Joshua recently had the chance to interview one of PopWreckoning’s favorite singer/songwriters, Kevin Devine. The guys talked about everything from albums, Brand New and politics. Make sure you check out part I before moving on to part II here:
Joshua, PopWreckoning: I find that you get a large number of people that are drawn to each individual album because each album is so different. Like I know a lot of people that prefer Make the Clocks Move. I find the Brand New people are more drawn to the “Cotton Crush” album [Split the Country, Split the Streets] and it’s nice because the extreme differences between albums definitely has the ability to widen your fan-base which widens your draw and I think it works for you. I don’t think a lot of artists can do it because people cry out. You know this isn’t the sound you normally have, but you haven’t been typecast into a distinct sound.
Kevin Devine: I think it works for me as much in that I get to do what I want and there’s not really a conscious ‘let’s make a rock, let’s make a folk record.’ It’s more like ‘that song should sound like this. This song should sound like this.’ I also think it’s probably what makes the other people in my world’s jobs or lives harder–like the marketing people and A&R people or the press people or the booking agent because I can go on tour with Okkervil River. I can go on tour with Bright Eyes or Cursive. I can do stuff with AA Bondy or whatever. And I do stuff with KT Tunstall and Corinne Bailey Rae and [Rachael] Yamagata and the Hotel Café and with Brand New and Manchester [Orchestra] and whoever else is more in that world.
PW: You hit on a question right there. What audience do you find tends to be more difficult to play for?
KD: Because I don’t fit exactly with anybody, there are great things about it. I love getting in front of a Rachael Yamagata crowd of like 35 year old urban professional people that like Coldplay a lot. I like getting in front of that crowd and I feel like a punk rocker a little bit with some of the things I’m saying or the way I’m saying them.
I also know at those shows there will be a bunch of people that won’t get it and there will be a bunch of people that, well it seems to me that people articulate to me that they do know it’s different and it’s genuine and that’s very meaningful to me. And those crowds are usually respectful and receive music differently than the kids that come see the more emo bands, or whatever you want to call them, that I play with. I don’t think, by the way, I don’t think that whatever that word is, that’s not what I think about a band like Brand New or Manchester, I think there’s a community that’s Colour Revolt, Anathallo, us, Mewithoutyou, Brand New, Manchester, and a couple other people by extension that’s like this weird middle point between what’s happening at Pitchfork and what’s happening at AbsolutePunk.
I blame part of that… well I feel I don’t get 90 percent of what’s happening at either place. So it’s nice to feel something in the middle. Besides that, those kids are really passionate. And when they like you, they’re really passionate about what you do and the hipster people, well it’s rewarding to impress them because they’re hard to impress. So if you play in front of Okkervil’s crowd and they really love what you’re doing, to be fair, my musical taste probably lies closest to those people, but I can’t pick and choose my audience and I certainly wouldn’t want to. It makes things really interesting for me.
That being said, if I could pick my tour, my headlining tour, and you’ve seen this, I’d rather bring Bondy and Jealous Girlfriends and I’d rather bring Jennifer O’Connor and Pablo and I’d rather bring bands that I like whether those kids are going to get it or not. Or whether those people draw anything or not.
I don’t want to bring “name” bands. I don’t want to bring bands I don’t like just cause they’re going to bring out a bunch of people. Plus they won’t ever do it cause you might get your hands caught into doing it, but it’s not my preference.
PW: The thing I enjoyed the most about the shows with the Jealous Girlfriends and the bands you are personally friends with that you brought on, there was an extra level of comfort when you were there and y. You guys were all just interacting and it was very much like the Hotel Café tour where you guys were all getting along and it was a family setting. I really enjoyed that and I think more people should be exposed to that.
KD: Well, that’s what it’s like with Manchester and Brand New, too. Me and Jesse [Lacey] and Brian [Bonz] were on that tour this summer.
We stopped at Lollapalooza to play at the HOB with Brand New and Manchester and then play, watch Brand New at Lollapalooza, and I wound up playing the first two songs of Brand New’s set in front of like 30,000 people at Lollapalooza. I didn’t know that until an hour and a half before the show. That’s killer because not that it would do them any good, maybe like the 5,000 people that don’t like Brand New, but like me would be like,
“Oh, that’s really cool that Kevin played with Brand New,” but way more people are going to be like, “Who’s that dude that Brand New had play their first two songs with them?” And it’s sick that they do that stuff. With Manchester, too, everyone, Jon Corley is playing bass in our band because our bassist had to go home and he was like, “I’ll learn the songs, I’m here.”
I’m lucky as hell that I’m surrounded by people like that across genres. But I also know that it’s not normal and I’m psyched that I’m a part of it. The thing that I think is really special about what I get to do is that I left Brand New’s set and I walked across Grant Park to watch Okkervil and Travis saw me at the side of their stage. Their drummer, and he pulled me out for their last song “Westfallâ€, I think it’s called, and I sang and played percussion with them in front of 10,000 people all after I had played guitar with Brand New. Now, the critical consensus, Brand New and Okkervil River are two very different things. But they’re not that different actually if you want to talk about why they make music and where it comes from and what they listen to even, but that’s another story for another time, but I think that’s crazy. I’m not saying it because I’m so fucking cool, I’m saying it because that’s the opposite. I just got to play with these two bands just because they like me.
PW: It’s definitely nice to see bands taking care of other bands, too. I find that is something that has dwindled a great deal. I didn’t realize this until I started doing this music journalism thing, but you see a lot of bands that are not compassionate about anybody else and I picked up on that from you and Brand New that you guys do take care of each other and it makes me like the bands more because of that.
KD: Me, too. Not to belabor the point but with Brand New in specific, you’re talking about a band that could never bring a support group on tour ever and sell 2,000-3,000 tickets anywhere in the world. I’ve seen that band play at the Leeds festival opposite the Kings of Leon or something and 18,000 kids were in a tent singing every word to their songs in the middle of England. I’m getting chills just sitting and talking about it because I remember being like, they’re my friends. They’re just dudes that we go eat and we play video games or they come over and we go see a movie and then I go watch that and I go, “Oh my God.”
This is a group that they were fighting with all those things, the ego, the rock star impulse, the ascendancy where people are blowing a lot of smoke up your ass. People figure out all that bullshit when they’ve already gone down, but they figured it out here and went, “Well we have to figure out a way to make this meaningful to us because if we don’t, we’ll breakup, so we’re only going to bring bands we like on tour, we’re going to do everything we can to help them find an audience through our audience.” I can’t articulate to you how rare that mindset is for a band their position. I wish it weren’t, but I would say rare almost to the point of being exclusive. I don’t really know any other bands that are as popular as they are that do the things they do.
PW: I would definitely agree. And the thing that I have found probably the most difficult about the entire situation is that lyrically based I think that there are people that just naturally assume that Jesse is an asshole when really it is the complete opposite from my experiences with him.
KD: Your experiences with him are true and correct and he — well I’m biased — he’s one of those five people you call when somebody in your family dies. Like this is somebody I’d get hit in the street by a car for if I knew it would help him be OK in some way.
Beyond all the things we just talked about, he’s one of my most trusted friends in the world. When someone has the audacity to come up to me and say, “Jesse Lacey’s a dick. Is that true?” I have a temper. I’m Irish and I come from an Irish family so my whole life is about suppressing that Irish temper, but when someone comes up and says something like that I’m like, “Yo dude fuck you.”
Or when someone says, “Why are you friends with him?” Why are you friends with your friends? Because you met them and you like them. It’s not a fucking mystery. How did you become friends with Jesse Lacey? Well there was a dowry and I paid his family $50,000 to let them be friends with me. But anyway, I love them and I love what he does and it rubs off on all of us.
I learn a lot from how those guys do things. I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that I think it’s true in reverse. They learn a lot from the people they bring out. I’ll tell you this. I sell 10,000 records the sell 3-500,000 records. They don’t treat me like that and vice versa and that’s the coolest thing in the whole world.
PW: In “Another Bag of Bones†you managed to hit on world politics and religion all on one song. Where did the inspiration for this song stem from?
KD: These days I have a bit more acceptance and surrender in my life, but I spent most of my 20s, I turn 29 tomorrow..I spent most of my 20s being really angry about all those things and I still am worried. I don’t know how you could not be worried. I’ve come to realize that my politics, or whatever the fuck you want to say, are more radical than the conversation that happens in this country about politics and that’s okay.
That’s not to say that there’s not good stuff from liberalism and the Democratic party. There are a lot of things that are immediately more helpful to people if a Democrat is in power: minimum wage and access to certain social aide. Certainly things like reproductive rights and stuff like that, but there’s a whole lot of stuff that they don’t even address. It’s not even discussed. It’s not on the table. Maybe there’s a rhetorical addressing of it.
The whole song started with, “it’s a brush fire spreading, feeding as it moves.†I was in California. It was 2007 and the brush fires were happening — they happen every 8 months. It was happening then and it just wiped out all these homes. The notion of fire starting here and nature raging down a hill taking out all this stuff seemed like a really apt metaphor for me for how everything seems to be happening in the world right now.
When you have a globalized communication system, a globalized economic system, a globalized military system and everything’s shrunk and everything affects everything, it’s the butterfly effect or whatever it’s called. Hummingbird effect. It’s one of those two. That was it and the song just started and it was like, “a derrrrrrr.” It’s certainly not an uplifiting song and it’s hard for me. It’s weird. I feel personally centered more than I ever have as an adult, but abstractly speaking there’s a lot of hope in this country right now and that’s great.
There’s a bookstore that’s a socialist/anarchist/feminist, whatever store in New York called Blue Stockings and on the day after the Obama election in the window of the storefront it said, “Great, now let’s get mobile!†and that’s how I feel about it. That’s symbolically important for a lot of reasons. That’s what I’ve been suggesting for a year and a half. I think when you end a song with, “It’s closer than you realize and it’s time to burn,†it probably doesn’t mean that you think things are that great.
What I can do is live really well as best I can in a small way, talk to people, listen to people, teach people, remain hopeful, live the best life I can live in the way I can live it because everything else is fucking bigger than me. I can say what I think and that song is what I think. If people miss the whole point and think it is a great rock song or it’s loud or it sounds like hip hop, because that’s what some dude told me, then that’s great. That’s awesome because I’m also trying to write songs that people like or that I like. I don’t want to end the interview on a note that’s depressing, that’s to me, that song comes from being really afraid, but I still have to live. I don’t want to live in fear all the time, you know?
PW: What should we expect in the future of Kevin Devine?
KD: The record. I’ll take some classes. I’m going to take some time off and audit a class. A writing class at my college, and do some stuff. Maybe get some work at a coffee shop and do some work that’s normal for the next four or five months and then I’ll probably be on tour from May to 2010 or something for this record.
PW: You’re regular 300 days of the year.
KD: Yeah. I’m going to Japan in February. I’m doing SXSW, but outside of those two trips, I’ll have the next four, almost four months off. So a lot of reading and watching DVDs and seeing my family.
PW: That doesn’t seem like a bad life.
KD: No, it’s fucking awesome.
PW: I will definitely see you at SXSW then.
KD: I’ll be there. Sorry if I talked too much.
Kevin Devine: website | myspace | Put Your Ghost To Rest review | @ north star bar | @ the picador | @ the troc balcony | interview with pt. I
Photo #1: Emily Driskill
Other photos: Jessica McGinley
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John Vanderslice
