – you’re speaking to god, or whatever, you’re speaking to something that isn’t necessarily human…

I know you guys have another outrageous stage production put together for this tour. What is different on this tour from your last big album tour as far as what’s happening on stage?

When we were putting the False Priest show together, my brother [multi-media artist David Barnes] and I were talking about our vision. The Skeletal Lamping show was basically just a collection of all these theatrical moments and they weren’t really connected at all – we’d have this Old West barroom brawl break out during one song, a creepy religious figure molesting little kids or something in another, and then we’d have this guy getting harassed by John McCain dolls, then hanging himself, and then getting covered in blood in some Aztec ceremony. Randoms ideas that we created and threw together.

So for False Priest, we thought it’d be cool if it was more thematic and everything had a narrative to it, that maybe wasn’t completely linear, but the parts connected together, so felt more like a contrived piece of work. And we actually tried that for the first couple shows, but it became almost a bit Spinal Tap (laughs). It wasn’t the way we envisioned it in our heads, it just came off in this awkward, sort of pretentious silly way. So then we just said, fuck it, and abandoned it and we were like, we’ve got all these components, we’ve got all these costumes and all these props, and everything, so what are we going to do?

So we tried to make it more playful and fun. I think we always just naturally gravitate towards that anyway, and any time we try to be too ambitious in creating some sweeping epic in our mind, it never really comes across. It’s always better if we have fun and do things spontaneously. And when you’re doing something night after night after night, even if it’s a complicated thing where you have lots of roles to play, it can still become mundane. To have that freedom, where you don’t have to follow any script, is very important.

It’s kind of funny, too, though, with the theatrics, because you realize that one certain theatric works really well with this specific song, but if you tried to do it on another song, it’d be awkward and just wouldn’t work. So a lot of times the theatrics actually sort of determine what the setlist is going to be.

So what’s next? I know you guys have an EP with some more material from False Priest on the way …

Yeah, that’s going to come out in April. It’s called The Controller Sphere. I’m really excited about it. It’s only five songs but there’s some different material, it’s sort of new territory for us, a bit noisier, a bit artsier. Just kind of bizarre stuff. But that’s done. And like you said, I’m not gonna take a break, so I’ve been working on more new material, working on some new projects, and I’m sort of in a transitional stage right now trying to figure out what I want to do next. I’ve made so many records by now, I’m trying to figure out if I should do should do something different, involve different people, to figure out different things I want to do, but still writing and exploring…

[Video for "Coquet Coquette" from False Priest below.]

2001-06-06 - Thriller Mag (interview from 2008)

James Husband – Of Montreal

By Thriller Monday June 6, 2011

It is not always easy to be a sideman in a band, but it is especially hard if . . .your front man suddenly takes control of the music, leaving no room for your input. And, it is even harder when you are a songwriter who can play a handful of instruments ranging from the guitar, to piano, to trumpet. James Huggins, sometimes known by his stage name, James Husband, was in the strange position of dealing with all of these things at once when Kevin Barnes took control of basically every part of his band, Of Montreal. After roughly a decade of striving and five albums (plus four compilations) that ranged from lo-fi brilliance (their debut, Cherry Peel), to occasionally unbearable whimsy (Coquelicot Asleep in the Poppies), OM had very little to show for their work. They were still grinding it out on the road, still playing for the same twenty or thirty die-hards, still going basically nowhere. In 2004, Barnes admitted to his band that he was thinking of quitting if the new album, Satanic Panic in the Attic, didn’t go over any better. The band already felt a bit weird, since Barnes had recorded the album almost entirely by himself for the first time in their history, so they might not have been too surprised at his admission. But, Satanic Panic was the most intricate, well-rounded, pop-oriented album the band had released. It was, in fact, something of a masterpiece. And that’s when the whole thing started to take off. Barnes followed quickly with Sunlandic Twins, which was great but not as good as its predecessor. Then, he topped himself again with Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? The group grew in popularity exponentially as the other members’ input decreased seemingly in the same proportion. However, the band’s heightened profile—including an Outback Steakhouse commercial that changed the lyrics to “Wraith Pinned to the Mist and Other Games”, which many saw as a traitorous act—seemed to weight on Barnes’ conscience. So, he began recording a challenge to everyone who said he’d sold out. The resulting album, Skeletal Lamping, was kind of the indie rock Bitches Brew, except that it kept all of the frustrating parts of Miles Davis’ most controversial album and didn’t really show any of the brilliance that make Brew such an essential classic. It sold well and was widely praised, but it is a tedious affair made up of short snippets of songs—most less than a minute long—that are patched together by transitions that are often jarring. Right after it was released, Thriller caught up with Huggins. Since the interview, he has left the band to pursue his solo career, and OM has released another decent but not great album, False Priest.

james2You’ve taken a serious step up in terms of stage performance. What has that been like?

It’s been an experiment that I think has gone very well. There are a lot of changes this time around, and we’re doing, by far, our biggest production in an increasing series of big productions, but this one takes the cake by a landslide.

The first thing I thought when I heard Skeletal Lamping, the only thing I could think of was how in the hell anyone would perform it live. It seems impossible, with all of the drastic changes in the songs. Was that hard to learn and is it hard to perform?

I’m so glad you asked, because no one ever asks about actually performing the music. It seems like most of the attention that the live spectacle gains is from the visual, and I think it’s very easy to forget, even for us, that the whole thing is supposed to be based on the music. We spent about two months before a single costume was tried on or a single prop design was built, learning the actual music. Sure, it’s difficult to learn something that disjointed. I think for Kevin, it’s very natural because he’s spent months with that material, kind of cutting it up and playing it backwards and forwards and inside out, and when he had decided on what he thought would be the final mixes, a lot of the stuff, that was the first time we heard it. Some of it we played on, some of it we had been playing live for months before he put out the album, but I would say a good sixty to seventy per cent of it was new to us, the same as it would be to a fan. Basically, it takes us several weeks where we just take each section and isolate a part or two or three that we think we want to do and try to make the closest representation to the album as possible, which is impossible because most of the songs have a minimum of about forty-eight tracks, some of them up into the hundreds. So, basically, between the six of us, we have to find the essence of three or four parts each and try to condense that into the most basic arrangement of what he has recorded.

It seems like that would take a while to get used to.

It definitely gets easier the more we do it and makes more sense slowly as we do it. But at first, it was very difficult and frustrating because I’m used to, sort of doing one thing or the other on a particular song. So, I could pretty much dedicate myself in the past to playing the bass or the keyboards or the guitar or the drums for about two or three minutes. But, I still look at this new stuff as each segment being its own song, so even if its seventeen seconds or thirty-one seconds, I still think of it as a song, independently that flows together in a segue or something. So, for me, there are a lot more challenging instrument switches, where I don’t think the consideration of the flow of the order of the songs is based on what I’m doing. I have to adapt to it, which means on a lot of these songs in the new set, I will be picking up and putting down as many as four instruments in one track, and that track might only be two minutes long. So, it’s definitely challenging, but then again, that’s just me griping that I get to do all that shit, because the truth is, it’s fun.

Skeletal Lamping is not an accessible album, really. What did you think when you first heard it?

It was challenging for me. I didn’t even like it for the first several weeks. I found it tedious to listen to. Now, I feel like it’s second nature and it makes perfect sense to me, but it took dozens of listens. And then, after learning it, I can’t listen to it, because now it’s like I can’t see it as an album that you sit down and listen to for forty minutes or whatever. I know too much, you know what I mean? That’s the sacrifice for us; we can’t allow ourselves to be fans because we’re too close to it.

How has your audience received it?

I’m surprised, people seem to love it just like it’s a fucking new Beatles record or something. I don’t get it. I, as an older indie rocker, presumed that the kids would have the attitude I had when I would go see bands, which was, “Oh, God. I hope they don’t just play their new album.” To me, that was always the attitude that, like, if you loved a band, especially if it was a band that you thought was your band, like even slightly underground, and then you see them start to get a bigger audience. I was afraid that all these kids would think we were too big or are losing it or whatever, and are just playing our new album – “They didn’t play anything off of Satanic Panic.” Which is funny to me, because most people think of that as our first record, and I still get people asking why don’t we play stuff off Gay Parade, which was when most of our current fans were still in single digits. That said, I’ve been pleasantly surprised, instead of having that attitude, it’s been the opposite, where most of the people only want to hear the new album and they are freaking out at the beginning, it’s like, you can tell when you play the first three seconds of a song that a couple of hundred of them all know the lyrics and they’ll start singing immediately and singing the entire thing. And they’re not easy lyrics to remember. I don’t even know half of them.

I’m one of those who enjoys hearing the old stuff as much as the new.

But, most of the time, the new material gets the biggest response. We’ve been playing some oldies—we did a couple of songs off of Satanic Panic and a couple of songs off of Sunlandic Twins, and those have been fun for us to play and I’m sure that plenty of people have enjoyed watching them, but they don’t get that instant roar that some of the new shit does.

I mean, I even want you to play stuff off of your first album, Cherry Peel, which came out in 1997.

Yeah, man, fucking another lifetime away from that stuff.

You all made about nine albums before one really hit. What is it like to work for so long at something and then finally get the recognition almost a decade later?

It has been gratifying in a sort of jaded, “It’s long overdue” kind of way. All of us have been like, “What the fuck? It took ten years to even get to a mild cult indie status.” We thought we were putting out great shit in 1998. To be perfectly honest, it wasn’t some sort of big surprise. It was more of a relief. Because we were going to keep doing it either way, but it makes it a whole lot easier to have people supportive of it and to be able to slightly make a living off of it and to be able to relax a little bit and focus more on it, than have it be this thing you’re fighting for.

Do you remember what you wanted out of the band when it started?

I don’t know, I can’t even remember what I was thinking then. I just know that we have always wanted to be full-time functional touring putting out as much stuff as possible kind of band. But for a lot of time, for several albums, it felt like more of a struggle to make that happen instead of an opportunity to let it happen. That’s why right now, we’re all able to completely focus on doing this, and so it makes it easier for us to really take it all the way, which is what we’re doing, I hope.

That’s nice, but I think what most people don’t realize is that being a successful touring act is hard fucking work.

It’s a full-time job, and it is a job, no matter what anyone says. Because there’s a lot more than jus that hour on stage, especially when we’re doing overseas stuff. We’ve been doing a lot of flying in and flying out, spending two or three days in the airport, thousands of dollars on weird travel expenses—you can’t imagine what it’s like traveling with instruments these day—just to do a thirty-minute radio program in England and come home. So, a lot of times, just a single performance has six or eight people’s lives tangled up for three or four days to make happen.

Since Satanic Panic, Kevin Barnes has really taken the reins in terms of writing and recording everything himself. Was that weird for the band when that happened?

Totally. I mean, it’s a very slow, natural adaptation we’ve had to go through. For me, the performance has little to do with songwriting or initial creation of the material. It’s always separate anyway, whether I wrote it and played it or whatever. I just think of it as acting. I’m still an actor and it’s my job and my talent, but I have a script. Instead of being a writer/director/actor, on this particular journey, I’m mostly just doing the performance for myself and for Kevin, and it’s still a very improvisational thing for me. I mean, a lot of it is obviously heavily organized, but within that, I still feel like I’m playing with as much freedom as I did when I was writing my own parts to the albums four years ago.

Does he give you any input as he’s recording or let you hear things as they develop?

Sure, I get to hear as much or as little as I care to. And a lot of times, I prefer to wait. During the creation of this album, Kevin would be sending mp3s of half-assed mixed songs every couple of days for four months, and I probably opened up a third of them.

He seems to be writing increasingly about his personal life—almost painfully direct songs about whatever he’s going through. Do you have any sense of where that comes from, or do you have any input on it?

It’s not that simple. There’s a lot more interpersonal, psychological ping-pong going on than that. Plus, a lot of that has to do with physical proximity. I haven’t really been living in Athens, and for most of the creation of this, our only contact was email and very little phone conversation. So, it’s not like a daily thing, getting up and making coffee, “Oh, what are you writing about today, Kevin?” It’s more like three or four weeks go by and I’ll get an mp3, “Hey, James, what do you think of this? Should the ending be this long?” You know, “I don’t know, it’s your song, dude, what do you think?”

2008-10-23 - Montreal Mirror

Hot and bothered

Kevin Barnes of oddball Athens, GA art-rock band Of Montreal talks about mythology,
insanity, sexuality, hard work and terror—because that’s what little boys are made of.

by LORRAINE CARPENTER

“It’s weird, sometimes an interviewer is like a psychiatrist,” says Kevin Barnes, halfway through his fifth session with this reporter. “It’s like you’re laying down on the couch and they’re asking these questions that you’ve never really thought about before. On some levels, it’s good, because it helps you work things out, but then you’re working it out in the public eye. Then again, I don’t worry about protecting my personal life. It’s okay to share everything with the world. I have no secrets, really—no secret life, no secret mind.”

Since Of Montreal was formed in Athens, Georgia in 1997, Barnes has made his name laying his heart, soul and body bare in public, from the name of his band (a reference to a local heartbreaker), to lyrics about mental breakdowns, spiritual voids, sexual fantasies and violent urges, to bizarre and shameless wardrobe choices. Flamboyance has always been an important part of the act (albeit in lesser degrees in the past), encouraged and abetted by his bandmates and the rest of the Of Montreal posse, particularly his brother David and wife Nina—they contribute to the band’s impressive, excessive artwork and on-stage antics, from the “Skeletal Lamping Collection,” a whole set of items accompanying the new album (with online purchases from the Polyvinyl Web site), to the sets, costumes and performance art that the band puts to use in the current show, their most elaborate to date.

And the music matches the escalated grandeur and ADD onslaught of the visuals. Practically every motif in Of Montreal’s back catalogue is jammed into Skeletal Lamping’s 58 minutes, skipping rapid-fire from post-punk droning and hammering to dirty falsetto funk to fluffy, effervescent pop to wee melancholy ballads, with horns and guitars and synths and screams and croons and the choir of heavenly Kevins, all care of Mr. Barnes, who composes, writes, records and plays it all himself.

Mirror: You’ve talked about this album in terms of upending people’s expectations and purposely creating discomfort by abandoning conventional song structures and embracing sonic extremes. Who are you playing to here? Fans? Critics? The people who call you a sell-out?
Kevin Barnes: I don’t even know what those people want. My only motivation is that I wanna make something fantastic and exceptional and exciting and provocative.

M: Do you think that this album in particular, and Of Montreal in general, is a love-it-or-hate-it proposition?
KB: It’s been like that all along. In the early days, we were making this really happy, twee, concept-art, psychedelic pop music, and there were tons of people who just hated it with all their heart, and there were some people who really loved its innocence and sweetness. What we’re doing now is somewhat polarizing, though it’s definitely not intended to be. But I rarely self-Google, because it’s too terrifying and freaky. Every time I see a comment like, “Of Montreal is great, they’re my favourite band,” right underneath it there’ll be a comment like, “This band sucks, I hate them so much, I wish Kevin Barnes would die.” Some people get very emotional about it—it’s just human beings making art! When people say, “That asshole is so pretentious, he needs to be knocked off his high horse,” they don’t realize that that pretentious asshole is totally freaked out by the world and has a lot of anxiety problems and is actually a sweet person and needs their love.
You might think that Bono really has his shit together. He’s in one of the most popular bands in the world. But I bet he stands naked in the shower and looks down at his feet and thinks, “God, I’m a weird little dinosaur.” I don’t think anyone feels totally content and secure all the time, no matter how successful or popular they are. They’re still these little dinosaurs.

M: One of your bandmates, Bryan Poole, said that the band’s emphasis on funk has something to do with the fact that you’ve “found yourself sexually.” What does that mean?
KB: Well, forever, in my 20s, I was basically a celibate, then somehow I blossomed and had a sexual awakening. I’m like a 13-year-old girl discovering sex and its wonders and complexities.

M: Do you consider yourself bisexual?
KB: I’m everything. I did an interview for a gay magazine and the guy asked me how I define myself sexually, and I said I don’t. In the spirit of this album, the spirit that I’m in right now, it’s ridiculous to ever brand yourself one way or another. Say you’re a white man; there are so many emotions and principles that go along with that, that establish your concept of yourself and your position in the world. I really try to divorce myself from all of that. I don’t wanna think of myself as a white bisexual male, it’s just silliness, and eventually people will evolve beyond that. If you have bisexual tendencies one day and not the next day, what does that make you? I guess that’s the dilemma I’m facing and trying to solve by creating this fluid perception of reality where anything goes, no restrictions or classifications, and it’s all just one day at a time, or one hour at a time, or one minute at a time.

M: You’ve been very open about your mental health in your lyrics and interviews—you recently told Rolling Stone about your psychiatric medication regimen. Do you ever worry about being stigmatized as a “nutter”?
KB: (laughs) Well, that’s what I am. But nobody feels that way, really. Everyone feels like they’re sane, they have it together and everyone else is crazy. I’ve been with these people in this band for a long time, and I know that they all think I’m crazy, but I think they’re crazy. One of us has to be wrong. But if you’re a thinking person and you have an active internal dialogue going all the time, you’re gonna be a bit kooky. Very few people are just straight-up boring, dull, nothing going on in their head. Sarah Palin, for example, is totally crazy and weird. It’s easy to hate conservatives for being such a drag but they just have a totally different viewpoint—things that are totally cool for them are not cool for me and vice versa, and that’s interesting.

M: It’s funny, when I was reading the definition of “lamping,” the use of floodlights in hunting, I immediately thought of her shooting moose from a helicopter.
KB: Yeah, that’s the myth. If she becomes physical and materializes as a leader, it’s scary. But as a fictional character, she’s fine.

M: Do you think people view you as a fictional character? Do you ever wonder about your own mythology?
KB: That’s too weird. I’ve romanticized John Lennon’s life, Ray Davies, Syd Barrett, all my heroes that I’ve idolized, and I know that some people really like Of Montreal and have this sort of romantic relationship with us and with me as a writer, but I can’t really put myself in that same place. Some people say crazy things like, “You’re like Brian Wilson,” and it’s just like, “No I’m not, he’s, like, good, he’s awesome, I’m just like this thing.”
We’ve spent so many years on the bottom where we just were not growing at all, we put out so many records that nobody really liked and we toured so much playing in front of very few people every night, it was so gruelling and so traumatizing, that now that we have this success, my skin is thicker ’cause I had to, as a defence, kill that part of me that might potentially become conceited.
I also had a blue-collar upbringing. My dad really, really worked hard to instill a strong work ethic in me, and it’s not so meritorious to go to work every day, that’s what you do, you work. There’s nothing to celebrate, really, you do what you’ve got to do.

M: So it’s work, but it’s not a job?
KB: Yeah. I don’t push myself to go into the studio and write songs, it’s something that I naturally feel compelled to do. Producing something validates my existence, it gives me a high, a sense of fulfillment. Ever since I got my first cassette four-track recorder when I was 15 or 16, I’ve been writing songs and putting them together one instrument at a time. At first, I didn’t have any friends that played music, I didn’t have many friends to begin with, so it gave me a reason to live. And back when no one gave a shit about the band, I never stopped making music, I never even considered any other option because there was nothing else I wanted to do. And even though now we’re more popular and we’re able to do this for a living, the spirit hasn’t changed, the motivation hasn’t changed, the excitement hasn’t changed. It’s an adventure.

2007-03-?? - Nerve

From Nerve.



Not so long ago, Kevin Barnes had a nervous breakdown. He was nine albums into a career as the frontman for Of Montreal, a pop band from Athens, Georgia, that was veering increasingly toward dark and dancey glam-rock. But his life, and his sanity, were unraveling. It didn't help that he split from his wife around the time she had his first child. It didn't help that he was in Norway . But it did, perhaps, help him to write a mind-blowing album. Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? channels David Bowie and Prince without sounding like a rehash of either. The band, long known for its theatrical, over-the-top stage performances, has raised the bar, with Barnes recently going naked at a show in Las Vegas. Believe it or not, he's actually not insane anymore. And he and his wife have reconciled. So we talked to him recently about stripping onstage, coming back from the edge and the album that may just be one of the year's best. — Sarah Hepola

You recently went full-frontal at a concert. Why did you do that?
I'd been thinking about it for a couple shows, but I'd heard that if I did it in a venue that wasn't twenty-one-and-over, I might have to sign up as a sex offender in every city we travel to. It just turned out that, around that time, we were going to do a twenty-one-and-over show in Las Vegas. And what better place to go naked than Vegas? The stars were aligned. So we made it a kind of sex show. We had straight and gay porn projected during the show.
It wasn't just like, "Now I'm gonna take off my clothes." I warned everyone in my band. They weren't sure I was gonna do it, though. I guess it's still a bit taboo, but there's some history of people doing similar things. People like Jim Morrison. I'm sure Iggy Pop has done it. GG Allin did way worse than that. I mean, it's not like it's the 1950s, and it's Elvis Presley naked onstage.

Yeah, but it's still shocking. People have nightmares about being onstage naked. Why did you want to do it?
It's just like the ultimate exhibition as far as performance goes. You're always putting yourself in a vulnerable position as a performer. And our band definitely has a flair for the theatrical, so it's not a big stretch for me. I'm always wearing these ridiculous clothes — stripper wear, fishnets, camping it up at bit. Actually, I think before I went naked that night, it was more obscene. I was wearing a gold miniskirt with no underwear. Sometimes when you're flirting with nudity, it has more impact. It can be more shocking if your cock is hanging out of a miniskirt.

But I'm totally relaxed about nudity. It's probably easier for me, because I feel so comfortable with my body. I think it's insane how uptight people are about nudity. Your clothes are your armor, I guess, on many levels. But I'm probably secretly a nudist at heart. I'm gonna be one of those horrible old men on a beach, running around naked.
I wasn't drunk. I wasn't nervous. For some people, I guess it could be dreadful. But I get into this persona that has no inhibitions. If I were naked in a grocery store, it might be a different story.

Even though you were pretty much fully exposed that night, you did have had on makeup and fishnets.
And a sash.

That's right. Can't forget about the sash. What does it do for you to wear fishnets and eyeliner?
Well, I don't think of it as cross-dressing or a perversion. It's more because of this new stage persona, who is a she-male. Psychologically speaking, people might be listening to me and thinking, "This kid has problems." But it helps, as an artist, to have a persona. You are given so many liberties as a performer. You can get away with whatever you want. And cross-dressing has a history, the extremely androgynous music of the '70s and punk rock during the New Romantic period. So I don't feel freaky at all. I mean, no matter what I do, I'm not going to be as freaky as Prince.

Let's talk more about your persona. Does he-she have a name?
This character's name is Georgie Fruit. I don't really know where that name came from. It's a songwriting persona for me, so it kind of goes beyond what I wear and do onstage. It gives me an outlet to explore different aspects of myself. I don't feel like I have a split personality or anything. It's this exaggerated view of my personality. So it's fun to be able to take certain aspects of my personality and blow them up, put them on the screen for overyone to see. Because I'm a performer. And like all performers, I'm slightly insecure and need constant affirmation. Otherwise I wouldn't go onstage.

When did you develop this persona?
When I was making the last record. I had gone through this heavy chemical depression, and it was a reaction to that. I was like, enough of that. I was sick of writing about my life. I was bored with myself. And I wanted to write about something fantastic, and bizarre, and otherworldy.

That's interesting. Because this album is more autobiographical than most of your earlier albums. Am I wrong?
It's all autobiographical. But I'm talking more about the second part of the album, when this songwriting persona pops up. Instead of my natural reaction to things, I was pretending to be a different person, coming from a different background, and seeing how they would view these experiences in my life.

So about those experiences. There's a line in which you say: "I spent the winter on the edge of a total breakdown while living in Norway." That pretty much strips away metaphor. What happened?
Basically just all these life-changing events were going on. I'd gotten married, and we were expecting our first child, and we were living in Norway, and I didn't know how to deal with those things, because as an artist you live in your own fantasy world. So when reality hits, it hits hard. It was hard to adapt. I had a very difficult time with things. I went through a chemical depression I couldn't get out of. It affected me on all levels. Affected everything, affected songwriting. It was so bad I had to get on medication. And once I got on medication, it became easier to handle. These things that felt unresolvable seemed easier. My wife and I split up, and then we got back to together. All of that probably helped me create this new character. You get sick of self-analysis. I wanted to explore other things, disconnect.

Depression can either spark your creativity or snuff it out. Which was it for you?
Fortunately, mine wasn't the kind of depression where I couldn't do anything, where I just sat in a room and did nothing. It was actually an inspiring period for me. My sanity was crumbling. It was a period of losing my grip. It wasn't so much like, "I'm sad." It was way more violent.

Do you hear that reflected on the album?
Mainly in "The Past Is a Grotesque Animal" [a seven-minute song that comes at the album's midway point]. But I didn't really want to reflect my reality so much. I was trying to change my reality. I felt miserable and insane. Instead of making fragmented, cacophonous music, I was trying to make something that was upbeat and happy. And use music as therapy. Instead of just revelling in something that was ugly and depressing.

That reminds me of track five, "Gronlandic Edit," which is amazing. The dance song of the year for me. But it took me a while to realize that, as great as its groove is, the lyrics are a downer.
There's a pretty strong contrast between songs and subject matter, yeah. And part of that is because musically, I have enough experience that I know what's a happy sound and what's a sad sound and I can produce something that's in chorus with what I feel or don't feel. But in a lyric, I can't fake that. I mean, if you're depressed, it's hard to write about how it's a sunny day and everyone's really happy.

But you could hide personal information — for instance, you used to bury it in these character sketches. I was reading an old interview where you talked about not wanting to write about yourself, because it made you feel vulnerable. What changed your mind?
Early on, I was very impressionable, and it was hard for me to handle negative criticism. I got some nasty reviews from people, and it made me want to withdraw and not write anything personal. So I started writing, as you say, these kind of whimsical character sketches. And I slowly started to incorporate more personal stuff over the last few albums — Satanic Panic in the Attic, The Sunlandic Twins. On this record it was more out of necessity, because it was such an overpowering part of my existence. I couldn't make something trivial out of it. My life was sort of hanging by a thread.

But how do you protect yourself from criticism now?
Luckily I'm not as vulnerable as I used to be. I have thicker skin, because of the experience I've had, and also just being a performer for a while now. I used to think that a bad review was the world's response to the music. Now it doesn't matter much. Now I realize it's just one person's opinion. It doesn't really mean anything.

I wanted to ask you about a couple lyrics. On "Bunny Ain't No Kind of Rider," you sing: "Eva, I'm sorry, but you will never have me. To me you're just some faggy girl, and I need a lover with soul power." I assume this is a song about getting hit on by groupies.
No, not really. It's just more about going out to the club. When [my wife] Nina and I were split up, I went through an exploratory phrase, because I didn't know if we were going to get back together again. And sometimes when you're single, you don't necessarily want to be single. You want to find someone you can connect with. So I would go to clubs and meet people, but nothing would ever come of it. And that's the story of one of those experiences. Obviously I would never say anything like that. I was trying to be cruel, almost to the point of absurdity.

But did you ever go out with groupies?
No. There's just such an imbalance there. Someone's going to mythologize you in this totally unnatural way. You obviously aren't that person. You don't feel like you're this iconic figure. Most people feel kind of pathetic and retarded most of the time. It's difficult to feel relaxed around a fan, because you're not really you.

In the song, "She's a Rejecter," you say, "I'm forever going celibate." What does that mean?
Actually, it's "I'm forever going celibate tomorrow."

Ohhh. That's a big difference.
Yeah. It's just the idea of, like, being a drug addict. This is the last time. This is the last day. I'm always saying tomorrow's going to be different. I'm going to change everything tomorrow.

The album begins with the sound of a little baby. Is that your daughter?
It is. It's actually her singing. She's just singing her own song. It's just like, la-la-la. n°

2006-04-07 - Athens Exchange

Of Montreal on Home, Fame and Bank Accounts

by The Bridge
04/07/2006

Small Town

It's Athens in the wintertime. As I'm walking home from work, a car drives by slowly, with the windows down, tunes loud, playing a song by my co-worker's band. It's Athens, it happens a lot. It's a pretty good song; I step to the beat. Oslo in the summertime/Nobody can get to sleep...

It's Of Montreal, a band born of the Elephant 6 collective who outlived and outgrew their kid brother status in said collective. You might (if you were prone to tedious, drawn-out analogies) want to think of Olivia Tremor Control as the overbearing mother of the group; Neutral Milk Hotel as the absentee father; and Elf Power the surprisingly well-adjusted older son. Of Montreal were, in the early days, a smaller caliber affair, drawing modest numbers for their shows and releasing albums to mixed reviews and less than spectacular sales. They had staying power, however, sticking it out for over a decade and counting. The last four or five years have been a mite snow-ballish for the group. Satanic Panic in the Attic, their second to last full-length, went to number two on the college radio charts in Billboard magazine. The follow-up album, last year's The Sunlandic Twins, is their current label Polyvinyl's biggest seller to date.

I'm not entirely sure where the band was, saleswise or famewise, when I met Dottie Alexander, current keyboardist for Of Montreal and former bartender at a joint called the Globe in Athens, Georgia. I know that they were popular enough to have acquired a disease common to all notable public personas, a disease which manifests itself mainly in the way that we, the common folk, interact with its victims. People like Michael Stipe, who is in the terminal phase of the disease, will encounter the same kind of whispering and eye aversion and/or unabashed staring (it's the same sentiment, whether you're looking too hard or not looking at all) usually reserved for the severely deformed. Having lunch with a friend at the Globe one day, not long before I got a job there myself, I noticed that Alexander was early stage symptomatic.

My friend, a vinyl collecting geek, was talking about independent record labels. I was listening half-heartedly. "And her band is on that label, too," he said, dropping his voice to a mutter on the word "her." I followed his gaze to the girl behind the bar, the girl from Of Montreal. "They're pretty popular." he added, still in a conspiratory undertone. She glanced in our direction as she walked by, and I hurriedly changed the subject, hoping she hadn't heard us talking about her. Fame makes me nervous. It's part of the disease. Their disease.

Ordinary Joe

So, to make a long story short ("TOO LATE!", cries the peanut gallery), I eventually met Dottie, we worked a shitty bar job together, and I forgot about her disease for a while. It was easy to do when she was doing Ordinary Joe stuff with me: cleaning toilets at the bar, bitching about our boss, paying parking tickets. By the time I saw her perform with her band, I had forgotten that anyone else had even heard of them. But they had, in large numbers, and ignoring it became increasingly difficult. Flipping through magazines at a newsstand, I'd come across my friend posing with her band in Mojo magazine, with a pithy little bio. On a trip to Gainesville, GA, the pharmacist in a grocery store drilled me with questions about the Of Montreal hoodie I was wearing - where did I get it, did I see the last show, when were they coming back. And finally, there is this intersection. Athens Exchange wants to send someone to interview them. I mention it to Dottie on her last visit to town. "Oh, why don't you do it?" she says. Sure, why don't I do it? Makes perfect sense. I know Dottie, I can get her to set it up, why not?

For future reference: because it's fucking weird.

Big Band

On the day of our interview, the band is, by and large, hung over. It is the day after their homecoming show at the 40 Watt, so I'm amazed that Dottie was able to persuade them to come at all. Everyone shows except for bassist Matt Dawson. Guitarist Brian Poole and drummer James Huggins are stubble-faced and wearing shades. Dottie looks happy but subdued, dressed in simple black, none of her usual multi-colored tights or screaming orange scarves. Lead singer Kevin Barnes does not look hung over, but he's a queer one, perpetually shiny-eyed, almost always decked out in something a bit beyond jeans and a t-shirt. Today he's wearing a pastel suit and a white-brimmed newsboy cap with slender blue and white striping that looks like something a train conductor in a Richard Scarry picture book would wear.

The band saunters raggedly in to the "quiet room" at Hot Corner Coffee, where the photographer and I have been discussing seating arrangements. As the others are getting coffee, Huggins strolls around the room, checking out the local artwork. He spots the photographer's laptop, set up by my tape recorder. "Is this yours?" he asks. I tell him whose it is.

"Photographer? You're not taking pictures of us." Shit. "Oh, no... You could have done that last night, when we looked cool..." We did take pictures last night, but that was for a review of the show, and this is for the interview. I try to explain, but Huggins is now a resolute non-participant. "I mean, maybe I speak for myself here... I bet I speak for some of the others..." He shakes his head and wanders out of the room. Five minutes later, Dottie returns from the coffee counter with an iced concoction and a rueful look. "Well, you pissed Jamey off," she grins. I start to freak out, quietly. "Don't worry, it's just Jamey. He's like that to everyone," she grins again and rolls her eyes.

Dottie and Jamey

They argue like a married couple. "We practically are one," I have heard her say, more than once. Both have significant others - it's a platonic love, certainly. But a looooong one. The two joined Of Montreal in '98 "as a package deal," Dottie says. At the time they were playing together in a drums-and-keys two piece called Lightning Bug vs. Firefly. Flashback to over a year ago, when the two came into the Globe while I was working. They sat at my table and ordered lunch. After Jamey placed his order (a sandwich), Dottie told me how to make it (hold the mushrooms, I think. Or maybe it was onions). "You're right, I don't want mushrooms (or onions or whatever)," Jamey said. "How did you know that?"

"Please. I've been listening to your picky orders long enough to know-"

And they bickered for a bit, cute as codgers. They do that a lot. "Jamey," Dottie once said, drunk, after a pissy phone conversation, "Is my cross to bear."

"What does that mean?"

"I don't know. Nothing. Jamey's great."

One night, closing the bar by ourselves, Dottie and I were required to call a male in to sit with us through closing. Our boss felt uncomfortable leaving two girls alone at night with all that money. So Dottie called skinny, foppish Jamey Huggins, who sat at the bar, drank overpriced beer, and insisted that everyone dance with him when we were supposed to be restocking, because he liked the song that was playing. He told us the entire history of Os Mutantes (which Dottie already knew). He was in a good mood that night. Jamey Huggins in a good mood is like a child at his birthday.

Dottie and Jamey are oddly twinned. Both have a high play instinct, both are very bright, and neither one has much patience for a party spoiler. Unless they are in a very bad mood, in which case the party is over.

Where Your Heart Is

Eventually, Brian Poole and Kevin Barnes return to the quiet room and arrange themselves on the couch with Dottie, and we begin the interview, while Huggins meanders about the room, uninvolved. The interview takes thirty, forty minutes, but it feels like an eternity. All of the effort I have made trying to forget that my friend is a rock star is being undermined, swiftly, by my very own deliberate actions. I have made her an adversary: she sits on one side, me on the other. Already, Huggins has fired a decisive shot, wounding my ego. My heart's in my throat. I feel like a jackass. "Do you feel weird coming back to Athens?" I ask, mostly because I feel weird. No, not really, is the group consensus. I've never interviewed a whole band before, and I'm getting flustered. One pissed off drummer and a simple "not really" are bad ways, I feel, to begin an interview. I reword the question, trying to get a more interesting response. "The wedding show," Barnes offers, finally. "That was pretty weird." "What wedding show?" Dottie asks. "THE wedding show..." "Oh, that one," says Poole, as he and Barnes lock eyes in an odd, intense stare. "The wedding show?" I prompt, hopeful. Barnes nods and mutters something, softly, about a show with the Psychic Hearts and the Modern Skirts. "That was probably the most different, definitely."

Great! That's something. "Different good, or bad?" I ask.

"Just different. Definitely." I try to get more about the wedding show, to no avail. In response to my next (admittedly dorky-sounding) question about whether Athens is still where the various members' hearts are, Barnes points out that "Leonard Cohen said, never go home with a hard on."

Okay, let's run with that. "Don't you have to do it anyway?"

"Oh, yeah. You know, he's just... Canadian, and shit." Barnes makes a small gesture dismissing Canadians.

A week later, in response to a rather panicky, help-me-write-it email to Dottie, she fills me in on the wedding show: "The wedding show was bullshit. We made it up. Having you on."

Dumb Interview

This is not the dumbest inerview that Of Montreal has ever endured. That honor, I believe, would go to the girl from an MTV2 contest who interviewed them in a record store. "She was deathly afraid of ketchup," Dottie said. The band, bored and bewildered, made up a bunch of ridiculous stories in response to her queries. Among them: Brian Poole's love of Ukranian mime. So I suppose a fib about a wedding show, with scant elaboration, isn't too bad. There's also the sex cult, which I kind of figured wasn't true. It's what I got for saying, "So, the band name...?"

"Boo!" (Times three.) "You're not going there." "Hissss..." "We get asked that. Every. Single. Time."

"But, I've read the story, where it came from, and I just-"

"Which one?" asks Poole.

"Oh-the one about the girl that Kevin dated, and she-"

"Enslaved me-" giggles Dottie.

"Into her sex cult," Barnes says.

"Don't you worry about how that information will affect your parental, family-oriented fans?"

"Yeah," says Dottie, "but we're finally ready to leak it."

"I've been leaking for a long time," Barnes adds brightly. "That's why we have to do so many costume changes."

"How do you feel about your expanding fan base?" Now I'm hoping to hear them bitch about frat boys and 99x listeners. "I mean, do you ever look out at these big crowds and see a bunch of people that you don't really believe..."

"Exist?" Barnes suggests, helpfully.

"I mean-that they really like Of Montreal," I finish, lamely. It has just occurred to me that it might be rude to suggest that the people coming to their shows don't actually care about the band. But no one seems to notice, or care.

"No. God bless them all." Barnes says, firmly and sincerely. Dottie and Poole nod and murmur in agreement. "How the audience reacts makes all the difference," Dottie adds. "It's a symbiotic relationship. Generally, the newer crowds have been younger and more into it, and it's a party. It's kind of what we wanted, to play and dance and enjoy, and then go home and get laid."

Like Children Playing

It is a party, watching them play, Of Montreal are a band that I can imagine six year olds loving, and I mean that as high praise. Their shows are a study in fun, pure, sincere, fun, with props and singalongs. There are costumes: wonderfully kitschy leisure suits, lots of body glitter, sometimes Dottie wears a wreath of blinking lights in her hair, usually Kevin Barnes takes his shirt off. At the last Athens show, Matt Dawson wore what looked like a oversized Russian cossack-style hat for the duration of the set, which had to be uncomfortable under the stage lights.

Dawson, by the way, is a bespectacled, cherub-cheeked guy who probably cringes every time someone refers to him as being "elfin." It was through him that I first heard of Fela Kuti, one of his musical heros. When he was couch crashing at Dottie's house, he whipped out a DVD on the man and begin to wax worshipful about him. "Thriteen wives, and he got them all to marry him at the same time," he sighed, "You gotta respect that.

Later, chatting about his role in the band, he remarked that being in Of Montreal is a little like being in a school play. "Because it's Kevin's show, Kevin's songs. You just learn your lines and play your part, you know?"

I like that, because it evokes a sense of childhood. Barnes' control of what Of Montreal puts forth feels like the bossiest kid on the block-the one who tells the best ghost stories - getting everyone to dress up and play make believe with him. There are bizarre improvs in most Of Montreal shows - pantomimes with strobe lights, strange chanting, occasional props. During these moments, they look less like rock stars and more like the goofy hipster kids that you see at parties in college towns, fucking around, making a joke of everything.

Oprah

"Those are the most enjoyable parts of the show," Brian Poole says of the improvisations. His bandmates agree. "We did one hundred and thirty shows last year, and we played some of those songs every night. So it kind of keeps things interesting."

"It's really more for us than for them," says Dottie.

"When we play "Exquisite Corpse" - I'm not sure anyone really likes us playing it." Dottie and Barnes snicker in agreement. "But we have fun."

"You do most of the lyrics, Kevin - is that right?"

"All." "He does 'em all." His bandmates answer for him.

"I put the words in." Barnes whispers in a gentle parody of modesty.

"Is it important to you that the others 'get' everything you're saying, that they understand the words?"

"No, not at all," he replies, very quickly. "I'd be shocked if they knew any of the words."

"It's funny," Poole says, "I sing backup on almost every song. If you asked me to quote a line, I probably wouldn't be able to do it. Sometimes when I'm singing, I'll think, what the hell am I saying..."

"Sometimes I've felt really bad," Dottie interjects. "when I figure something out - like, oh, is that what you were talking about? Oookay."

Barnes nods. "At this point, I've played them so many songs, I don't expect them to pay attention anymore."

I consult my notes on the lyrics. Lots of literary references, this guy. Orwell, Keats, Greek mythology - "Were you an English major?"

"No, I'm a pseudo-intellectual. I don't know, I just have an interest in it. I never really went to school."

"Of Montreal is a very literary band," I observe.

"We're all members of the Oprah Winfrey book club," he explains, "and that helps us stay in touch with contemporary literature."

Elephant 6

"It was like a family. It really was. And everyone was really excited about what was happening - and those days can't last forever," Brian Poole acknowledges. "We're all still friends, of course, but you go to do your own thing eventually. There's not that concentration now, that high feeling, like there's some utopian music vision that's happening all over... but it still exists. We played with Robert Schneider, from the Apples [Apples in Stereo] for a couple of shows, recently, and a bunch of guys and girls [from Elephant 6] came out for the show last night. I try to play with everyone from that that I can, but, you know - the Orange Twin kids [a label started by many for the Elephant 6 members], they have their own stuff going on."

"Did you guys ever consider being on Orange Twin?"

"Brian is on it," Dottie says, referring to Poole's solo work as the Late B.P. Helium.

"Yeah, and they're cool," he says. "But Polyvinyl, it's just the best thing that ever happened to Of Montreal. I mean, Kindercore [a now defunct Athens indie label] tried, but... Polyvinyl just really has their shit together."

"So, who handles the financial decisions, contracts and whatnot - who's your manager?"

"Brian." Dottie laughs. "Most of that stuff is unfairly deferred to Brian. Not that you don't do a great job," she assures him. "But you have too much work."

"You need a tour manager, then?"

"We need Flam Dikton," says Barnes.

"We're short listed for Flam Dikton," Dottie sighs.

"He came to all five shows at South by Southwest," Barnes points out.

Flam Dikton, apparently, is an old-hand manager who has worked with some big names and is, according to the band, the shit. The currently unobtainable shit. These kids ain't dumb. They know the stakes are rising, and they don't want to make any missteps that they'll be kicking themselves for later. Poole, who gives off the most grounded air of the bunch, is clearly concerned about not letting the business tedium overtake the joy of making music. "I read this thing about Arcade Fire last year when they were blowing up. Someone asked the front guy how everything was going, and he was like, 'Oh, it's been terrible. I'm busy opening bank accounts. I haven't had time for anything else.' Of course it sounds like, oh, you poor baby, you have all this money to deal with."

Dottie chuckles. "I remember being outraged by that."

"What he was saying is basically, he's having to deal with all this stuff that has nothing to do with the music. That's how you get the history of musicians rushing to sign bad contracts, or doing something stupid, and then later saying, shouldn't we be getting paid for this? And someone says, well, no, you signed it away."

A While Ago

At the Go Bar, many months ago, I sat with Dottie and her roommate, Elyse, and we talked about their plans to move to Santa Cruz. While we were talking, I noticed Michael Stipe lounging on the couch near the DJ's table. He had on sunglasses and his usual hangdog expression, and he needed a shave. As the girls talked, I stared at him, feeling oddly disturbed by his presence, and guilty for feeling disturbed. The guy can't help it that he's famous; it isn't his fault, I told myself. What difference does it make anyway?

But I couldn't help it. I didn't like him being there, in that tiny little bar. I didn't like the largeness of him. The simple fact of what he did for a living erected a wall around him, and it made me feel cagey. Of course, it is possible he doesn't like it either.

Not too long after that, I went to see Of Montreal play a show at the 40 Watt. "I have this whole other persona onstage," Dottie admitted once. "You'll probably call me out on it."

She did. Or maybe she didn't, maybe the simple fact of being onstage erected a wall around her that altered her by itself. She looked too large. Too lit up. Too doll-like, like anyone might pick her up and pose her to suit themselves.

Bye Now

I end the interview somewhat awkwardly, and the kids start to gather their stuff. I say goodbye to my friend with no hug, which is all right. I'm not a big hugger. She is, though. I'm afraid I've altered our relationship irrevocably. I've gone and made her big.

A week later, I leave Dottie a voicemail worrying about all of this, and complaining that I'll never finish this piece. She calls me back and tells me I'm crazy and paranoid. Mildly relieved, I send her an email with one of the many questions I had wanted to ask and forgotten: Don't you think it's weird that I'm interviewing you, by virtue of what you do, and not, say, a brain surgeon or a math teacher?

Her response: "Brain surgeons are boring." That, and people dig musicians because it's something they can imagine themselves doing, and therefore relate to.

I don't think I can imagine myself doing what these guys do. It seems wonderful and impressive and lonely and awful. I'm horrified at the thought of them signing a bad deal and getting screwed by some megalabel and tossed aside after their fifteen minutes. I'm equally horrified that they'll become mondo-famous and my friend will be like Stipe-a rock star in a tower, unreachable. Let's wish these guys luck. Let's hold out hope that, ten years from now, they'll still act like six-year-olds onstage.