Scott Avett starts the set solo with guitar while Seth moves across the stage empty handed, with vocals that ride piggy-back on Scott’s, as only a brother can do. Seth’s hand subconsciously strums his invisible guitar.
Bob Crawford joins the ensemble, whirling and dipping his upright bass like a dance partner, as “Shame,” from 2007’s Emotionalism, stirs the voracious crowd into a frenzy of arms swaying like the snakes on Medusa’s head
The Avett Brothers stomp and chomp at the bit with unbridled energy at this Saturday night show at the Paramount Center for the Arts in Bristol, Tenn. Scott and Seth’s right legs paw the ground, breaking into the signature Avett dancing gait. Bob bounces to the close, tight rhythms, heaving ecstatic fans into a kinetically executed momentum reined in by the next song. Stepping back from the mike, the crowd is calmed by a long interlude, pacification until the next song, “Signs,” released on the 2004 CD Mignonette.
Joe Kwon bounds in for the fifth song, holding his cello in the air and mouthing words to “Distraction # 74” from Four Thieves Gone, released in 2006. “It’s so nice to be down South with you all,” Scott says. “We love you, Avett Brothers!” the crowd sings back in unison.
Scott’s voice is wicked like a long pull of Southern Comfort, Seth’s a heady, clear sip of moonshine from a glass canning jar, as they sing “Living of Love,” from Emotionalism.
Later in the set, Scott sings the lyrics to one of the three unreleased songs, “Laundry Room.” Ever the quintessential artist, Scott motions with his hands and paints pictures in the air. “Ya’ll are just some sweet people, you know that?” Seth asks the crowd.
“Pretty Girl from Chile,” from Emotionalism, showcases Seth dancing a rumba with his guitar before giving Joe a quick hug, moving to the drums. Bob and Scott sizzle on electric guitars as Seth reaches his drumsticks to the heavens as the crescendo climaxes.
“I want to thank you guys for keeping us going,” Scott says, thumping his heart with his hand to signify love. The Avett Brothers exit the stage as the throng roars ear-splitting screams, hands bang the stage like a bongo, tribal chants of “Avett Brothers, Avett Brothers, Avett Brothers!” “Thank you so much,” Scott says as they return, Seth smiling beside him. “We’d love to play another song for you. We have a new record coming out in a few weeks and we’re going to play a new song for you,” He says. The crowd is rocked into a trance as Seth sings his tender-hearted song, “Tear Down the House,” from The Second Gleam.
“I love it already”, a fan yells, piercing the silence.
Not so fast,” Scott grins.
The rollicking song, “Go to Sleep,” from Emotionalism, ignites fans once more as Seth and Scott kick their legs into the air while Bob and Joe spring up and down, their instruments like pogo sticks.
One of Scott’s banjo picks slips from his finger. An ebullient young lady snatches it as it rolls by, turns it over and over in her hand as if discovering the Holy Grail.
Seth strides to front stage, claps his hands in the air as the crowd follows him like a game of Simon Says, clapping and singing the last verse to the song, “ La La La La La La La.” The fans continue singing the verse until the Avett Brothers return for a second encore, junkies needing just one more fix. The last song, the unreleased, “Late in Life,” ends as Scott braves a quick handshake with a few fans, narrowly escapes being kidnapped, and exits the stage behind Seth, who skips like the Pied Piper. Bob stays behind a few minutes, his aquamarine eyes glisten as he shakes hands and call the fans by name. Outside, hopeful fans hover near the tour bus, hoping and praying for autographs. Justin, a fan from Johnson City, Tenn. who designs posters for some of the Avett Brother shows, talks to a lingering group about an encounter with Scott.
“Scott said, ‘Well, it’s a real honor to have you do this for us,’” Justin says with astonishment. “Like it was him honoring me, instead of the other way around.”
Monday, July 28, 2008
Avett family home a storehouse for memories
An antiquated yellow lab and a frisky doberman pinscher are vociferous escorts to the front steps of the modest, wooden house se cured by a towering brick chimney standing sentinel to Jim and Susie Avett, parents of Scott and Seth. The living room is an humble assortment of the lares and pennants of Jim and Susie’s 40 years together. Scott’s oil portraits of he and his wife adorn the wall perpendicular to the bookshelf lined with Jim’s collection of vintage tomes. The 1930s upright piano where the Avett children practiced their lessons anchors the room, its high shelf supporting framed photographs of weddings and grandchildren.
A black woodstove squats catty-cornered, the backdrop for the “shows” that Scott, Seth and their older sister Bonnie rehearsed in their bedrooms and performed to their parents’ delight in the halcyon days of their childhood.
Jim Avett, a gifted singer/song writer himself and loquacious doyen to the Avett clan holds court in a chair in the middle of the room. “Our house is a refection of what’s im portant to us,” Jim says. “It was always important not to stifle the children’s creativity, which we may have overdone,” referring to walls sketched with portraits and song lyrics like hieroglyphics on primitive caves.
Jim removes Seth’s hand-drawn portrait of the family from the wall, all five family members smiling with their arms around each other. It is inscribed in Seth’s childish handwriting as “the best family in the world.”
“Family is the only thing that lasts over the years, and it should be the first,” says Jim. “Strong family ties are the best thing a parent can give a child. From those ties comes a life that will reach its potential.”
Jim and Susie moved to Concord from Wyoming to this rustic refuge ensconced by canopies of trees, given to them by the former tenant for “tax evaluations and lawyer’s fees.” Seth, the youngest of the Avett children, was four months old when they moved, “scraping his little legs on the concrete floor back before we had carpet,” Susie smiles.
Upstairs in Bonnie’s former room is a collection of Jim’s vintage guitars stacked like sardines, tagged like toes in a morgue with complete information about the purchase.
Jim unfolds one from its black case and holds it to his chest like a beloved child, strummming “My Grandfather’s Clock” before crooning Willie Nelson’s “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain.” “After forty-five years of playing the guitar, you’d think I’d be good at playing it,” he says self-effacingly. “I know a lot of songs, love to sing, and that’s why Scott and Seth let me hang around.”
The guitar evokes a sense memory. “I used to play the guitar for the kids a lot,” he recalls, “and one day Seth said, ‘Daddy, how do you do that?’ I taught him three chords; he went back in his room and shut the door. After a while he came running out saying, ‘Mama! Mama! Come listen to this!’” Seth bought his first electric guitar with the $30 he made picking three gallons of blackberries he sold for $10 each.
Jim says their passion for music started in their home. “We sang in the car, in the yard and in church. One Sunday, Scott was supposed to sing in church.” “The same church where their piano teacher went,” interjects Susie. “Well,” continues Jim. “Scott had a bad cold and we were wondering who was going to sing. Seth raised his hand up and said, ‘I’ll do it!’ He’d been listen ing to Scott practice and he just got right there and sang his little heart out.”
Jim says Scott started with the piano, then the guitar, then the banjo.
“Scott doesn’t play like Earl Scruggs; he plays how he wants to play. This is how music progresses. We don’t all play or think the same way — the music comes out of our instruments. If the music’s bad, we’ll pick on the front porch. If it’s good, people will seek you out to hear it. “We wanted the kids to be influenced by Southern gospel because it’s the highest of highs and the lowest of lows, the most absolute, accurate and correct way of living,” says Jim, the son of a Methodist minister. “Last Christmas we sat here in the living room and for three days we had people come in and out to record seventeen gospel tunes. So when we’re dead and gone the children can master it down and keep it for posterity. Seth is in charge of it now.”
The first gig as the Avett Brothers with Scott, Seth and Bob Crawford was performed on a steaming slab of concrete with bandanas tucked in back pockets to wipe sweat from their brows at the local Wine Vault. Jim recalls, “The first night the owner paid them fifty bucks, the next time they played to a larger crowd for about two hundred. Scott and Seth said they’d come back to play but wanted four hundred.
“The guy said, ‘Nobody in Charlotte is gonna pay you four hundred dollars.’” Scott said, “We’ll see, you may be right.” “My sons are not presumptuous,” Jim says, “but the next gig they did paid five hundred dolllars.
“A couple of years ago, they played for a group of music executives in Nashville,” Jim continues. “They said it was the first new music that’s come to Nashville in the last thirty years. They compared their harmonies to the tight, close harmonies of the Louvin Brothers and the Everly Brothers. It was the finest compliments as far as harmonies go. “Scott and Seth’s tight harmonies come from being brothers with the same DNA. You can hear and match up better than anyone. You have the same stuff in your blood. Growing up, you could see the glee in their eyes when they were hitting it.”
That creative strand of DNA comes from Jim, who plays music every Tuesday and Thursday nights in Concord. He occasionally appears on stage with his sons singing the song “Signs,” recorded with Greensboro’s legendary guitarist Scott Manring in 1972 in an abandoned house off Friendly Avenue in Greensboro.
“Seth came in one day and asked me if I had a copy of ‘Signs.’ I said I didn’t. He asked if I could write the lyrics down, so I did sitting right there at the kitchen table. He used that with my block handwriting on the jacket cover with the songs they wrote on Mignonette,” Jim says.
Outside in the sweltering July heat, Jim and Susie stroll to the colossal barn, a bucolic backdrop to the property they just handed over to their children a couple of months ago. Corpulent cows moo as Jim schleps in barnyard muck, pointing to an upstairs room where Scott and Seth jumped as kids into fragrant stacks of hay.
Scott’s old, white pickup truck hunkers underneath the other side of the barn, the back window garnished with an ECU sticker opposite a Nemo insignia.
Scott was an arts and communications major at East Carolina University. Seth majored in printmaking at the University of Charlotte.
Back-tracking past the house Jim and Susie turn by the chicken coop, constructed be cause Scott and Seth’s wives declared, “If we are going to live on a farm we should have chickens.”
The family’s RV stoops beside a tall, brown building that houses Jim’s tools from his welding business where Scott and Seth worked summers when they weren’t scrapping commercial jobs with landscapers and carpet cleaners.
A large, grassy field is dotted with a veritable car show: A blue 1967 Impala crouches under an awning sharing company with Seth’s ’64 Ford; a senescent emerald-green van plastered with peeling stickers and a metal Jesus emblem rests after years of road trips with the band. “I like old music, old cars and old women,” Jim jokes.
“Bout twelve to fourteen years ago Seth and I went to an auto auction and I bought a 1964 Ford, mainly because Seth liked the car at least as much as I did. After much effort was put into the old car, it began to be a pleasure to drive, which Seth did daily, although he had a pretty ragged 1963 Ford of his own. Somehow he ended up owning my really solid ’64, and I ended up with his less-than-solid ’63 model. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Sitting back in his chair in the living room, Jim reflects on the Avett Brothers’ decision to sign a deal with American/ Columbia Records, working with nation ally acclaimed producer, Rick Rubin. “You have to position yourself to move on, to be in the right place at the right time and strike when the iron is hot,” Jim explains. “The idea is to move on toward the goal, which has always been getting the band’s music ever more refined and presentable to the audience. The next rung on this ladder is working with the absolutely best in the busi ness, and they are lucky to be doing just that. We’ll always be grateful for the successes the band has had and the continuance of this journey. Seth wanted to write something online so their fans don’t think they sold out. These days’ record companies have keys to doors where you don’t even know where the door is. They can grease the tracks. They got what they wanted in terms of protect ing the integrity of the band,” Jim says.
Jim and Susie say there’s been some talk about a possible Pacific Rim tour, including Australia and Japan.
“Susie and I always tried to expose them to life choices — you don’t know what you’re missing until you see the world,” Jim says.
Recently, after a show at Bonnaroo, Seth, Scott and Bob stayed over night so they could eat at the legend ary Pancake Pantry in Nashville. “There was a girl who’s a friend of theirs talking to them. She walked away and country singer Keith Urban stopped her, and said, ‘Hey, are you with the Avett Brothers?’” says Jim.
“A couple of years ago Seth asked me how he and Scott could ever pay us back. ‘Boy,’ I said, ‘I’m not keeping a running tab. If I die right now, you’ve paid me back,’” says Jim. “’Every time I see someone out in the audience that really listens to you, it pays me back.’”
A black woodstove squats catty-cornered, the backdrop for the “shows” that Scott, Seth and their older sister Bonnie rehearsed in their bedrooms and performed to their parents’ delight in the halcyon days of their childhood.
Jim Avett, a gifted singer/song writer himself and loquacious doyen to the Avett clan holds court in a chair in the middle of the room. “Our house is a refection of what’s im portant to us,” Jim says. “It was always important not to stifle the children’s creativity, which we may have overdone,” referring to walls sketched with portraits and song lyrics like hieroglyphics on primitive caves.
Jim removes Seth’s hand-drawn portrait of the family from the wall, all five family members smiling with their arms around each other. It is inscribed in Seth’s childish handwriting as “the best family in the world.”
“Family is the only thing that lasts over the years, and it should be the first,” says Jim. “Strong family ties are the best thing a parent can give a child. From those ties comes a life that will reach its potential.”
Jim and Susie moved to Concord from Wyoming to this rustic refuge ensconced by canopies of trees, given to them by the former tenant for “tax evaluations and lawyer’s fees.” Seth, the youngest of the Avett children, was four months old when they moved, “scraping his little legs on the concrete floor back before we had carpet,” Susie smiles.
Upstairs in Bonnie’s former room is a collection of Jim’s vintage guitars stacked like sardines, tagged like toes in a morgue with complete information about the purchase.
Jim unfolds one from its black case and holds it to his chest like a beloved child, strummming “My Grandfather’s Clock” before crooning Willie Nelson’s “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain.” “After forty-five years of playing the guitar, you’d think I’d be good at playing it,” he says self-effacingly. “I know a lot of songs, love to sing, and that’s why Scott and Seth let me hang around.”
The guitar evokes a sense memory. “I used to play the guitar for the kids a lot,” he recalls, “and one day Seth said, ‘Daddy, how do you do that?’ I taught him three chords; he went back in his room and shut the door. After a while he came running out saying, ‘Mama! Mama! Come listen to this!’” Seth bought his first electric guitar with the $30 he made picking three gallons of blackberries he sold for $10 each.
Jim says their passion for music started in their home. “We sang in the car, in the yard and in church. One Sunday, Scott was supposed to sing in church.” “The same church where their piano teacher went,” interjects Susie. “Well,” continues Jim. “Scott had a bad cold and we were wondering who was going to sing. Seth raised his hand up and said, ‘I’ll do it!’ He’d been listen ing to Scott practice and he just got right there and sang his little heart out.”
Jim says Scott started with the piano, then the guitar, then the banjo.
“Scott doesn’t play like Earl Scruggs; he plays how he wants to play. This is how music progresses. We don’t all play or think the same way — the music comes out of our instruments. If the music’s bad, we’ll pick on the front porch. If it’s good, people will seek you out to hear it. “We wanted the kids to be influenced by Southern gospel because it’s the highest of highs and the lowest of lows, the most absolute, accurate and correct way of living,” says Jim, the son of a Methodist minister. “Last Christmas we sat here in the living room and for three days we had people come in and out to record seventeen gospel tunes. So when we’re dead and gone the children can master it down and keep it for posterity. Seth is in charge of it now.”
The first gig as the Avett Brothers with Scott, Seth and Bob Crawford was performed on a steaming slab of concrete with bandanas tucked in back pockets to wipe sweat from their brows at the local Wine Vault. Jim recalls, “The first night the owner paid them fifty bucks, the next time they played to a larger crowd for about two hundred. Scott and Seth said they’d come back to play but wanted four hundred.
“The guy said, ‘Nobody in Charlotte is gonna pay you four hundred dollars.’” Scott said, “We’ll see, you may be right.” “My sons are not presumptuous,” Jim says, “but the next gig they did paid five hundred dolllars.
“A couple of years ago, they played for a group of music executives in Nashville,” Jim continues. “They said it was the first new music that’s come to Nashville in the last thirty years. They compared their harmonies to the tight, close harmonies of the Louvin Brothers and the Everly Brothers. It was the finest compliments as far as harmonies go. “Scott and Seth’s tight harmonies come from being brothers with the same DNA. You can hear and match up better than anyone. You have the same stuff in your blood. Growing up, you could see the glee in their eyes when they were hitting it.”
That creative strand of DNA comes from Jim, who plays music every Tuesday and Thursday nights in Concord. He occasionally appears on stage with his sons singing the song “Signs,” recorded with Greensboro’s legendary guitarist Scott Manring in 1972 in an abandoned house off Friendly Avenue in Greensboro.
“Seth came in one day and asked me if I had a copy of ‘Signs.’ I said I didn’t. He asked if I could write the lyrics down, so I did sitting right there at the kitchen table. He used that with my block handwriting on the jacket cover with the songs they wrote on Mignonette,” Jim says.
Outside in the sweltering July heat, Jim and Susie stroll to the colossal barn, a bucolic backdrop to the property they just handed over to their children a couple of months ago. Corpulent cows moo as Jim schleps in barnyard muck, pointing to an upstairs room where Scott and Seth jumped as kids into fragrant stacks of hay.
Scott’s old, white pickup truck hunkers underneath the other side of the barn, the back window garnished with an ECU sticker opposite a Nemo insignia.
Scott was an arts and communications major at East Carolina University. Seth majored in printmaking at the University of Charlotte.
Back-tracking past the house Jim and Susie turn by the chicken coop, constructed be cause Scott and Seth’s wives declared, “If we are going to live on a farm we should have chickens.”
The family’s RV stoops beside a tall, brown building that houses Jim’s tools from his welding business where Scott and Seth worked summers when they weren’t scrapping commercial jobs with landscapers and carpet cleaners.
A large, grassy field is dotted with a veritable car show: A blue 1967 Impala crouches under an awning sharing company with Seth’s ’64 Ford; a senescent emerald-green van plastered with peeling stickers and a metal Jesus emblem rests after years of road trips with the band. “I like old music, old cars and old women,” Jim jokes.
“Bout twelve to fourteen years ago Seth and I went to an auto auction and I bought a 1964 Ford, mainly because Seth liked the car at least as much as I did. After much effort was put into the old car, it began to be a pleasure to drive, which Seth did daily, although he had a pretty ragged 1963 Ford of his own. Somehow he ended up owning my really solid ’64, and I ended up with his less-than-solid ’63 model. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Sitting back in his chair in the living room, Jim reflects on the Avett Brothers’ decision to sign a deal with American/ Columbia Records, working with nation ally acclaimed producer, Rick Rubin. “You have to position yourself to move on, to be in the right place at the right time and strike when the iron is hot,” Jim explains. “The idea is to move on toward the goal, which has always been getting the band’s music ever more refined and presentable to the audience. The next rung on this ladder is working with the absolutely best in the busi ness, and they are lucky to be doing just that. We’ll always be grateful for the successes the band has had and the continuance of this journey. Seth wanted to write something online so their fans don’t think they sold out. These days’ record companies have keys to doors where you don’t even know where the door is. They can grease the tracks. They got what they wanted in terms of protect ing the integrity of the band,” Jim says.
Jim and Susie say there’s been some talk about a possible Pacific Rim tour, including Australia and Japan.
“Susie and I always tried to expose them to life choices — you don’t know what you’re missing until you see the world,” Jim says.
Recently, after a show at Bonnaroo, Seth, Scott and Bob stayed over night so they could eat at the legend ary Pancake Pantry in Nashville. “There was a girl who’s a friend of theirs talking to them. She walked away and country singer Keith Urban stopped her, and said, ‘Hey, are you with the Avett Brothers?’” says Jim.
“A couple of years ago Seth asked me how he and Scott could ever pay us back. ‘Boy,’ I said, ‘I’m not keeping a running tab. If I die right now, you’ve paid me back,’” says Jim. “’Every time I see someone out in the audience that really listens to you, it pays me back.’”
Miles of conversation on the road with the Avetts
The low, steady rumble of tour-bus tires on the highway is white noise, a smooth and steady backdrop to Seth Avett’s easy laugh and languid Southern drawl.
The Avett Brothers are headed to New York, traversing a route from West Coast to East Coast, miles away from the red clay of their stomping grounds in Concord.
On Tuesday the Avett Brothers released their new EP, The Second Gleam, a glittering gem with slow, meandering songs that tumble through a stream of nostalgia, sentimentality and most of all, love. The Second Gleam supersedes its older sibling, The Gleam, released in 2006, in the compelling nature of the songs, solid and thoughtful hallmarks to the men who’ve experienced both joy and sorrow. Though, like brothers, they are each special in their own way, The Second Gleam and The Gleam are perfect bookends.
The first song, “Tear Down the House,” is one Seth says is “about seeing changes around you.” The lyrics exclaim: “Tear down the house that I grew up in/ I’ll never be the same again.”
Though the house where the Avett children — Bonnie, Scott and Seth — grew up in still stands, Seth says the song “is more about how the older you get the landscape of your life changes, history come undone.”
Seth’s older brother, Scott, sings the second track, “Murdered in the City,” a song about how much Scott would want his family to know he loves them if he should die. “I wonder which brother is better,” Scott sings. “Which one my parents loved the most. I sure did get in lots of trouble; they seemed to let the other go.” Seth laughs about being the baby in the family, saying, “Well you learn a lot from those who come before you. You learn what to do and not do.” “Bella Donna,” a poignant love song sung in Seth’s high, lonesome voice, “was definitely inspired by someone. It was definitely written from experience. You have a better chance of clarity because it’s something you’ve been through. It’s rooted in personal experience.”
“Bella Donna” was originally released in 2005 as “Darling,” on one of three CDs Seth recorded, on a cassette player in his bedroom. Seth says the decision to include it on The Second Gleam is “because we try not to put songs in shackles. We try to allow the songs to become what they’re supposed to be without us being in the way.” Seth adds that there are plans to re release the “Darling” CDs in a “more masterful way.” Scott sings the fourth song, “The Greatest Sum,” his voice gravelly with emotion as he vows, “Not even the clouds, not even the past, not even the hands of God can hold me back from you.” Five out of six songs on The Second Gleam are about love. In “Tear Down the House,” Seth sings about crying over a girl who broke his heart, “not just crying but collapsing and screaming at the moon.
“Love is very obviously the most important thing,” Seth explains. “Hopefully it comes from some sort of blessing of clarity. Love is the good side, where the light comes from. We try to appreciate that and communicate it as well as we can, There are enough facets of love to write it in a number of songs. We feel it should be championed to the fullest extent possible.”
The last song on the EP, “Souls on Wheels,” is sung by Seth. “Souls like wheels/ turning, taking us with wind at our heels/ turning, making us decide on what we’re giving/ changing this way we’re living.”
Seth says this song’s “aim is to be presented as a transition song, a desire for rebirth, a major chance to put your old self away and allow your new self to come in. It considers experiences that are fiery and very intense that make you question what you’re made of, who you want to be, and how you’re going to change.”
The Avett Brothers are in a prolific period of songwriting, like cauldrons of hot water, spilling songs faster than the heat can be turned down. “We have a lot to draw from the well,”
Seth says. “At the moment there are a lot of songs occurring. That may not always be the case and we want to take advantage of it while we can. It’s important to have the tools to finish an idea. You have to write it down then record it or you’ll forget it. We try our best to dedicate the time to our ideas. All three of us write anywhere and everywhere. We always carry sketchbooks and journal recordings.”
Seth says he was talking to his wife on the phone one day and “a melody cameto me in the middle of the conversation. I asked my wife if I could call her back. She said that would be fine. So I wrote it down real quick and called her back.” All three Avett Brothers are married and spend about a hundred days on the road. “We’re doing well with it now, but in the future we’d like to get it down to about sixty days away,” he says. “We spent the first seven years on the road in very uncomfortable cars or riding in vans with trailers hitched to the back,” Seth says. “We’re glad and proud to ride in this lifestyle.”
The Avett Brothers are headed to New York, traversing a route from West Coast to East Coast, miles away from the red clay of their stomping grounds in Concord.
On Tuesday the Avett Brothers released their new EP, The Second Gleam, a glittering gem with slow, meandering songs that tumble through a stream of nostalgia, sentimentality and most of all, love. The Second Gleam supersedes its older sibling, The Gleam, released in 2006, in the compelling nature of the songs, solid and thoughtful hallmarks to the men who’ve experienced both joy and sorrow. Though, like brothers, they are each special in their own way, The Second Gleam and The Gleam are perfect bookends.
The first song, “Tear Down the House,” is one Seth says is “about seeing changes around you.” The lyrics exclaim: “Tear down the house that I grew up in/ I’ll never be the same again.”
Though the house where the Avett children — Bonnie, Scott and Seth — grew up in still stands, Seth says the song “is more about how the older you get the landscape of your life changes, history come undone.”
Seth’s older brother, Scott, sings the second track, “Murdered in the City,” a song about how much Scott would want his family to know he loves them if he should die. “I wonder which brother is better,” Scott sings. “Which one my parents loved the most. I sure did get in lots of trouble; they seemed to let the other go.” Seth laughs about being the baby in the family, saying, “Well you learn a lot from those who come before you. You learn what to do and not do.” “Bella Donna,” a poignant love song sung in Seth’s high, lonesome voice, “was definitely inspired by someone. It was definitely written from experience. You have a better chance of clarity because it’s something you’ve been through. It’s rooted in personal experience.”
“Bella Donna” was originally released in 2005 as “Darling,” on one of three CDs Seth recorded, on a cassette player in his bedroom. Seth says the decision to include it on The Second Gleam is “because we try not to put songs in shackles. We try to allow the songs to become what they’re supposed to be without us being in the way.” Seth adds that there are plans to re release the “Darling” CDs in a “more masterful way.” Scott sings the fourth song, “The Greatest Sum,” his voice gravelly with emotion as he vows, “Not even the clouds, not even the past, not even the hands of God can hold me back from you.” Five out of six songs on The Second Gleam are about love. In “Tear Down the House,” Seth sings about crying over a girl who broke his heart, “not just crying but collapsing and screaming at the moon.
“Love is very obviously the most important thing,” Seth explains. “Hopefully it comes from some sort of blessing of clarity. Love is the good side, where the light comes from. We try to appreciate that and communicate it as well as we can, There are enough facets of love to write it in a number of songs. We feel it should be championed to the fullest extent possible.”
The last song on the EP, “Souls on Wheels,” is sung by Seth. “Souls like wheels/ turning, taking us with wind at our heels/ turning, making us decide on what we’re giving/ changing this way we’re living.”
Seth says this song’s “aim is to be presented as a transition song, a desire for rebirth, a major chance to put your old self away and allow your new self to come in. It considers experiences that are fiery and very intense that make you question what you’re made of, who you want to be, and how you’re going to change.”
The Avett Brothers are in a prolific period of songwriting, like cauldrons of hot water, spilling songs faster than the heat can be turned down. “We have a lot to draw from the well,”
Seth says. “At the moment there are a lot of songs occurring. That may not always be the case and we want to take advantage of it while we can. It’s important to have the tools to finish an idea. You have to write it down then record it or you’ll forget it. We try our best to dedicate the time to our ideas. All three of us write anywhere and everywhere. We always carry sketchbooks and journal recordings.”
Seth says he was talking to his wife on the phone one day and “a melody cameto me in the middle of the conversation. I asked my wife if I could call her back. She said that would be fine. So I wrote it down real quick and called her back.” All three Avett Brothers are married and spend about a hundred days on the road. “We’re doing well with it now, but in the future we’d like to get it down to about sixty days away,” he says. “We spent the first seven years on the road in very uncomfortable cars or riding in vans with trailers hitched to the back,” Seth says. “We’re glad and proud to ride in this lifestyle.”
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Ramseur Records triples up, loses a headliner
Dolphus Ramseur, head of Ramseur Records in Concord, N.C., has hit the pay streak with the July 22nd, 2008 release of the Avett Brothers new EP, The Second Gleam, along with Samantha Crain and the Midnight Shivers first EP, The Confiscation, and Sammy Walker’s album, Misfit Scarecrow.
Dolphus is a prospector of bands, mining his claims with extremely fertile hands, picking gold from crevices with knives and spoons, picks and shovels.
He discovered the bedrock band of Ramseur Records, the Avett Brothers, playing an outdoor gig in their hometown of Concord, a serendipitous meeting that shifted the plate tectonics of Ramseur Records.
“I knew the Avett Brothers had something special,” Dolphus says. “I felt we could help each other out.”
Dolphus’ path from mill town to gold mine began when an early talent for
tennis lowered the moat and opened the castle door for this young man whose parents were the first of three generations to escape the drudgery of mill work.
Traveling the world in the 1970’s as a one-time junior tennis champion, Dolphus visited every record store he could, collecting music and developing relationships with the people who worked there.
A big fan of 70’s and 80’s post-punk music, led to a fortuitous meeting with English singer/songwriter Martin Stephenson who was interested in artists from North Carolina such as Doc Watson and Charlie Poole.
Martin visited Dolphus in Concord, recording with North Carolina musicians such as Sammy Walker, Etta Baker spawning hobby in 2000 that became Ramseur Records in 2000 with their first release, a spiritual collection by Charlotte based songwriter David Childers.
Sadly, the death of Dolphus’ father-in-law, with whom he’d been working with coincided with the Avett Brothers first release, A Carolina Jubilee.
Dolphus decided to make Ramseur Records his full-time career. Taking out a $15,000 line of credit, he knew he had to “sink or swim.”
“I was doing it all,” he says” I was putting out the records, booking all the shows, and moving furniture on the side just to put food on the table.”
“One day Scott Avett called me on the phone while I was moving furniture. He could hear me huffing and puffing. I had to confess that I was doing it just to make ends meet.”
“Scott said something like, “Well now I’m fired up! We’ll all keep working hard and we’ll make it. He put a lot of faith in me.”
Dolphus and the Avett Brothers struck gold when they were selected to play at Merlefest in 2004.
“I knew if I could get them to the festival people would remember three words, The Avett Brothers.”
“I like bands that are honest and real with songs people can connect with,” he says. “If something sort of touches me or moves me, I want to share it with others.”
Dolphus works like a cradler to his bands, rocking and guiding the everyday chores of the cradle box with one while pouring the sluice of total artistic freedom with the other.
“If they want to bark in a trashcan, we’ll put it out,” he laughs. “I trust them to put it out and they do.”
Ramseur Records is unique in the rapprochement Dolphus has created with his bands and with the people he works with whose lucky heads have been knighted by Dolphus’own brand of Excalibur.
“My label hasn’t been as lucrative as some but I’m in a great position of surrounding myself with people I really like and want to be around. Sadly, a lot of people work with people they don’t really like all of their lives, never seeing their families. I’m in a good position to be with people I really want to be with.”
Dolphus and his wife Dana’s two young sons help Dolphus out during the day, whistling to tunes like “Traipsing through the Aisles,” by Samantha Crain, the newest and youngest member of the Ramseur family.
“I trust their ears better than mine,” Dolph says. “Kids can usually cut to the core and spot something good.”
Dolphus’ eyes widen as he describes the anticipation Ramseur Records three new releases in July 22, 2008.
“All three projects are special because they’re so different in nature, but are all heartfelt music.”
“Sammy Walker is a forgotten folk singer, Samantha Crain is young and hungry, and the Avett Brothers have kept the ball rolling.”
Dolphus says that although the success of the Avett Brothers has “been a plus, we still conduct business the same Ramseur way by winning over one fan at a time.
Ramseur Records will continue to manage the Avett Brothers and is supportive of their decision to sign with American/Columbia Records.
“We are much honored to be joining the team over an American/Columbia. With Rick Rubin producing, I feel that we have found a great home for the guys in which they can expand on their artistic creativity. With the Avett Brothers and Ramseur Records, it has always been and will always be about the art. We have never put our billfolds in front of the artistic vision that we have shared. We are very lucky to have someone like Rich who also wants to share in this vision and help with his vast knowledge and experience,” says Dolphus.
Originally Published in Yes! Weekly
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Samantha Crain parks at the Garage
Stepping across the street from the Garage in Winston-Salem last Friday night to discuss her new EP, The Confiscation, Samantha Crain, is stopped at the door by the bartender.
"I'm sorry," he says. "We don't allow children in here."
Blinks of surprise follow reassurances that Crain, a petite, full-lipped beauty with a brunette braid coiled around one shoulder, is indeed 21 years old.
She is the youngest and newest member of Ramseur Records, a Concord, NC-based record label managing stanchion bands such as the Avett Brothers and the everybodyfields. She and her band, the Midnight Shivers, are also recipients of the Oklahoma Gazette's 2008 Woody Award for best folk band. Further lifting the wings of this phoenix of a band is the honor of having a day officially dedicated to Samantha by the mayor of her hometown, Shawnee, Ok.
"It was really cool to receive the award in the spirit of Woody Guthrie because he is the epitome of Oklahoma," says Crain.
She has been writing stories since she was a child in composition notebooks her parents supplied.
"As soon as I could write stories about people, I did. I was quite the little liar and exaggerator and still am," she says with a smile.
The Confiscation is a compilation of five short stories Crain wrote and turned into songs. Each song has a different narrator expounding themes of betrayal, redemption and good versus evil.
In the process of taking the EP to the next level, she e-mailed Dolphus Ramseur, president of Ramseur Records about the possibility of opening for the Avett Brothers.
As the winds of fate and serendipity blow, Crain says she and Dolphus Ramseur, head of Ramseur Records, "found each other."
"We just started talking and everything fell into place," she says. "He's more interested in the long career than the fast buck."
Jacob Edwards, on drums, coined the name the Midnight Shivers, "because they needed something that evoked nighttime whisky drinking and front-porch smoking." He's joined by Andy Tanz on bass and back-up vocals and, for the tour, Nate Hendrix on electric guitar. The Midnight Shivers anchor the traditional folk-rock rhythms and steer Crain's Dylanesque acoustic guitar and harmonica duets.
Samantha's youthful appearance is in direct contrast to her velvety, sonorous voice thick with flavors of dark chocolate, licorice and nutmeg, melded with a unique blend of round vowels.
"As a child I had a lisp or a speech impediment," she explains. "I was from a family that was either very eloquent of had a very Southern drawl.
"When I sing I can make up words that sound like how I want them to be. Words are things that I experiment with. I can rhyme and mold anything together and I never sing the same song the same way. The tone and timbre is me but it's a whole new game each time.
Samantha Crain & the Midnight Shivers' 12-song set struck all the right notes, fusing a palpable collaboration of bands such as the Grateful Dead, Radiohead, Bob Dylan and the Band, all musical influences.
Four songs from The Confiscation were featured beginning with "Beloved, We Have Been Expired," a weary resignation of love's flame burning low, of "being the forgotten change in the pocket of your old winter coat." Crain explains the verse of this song: "The floors I sleep on at night, they speak to me. Their strange voices tell me all thing true.They say if something's dead, it's dead. There's no reviving it, just bury it and move on."
"Two years go when we started touring we slept on floors anywhere we could," she says. "I would lie on the hard floor and think about everything. I had really good therapy sessions, imagining hands coming out of the floor for a massage. Floors were the source I could go to to figure things out."
"Traipsing Through the Aisles," is a pulsing, surprisingly happy-go-lucky, shrug-of-the-shoulders song despite the theme of remorse as thick as a wet wool blanket.
"I'm lost inside my home and my clothes, in the rows of my mind and I know it's not a sign I just messed up this time.
"I did something wrong." The tenth song plays possum with the crowd, the band pretending to fumble for a song as the singer's back is turned, when in fact she swivels around with harmonica to lips, blasting the audience with all the vehemence of a Southern Baptist preacher pummeling his fist on the pulpit and spitting warnings of fire and brimstone.
"The River," conjures grim images of a man around town that discovers little girls playing beside a river.
"When he finds them the rest makes me shiver, he holds them down when their feet won't reach the ground and he waits for the struggle to end." Crain says this song was inspired by a Flannery O'Connor story of the same name that she and two friends read and decided to write their own version. Crain decided for her story that the man is purged of guilt and repents by agreeing to be baptized in the river where, "the preacher holds him down when his feet won't reach the ground and he waits for judgment to come, yes he waits for the Lord's will to be done."
"Writing is a meditation for me," she says. "I sit down and the chord progressions just sort of happen. The melodies are in my head. I keep journal entries in images. The best songs are the ones you can feel, see and smell."
When asked why only five of the twelve lyrical miracles performed Friday night were released as an EP instead of a complete CD, she responds with a lightening bolt of bare truth.
"I only had five-hundred dollars," she says. "That's how much it costs to record five songs.
Originally Published in Yes! Weekly
Monday, May 26, 2008
Sam Quinn's Posthumous visit with Gram Parsons
Sam Quinn and his band, the everybodyfields, recently stayed at The Joshua Tree Inn, where legendary singer/songwriter Gram Parsons died from an overdose of drugs and alcohol in 1973 at the age of 26.
Sam , Jill Andrews, Josh Oliver, and Tom Pryor, comprise the everybodyfields, whose music has been described as, "a fresh set of fingerprints in the archives of bluegrass, country, and folk, music." The band was touring the west coast, or "left coast", as Sam likes to say , when Sam and Josh found out they were booked to stay at The Joshua Tree Inn.
The Joshua Tree Inn is a simple but mythical motel in California, about 140 miles east of Los Angeles.It was popular in the fifties for Hollywood rabble rousers and trendy in the seventies for rockers and celebrities. These days, the main attraction is room number eight, where thousands of fans pilgrimage every year to pay homage to Gram Parsons.
"I've been a huge Gram Parsons fan since I was eighteen," says Sam, who turns twenty-eight in April, 2008. "It was really far out to find out we would be staying in the Joshua Tree Inn. I had just waked up in our van about a mile away. I knew we would be in the vicinity, but sharing a wall with Gram, no, not a chance."
"We walk in and the lady at the front desk, gives me a key to room number 7, the room next to the one Gram died in," says Sam. "There was a concrete slab in front of room number eight with beer and liquor bottles, an old busted up guitar, and Mexican candles on it."
"The room was the same as when Gram died in it. It was like a shrine to him with CD's and a log book where could write notes about Gram. There was a painted sign that said, Safe at Home. (Safe at Home was the title of Gram's one- album novelty with The International Submarine Band.)
The Joshua Tree Inn is said to be "the final resting place" of Gram's spirit. Global traveler's leave tales in the eulogy book attesting to "feeling" Gram's spirit in the room or experiencing odd incidences. One guest recorded, "Richard asked Gram to give us a sign, and the radio came blaring at us with country music at 2:39 a.m."
Possibly the most moving entry is that of Gram Parsons daughter, Polly, whom he saw little of during the seven years he was her father, wrote, "I know your beautiful angel wings must reach far across the desert when you soar…for here you will always be truly safe at home."
"I closed my eyes and thought about all the things that led up to his death,' says Sam. "I thought, man, there's been some abuse in this room. It was kind of creepy being in a room where somebody has died."
Sam didn't put any tokens on Gram's shrine but "went back to room number 7 and drank lots of beer. I figured Gram would want me not to waste beer."
Gram Parsons "cosmic American music," a blend of country and rock, inspired musical giants such as The Eagles, Jackson Browne, and Dwight Yoakum. Thirty three years after his death, Grams' genius ripples through time, influencing bands such as the everybodyfields, the Jayhawks, and Wilco.
Gram Parsons was born Ingram Cecil Connor III, in Waycross, Georgia, on November 5, 1946. His family was extremely wealthy and cursed with tragedy.
Gram adored Elvis Presley as a boy, the Journeymen as a teenager, and Merle Haggard and Buck Owens as a young man.
He was a beautiful boy with an inordinate intelligence, dangerous charisma, and a passion for music. The girls loved him.
Gram made a single-record with The Byrds, two albums with the Flying Burrito Brothers, and two solo albums, GP and Grievous Angel. All sold poorly during his life but gained notoriety after his death.
Gram's posthumous fame was due partly to the media attention of his "partial cremation," in the Joshua Tree National Park, where road manager, Phil Kaufman, stole Gram's casket, took it to Joshua Tree National Park, and ignited with kerosene as a pact he and Gram had made.
Sam and Tom were bewitched with the Joshua Tree National Park.
"Spending time out in that desert was some of the most amazing times I've ever spent. It ups the ante for being out there, the terrain and the atmosphere trying to take your moisture out of you."
In the biography of Gram Parsons life, Twenty Thousand Roads, author David N. Meyers describes the desert as "like no other." "Joshua Trees are large, slow-growing yuccas that are remarkably humanoid in shape and evocation. Dotting the Park are enormous piles of softly rounded boulders that, like the Joshua Trees, seem somehow animated. They form phantasmagorical shapes against the Park's infinite blue sky and deep silences. Joshua Tree feels like the end of the world, but a benign one."
Sam says that he and Tom" went out for two days in a row, hiking and sitting on rocks so high that the trees in the desert looked like nipples. Every now and then we'd run into a purple cactus. It was so magical. We were both completely floored. It was beautiful, so much light. Everything wanted to stick, poke, or bite you."
"Being there was like a re-start button on life. People were so laid back. It is an artists' community. We could hear crows out there and you could hear the wind off their wings."
"When we left, we got back in the van and rode for ten hours. I took a lot of notes and got some tunes together. It was the right place and right time for every thing to gel. I could clean out the cobwebs instead of getting marred down in the things that don't matter."
Gram Parsons often visited the desert to fuel his creativity and find solace from the many demons that tormented him. Suicide, depression, and alcoholism ran like threads on the underside of a tapestry through his family, weaving generations of dysfunction.
Like the lyrics to Sam's song, "Aeroplane," from the everybodyfields CD, Nothing is Okay, "what holds me up is going to burn me in the turn around," so did Gram's final hours at the Joshua Tree Inn surrounded by the desert he so loved.
"I have a big spot in my heart for Gram," says Sam. "GP and the Grievous Angel was my favorite CD. The more I listened the more I found to listen to. "We'll Sweep out the Ashes," was a big one."
"I was coming to grips from growing up in Eastern Tennessee. I was trying to shake that off, getting out of "Po-Dunk," town. It hit me around the time I left there that I was ashamed that I thought that for so long. It was a rite of passage."
Gram Parsons made country music cool in a time when some people considered country singers on the same level as white trash red-necks.
"Gram was a piss and vinegar kind of guy, a show boat who had a lot of issues, but when he opened his mouth, he really showed up", Sam says. " He was such a good singer. He wrote some amazing chord changes. The song, "She," was such a vocal showcase for Gram. This performance of this song is insanely good."
"One time somebody came up to me after a show we did. I was standing next to Jill, who's usually the one who people say her song really touched them. This guy comes up to me and said, "Yeah, that song really touched me. You've become everything to be a country music singer. It was one of the best compliments I've ever had."
Sam says, "It's the soul that comes out, not the notes or timbre. That's what Gram had. It resonates with me. Those twangy songs spoke to me on a primordial level. They got under my skin. He is so cool and always will be."
The Joshua Tree Inn is for sale for two million dollars.
Sam , Jill Andrews, Josh Oliver, and Tom Pryor, comprise the everybodyfields, whose music has been described as, "a fresh set of fingerprints in the archives of bluegrass, country, and folk, music." The band was touring the west coast, or "left coast", as Sam likes to say , when Sam and Josh found out they were booked to stay at The Joshua Tree Inn.
The Joshua Tree Inn is a simple but mythical motel in California, about 140 miles east of Los Angeles.It was popular in the fifties for Hollywood rabble rousers and trendy in the seventies for rockers and celebrities. These days, the main attraction is room number eight, where thousands of fans pilgrimage every year to pay homage to Gram Parsons.
"I've been a huge Gram Parsons fan since I was eighteen," says Sam, who turns twenty-eight in April, 2008. "It was really far out to find out we would be staying in the Joshua Tree Inn. I had just waked up in our van about a mile away. I knew we would be in the vicinity, but sharing a wall with Gram, no, not a chance."
"We walk in and the lady at the front desk, gives me a key to room number 7, the room next to the one Gram died in," says Sam. "There was a concrete slab in front of room number eight with beer and liquor bottles, an old busted up guitar, and Mexican candles on it."
"The room was the same as when Gram died in it. It was like a shrine to him with CD's and a log book where could write notes about Gram. There was a painted sign that said, Safe at Home. (Safe at Home was the title of Gram's one- album novelty with The International Submarine Band.)
The Joshua Tree Inn is said to be "the final resting place" of Gram's spirit. Global traveler's leave tales in the eulogy book attesting to "feeling" Gram's spirit in the room or experiencing odd incidences. One guest recorded, "Richard asked Gram to give us a sign, and the radio came blaring at us with country music at 2:39 a.m."
Possibly the most moving entry is that of Gram Parsons daughter, Polly, whom he saw little of during the seven years he was her father, wrote, "I know your beautiful angel wings must reach far across the desert when you soar…for here you will always be truly safe at home."
"I closed my eyes and thought about all the things that led up to his death,' says Sam. "I thought, man, there's been some abuse in this room. It was kind of creepy being in a room where somebody has died."
Sam didn't put any tokens on Gram's shrine but "went back to room number 7 and drank lots of beer. I figured Gram would want me not to waste beer."
Gram Parsons "cosmic American music," a blend of country and rock, inspired musical giants such as The Eagles, Jackson Browne, and Dwight Yoakum. Thirty three years after his death, Grams' genius ripples through time, influencing bands such as the everybodyfields, the Jayhawks, and Wilco.
Gram Parsons was born Ingram Cecil Connor III, in Waycross, Georgia, on November 5, 1946. His family was extremely wealthy and cursed with tragedy.
Gram adored Elvis Presley as a boy, the Journeymen as a teenager, and Merle Haggard and Buck Owens as a young man.
He was a beautiful boy with an inordinate intelligence, dangerous charisma, and a passion for music. The girls loved him.
Gram made a single-record with The Byrds, two albums with the Flying Burrito Brothers, and two solo albums, GP and Grievous Angel. All sold poorly during his life but gained notoriety after his death.
Gram's posthumous fame was due partly to the media attention of his "partial cremation," in the Joshua Tree National Park, where road manager, Phil Kaufman, stole Gram's casket, took it to Joshua Tree National Park, and ignited with kerosene as a pact he and Gram had made.
Sam and Tom were bewitched with the Joshua Tree National Park.
"Spending time out in that desert was some of the most amazing times I've ever spent. It ups the ante for being out there, the terrain and the atmosphere trying to take your moisture out of you."
In the biography of Gram Parsons life, Twenty Thousand Roads, author David N. Meyers describes the desert as "like no other." "Joshua Trees are large, slow-growing yuccas that are remarkably humanoid in shape and evocation. Dotting the Park are enormous piles of softly rounded boulders that, like the Joshua Trees, seem somehow animated. They form phantasmagorical shapes against the Park's infinite blue sky and deep silences. Joshua Tree feels like the end of the world, but a benign one."
Sam says that he and Tom" went out for two days in a row, hiking and sitting on rocks so high that the trees in the desert looked like nipples. Every now and then we'd run into a purple cactus. It was so magical. We were both completely floored. It was beautiful, so much light. Everything wanted to stick, poke, or bite you."
"Being there was like a re-start button on life. People were so laid back. It is an artists' community. We could hear crows out there and you could hear the wind off their wings."
"When we left, we got back in the van and rode for ten hours. I took a lot of notes and got some tunes together. It was the right place and right time for every thing to gel. I could clean out the cobwebs instead of getting marred down in the things that don't matter."
Gram Parsons often visited the desert to fuel his creativity and find solace from the many demons that tormented him. Suicide, depression, and alcoholism ran like threads on the underside of a tapestry through his family, weaving generations of dysfunction.
Like the lyrics to Sam's song, "Aeroplane," from the everybodyfields CD, Nothing is Okay, "what holds me up is going to burn me in the turn around," so did Gram's final hours at the Joshua Tree Inn surrounded by the desert he so loved.
"I have a big spot in my heart for Gram," says Sam. "GP and the Grievous Angel was my favorite CD. The more I listened the more I found to listen to. "We'll Sweep out the Ashes," was a big one."
"I was coming to grips from growing up in Eastern Tennessee. I was trying to shake that off, getting out of "Po-Dunk," town. It hit me around the time I left there that I was ashamed that I thought that for so long. It was a rite of passage."
Gram Parsons made country music cool in a time when some people considered country singers on the same level as white trash red-necks.
"Gram was a piss and vinegar kind of guy, a show boat who had a lot of issues, but when he opened his mouth, he really showed up", Sam says. " He was such a good singer. He wrote some amazing chord changes. The song, "She," was such a vocal showcase for Gram. This performance of this song is insanely good."
"One time somebody came up to me after a show we did. I was standing next to Jill, who's usually the one who people say her song really touched them. This guy comes up to me and said, "Yeah, that song really touched me. You've become everything to be a country music singer. It was one of the best compliments I've ever had."
Sam says, "It's the soul that comes out, not the notes or timbre. That's what Gram had. It resonates with me. Those twangy songs spoke to me on a primordial level. They got under my skin. He is so cool and always will be."
The Joshua Tree Inn is for sale for two million dollars.
Monday, January 21, 2008
Interview with the everybodyfields
TheEverybodyFields, a band from Johnson City, Tennessee, lead by Sam Quinn and Jill Andrews, literally shushed the usually rollicking crowd at the Garage in Winston Salem, N.C., last Friday night, enchanting the beer drinking, stogy- smoking lot .
Like a fresh set of fingerprints in the archives of bluegrass, country, and folk history, the conjugal synchronicity of Sam and Jill’s voices carve a new niche in the music genre, as if they dashed a sprinkle of special Eastern Tennessee seasoning to make a brand new recipe.
Jill’s harmonies lilt like liquid silver, as serene as a Nightingale, dovetailing in perfect concord with Sam’s ardent crooning.
Their lyrics are potent poetry, masterpieces quilled by erudite masters who have tasted the bitter bile of a broken heart, throbbed with desire in newfound love, and fallen headfirst into the dark, black abyss of loneliness.
There is an underlying current of electricity between the 27ish duo. Jill places her hand affectionately on Sam’s leg and they hug with genuine care. They also banter and barb with that “you know I’m kidding but I’m half serious”, sparring about Jill’s old boyfriends and Sam’s girlfriend whose photographs he forgot to credit on their last CD.
Sam and Jill met as camp counselors in 1999 in Johnson City, Tennessee, where Sam was already playing the guitar and singing.
“I was envious at his ability to NOT be a camp counselor and play the guitar around the campfire with his friends because he didn’t want to hang out with the kids,” Jill explains.
“I had pigtails and hair down to my butt,” chimes Sam, who coined the name TheEveryBodyFields from the backyard of his home in his early 20’s, where “we hung out with people and drove around drinking beer with our eyes closed.”
“I liked that the name included everybody,” says Jill. “Everybody and fields aren’t usually put together in one space.”
The band toured the East coast in the early years behind the wheel of their Buick Rendezvous, booking gigs under Jill’s pseudonym, Ellen Y Larson.
The first song together was, “We’ll Sweep Out the Ashes in the Morning,” as performed by Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris.
Inspired by artists like Gram Parsons, Joni Mitchell, Wilco and the JayHawks, Sam and Jill write their own songs, with the exception of one.
“Sometimes our song writing is a collaboration, but most of the time it’s his song or my song,” says Jill. “Or, we’ll take a song to each other and say, “Hey, can you help me out?
"For me,” she continues, “when the feeling isn’t there, I can’t do it. I have to be alone. I put on these “weed eater” earphones when we are traveling in the car so I can think.”
“I stop a lot of songs to sit on them awhile,” Sam grins. “It’s tough to be your own boss when your fiends are all slackers or border line losers.”
Sam and Jill’s first release, “ Halfway There: Electricity in the South,” featured the song written by Sam about the plight of the victims of progress in the Roosevelt Era , “T.V.A., which won first place in the Chris Austin song writing competition at the 2005 Merlefest in Wilkesboro, N.C.
“And God, the Father, said,”Jesus Christ, I don’t know about this electricity. They use the day to steal the nights and made my waters rise, and trying to take my job away
Jill’s song, “The Silver Garden,” from the same release is a profound, though somewhat impatient promise to her sweetheart.
“There’s a part of you, deep inside of me, not the part that hides, not the part that leaves. You’ve loved me for years, I won’t ask you again. There’s nobody else, don’t ask me again. And I’ll go to the Silver Garden to be with you.”
Their second release, “Plague of Dreams,” in 2005 features the song, “Magazine, in which Sam writes that he’s, “two feet knee in doubt, a round of bases and at home I’m out. But if you’re never home, I doubt, that you’ll ever see me out. The parking lot is a hiding place, ‘cause under the cars you can’t see my face.”
Sam actually did hide underneath his family car when he was a boy playing Little League and got tagged out.“Everyone hated me because we lost the season because of me, so I went out to the parking lot and hid underneath our car,” he explains.
Unlike the first two releases which features Sam and Jill on vocals, bass, and guitar, former member David Richey on dobro, and guest musicians on fiddle, Sam and Jill’s third masterpiece, “Nothing is Okay,” expands the usual musical line up with lap steel instead of dobro, keys and drums.
Outstanding on this CD is Jill’s song, “Wasted Time, a desperate bargain with her lover, co-written by Megan McCormick , is a two- in- one song bridged brilliantly by an interlude that ends with Sam’s repetitive and reassuring words, “It’s not your problem”
“Hey, it’s me. I know it’s 3:00 a.m. Saying please, pick up the phone, I’m all alone and need a friend. I’m so grateful, and you’re so tired of me. If you hold me now, I promise to let go when you leave.”
On stage at the Garage, Sam and Jill play two riveting sets, trading bass and guitar back and forth like proud parents of new babies.
Jill’s beautiful, unclouded face is unperturbed as she closes her eyes during each song.
Sam, with his quirky, curly brown hair and thick muttonchops, turns his head sideways, almost grimacing with emotion as he sings, the perfect contrast to Jill’s tranquility.
He takes a step back and nods his head in steady affirmation while Jill stills the crowd to silence with, “Wasted Time, accompanied by Josh Oliver on keyboards and vocals and Tom Pryor on lap steel.
Pausing between songs, Jill tells the audience wryly, “Sam has this cryptic way of telling us what we are playing next. He plays the G cord and he thinks we should know what the next song is.”
Sam takes a sip of red wine and slams the house down with “Don’t Tern Around.”
He likes to misspell words on purpose because he thinks it looks “neat.”
“Terd looks better than turd, don’t you think,” he muses.
They close the second set with another new song,“That was my favorite show I’ve ever seen these guys do,” says David Butler, a 50ish volunteer DJ for WQFS 90.9 from Guilford College in Greensboro, N.C.
“I love TheEveryBodyFields. I find them totally unique. I’ve never been to the Garage where you didn’t hear loud conversation and beer bottles breaking. There were a couple of numbers where it was “whisper quiet.”
David Butler and countless other fans believe Sam and Jill will be quite famous.
“I wouldn’t want to work for someone else,” admits Sam. “I’d just like to keep making records with 100% artistic freedom.
“I’d like to be widely respected and to have enough money to build a house,” says Jill. I’d want to be like Gillian Welsh, who can still walk down the street unnoticed.”
Their upcoming tours include gigs on the West Coast, the Midwest, as well as their well traveled route along the East Coast.
In the meantime, Jill says her dog just died and she thinks about her all of the time.
“I cried in the car coming here today,” she says.
Sam looks surprised. “I was asleep,” he says.
“No,” corrects Jill gently, “You were in the back seat.”
Visit the everybodyfields' website
Like a fresh set of fingerprints in the archives of bluegrass, country, and folk history, the conjugal synchronicity of Sam and Jill’s voices carve a new niche in the music genre, as if they dashed a sprinkle of special Eastern Tennessee seasoning to make a brand new recipe.
Jill’s harmonies lilt like liquid silver, as serene as a Nightingale, dovetailing in perfect concord with Sam’s ardent crooning.
Their lyrics are potent poetry, masterpieces quilled by erudite masters who have tasted the bitter bile of a broken heart, throbbed with desire in newfound love, and fallen headfirst into the dark, black abyss of loneliness.
There is an underlying current of electricity between the 27ish duo. Jill places her hand affectionately on Sam’s leg and they hug with genuine care. They also banter and barb with that “you know I’m kidding but I’m half serious”, sparring about Jill’s old boyfriends and Sam’s girlfriend whose photographs he forgot to credit on their last CD.
Sam and Jill met as camp counselors in 1999 in Johnson City, Tennessee, where Sam was already playing the guitar and singing.
“I was envious at his ability to NOT be a camp counselor and play the guitar around the campfire with his friends because he didn’t want to hang out with the kids,” Jill explains.
“I had pigtails and hair down to my butt,” chimes Sam, who coined the name TheEveryBodyFields from the backyard of his home in his early 20’s, where “we hung out with people and drove around drinking beer with our eyes closed.”
“I liked that the name included everybody,” says Jill. “Everybody and fields aren’t usually put together in one space.”
The band toured the East coast in the early years behind the wheel of their Buick Rendezvous, booking gigs under Jill’s pseudonym, Ellen Y Larson.
The first song together was, “We’ll Sweep Out the Ashes in the Morning,” as performed by Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris.
Inspired by artists like Gram Parsons, Joni Mitchell, Wilco and the JayHawks, Sam and Jill write their own songs, with the exception of one.
“Sometimes our song writing is a collaboration, but most of the time it’s his song or my song,” says Jill. “Or, we’ll take a song to each other and say, “Hey, can you help me out?
"For me,” she continues, “when the feeling isn’t there, I can’t do it. I have to be alone. I put on these “weed eater” earphones when we are traveling in the car so I can think.”
“I stop a lot of songs to sit on them awhile,” Sam grins. “It’s tough to be your own boss when your fiends are all slackers or border line losers.”
Sam and Jill’s first release, “ Halfway There: Electricity in the South,” featured the song written by Sam about the plight of the victims of progress in the Roosevelt Era , “T.V.A., which won first place in the Chris Austin song writing competition at the 2005 Merlefest in Wilkesboro, N.C.
“And God, the Father, said,”Jesus Christ, I don’t know about this electricity. They use the day to steal the nights and made my waters rise, and trying to take my job away
Jill’s song, “The Silver Garden,” from the same release is a profound, though somewhat impatient promise to her sweetheart.
“There’s a part of you, deep inside of me, not the part that hides, not the part that leaves. You’ve loved me for years, I won’t ask you again. There’s nobody else, don’t ask me again. And I’ll go to the Silver Garden to be with you.”
Their second release, “Plague of Dreams,” in 2005 features the song, “Magazine, in which Sam writes that he’s, “two feet knee in doubt, a round of bases and at home I’m out. But if you’re never home, I doubt, that you’ll ever see me out. The parking lot is a hiding place, ‘cause under the cars you can’t see my face.”
Sam actually did hide underneath his family car when he was a boy playing Little League and got tagged out.“Everyone hated me because we lost the season because of me, so I went out to the parking lot and hid underneath our car,” he explains.
Unlike the first two releases which features Sam and Jill on vocals, bass, and guitar, former member David Richey on dobro, and guest musicians on fiddle, Sam and Jill’s third masterpiece, “Nothing is Okay,” expands the usual musical line up with lap steel instead of dobro, keys and drums.
Outstanding on this CD is Jill’s song, “Wasted Time, a desperate bargain with her lover, co-written by Megan McCormick , is a two- in- one song bridged brilliantly by an interlude that ends with Sam’s repetitive and reassuring words, “It’s not your problem”
“Hey, it’s me. I know it’s 3:00 a.m. Saying please, pick up the phone, I’m all alone and need a friend. I’m so grateful, and you’re so tired of me. If you hold me now, I promise to let go when you leave.”
On stage at the Garage, Sam and Jill play two riveting sets, trading bass and guitar back and forth like proud parents of new babies.
Jill’s beautiful, unclouded face is unperturbed as she closes her eyes during each song.
Sam, with his quirky, curly brown hair and thick muttonchops, turns his head sideways, almost grimacing with emotion as he sings, the perfect contrast to Jill’s tranquility.
He takes a step back and nods his head in steady affirmation while Jill stills the crowd to silence with, “Wasted Time, accompanied by Josh Oliver on keyboards and vocals and Tom Pryor on lap steel.
Pausing between songs, Jill tells the audience wryly, “Sam has this cryptic way of telling us what we are playing next. He plays the G cord and he thinks we should know what the next song is.”
Sam takes a sip of red wine and slams the house down with “Don’t Tern Around.”
He likes to misspell words on purpose because he thinks it looks “neat.”
“Terd looks better than turd, don’t you think,” he muses.
They close the second set with another new song,“That was my favorite show I’ve ever seen these guys do,” says David Butler, a 50ish volunteer DJ for WQFS 90.9 from Guilford College in Greensboro, N.C.
“I love TheEveryBodyFields. I find them totally unique. I’ve never been to the Garage where you didn’t hear loud conversation and beer bottles breaking. There were a couple of numbers where it was “whisper quiet.”
David Butler and countless other fans believe Sam and Jill will be quite famous.
“I wouldn’t want to work for someone else,” admits Sam. “I’d just like to keep making records with 100% artistic freedom.
“I’d like to be widely respected and to have enough money to build a house,” says Jill. I’d want to be like Gillian Welsh, who can still walk down the street unnoticed.”
Their upcoming tours include gigs on the West Coast, the Midwest, as well as their well traveled route along the East Coast.
In the meantime, Jill says her dog just died and she thinks about her all of the time.
“I cried in the car coming here today,” she says.
Sam looks surprised. “I was asleep,” he says.
“No,” corrects Jill gently, “You were in the back seat.”
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