Shearwater

A conversation with Jonathan Meiburg

(June 2006)

Interview by Adam McKibbin

In May 2005, Shearwater’s Jonathan Meiburg was the first-ever interview guest on The Red Alert.  His band had a newly released EP, Thieves, that suggested a shift away from 2004’s exquisitely evocative and long-lingering Winged Life, which featured Meiburg and Will Sheff (who both also play in Okkervil River) alternating with lead songwriting and lead vocal duties.  In considering the future sound of Shearwater, Meiburg spoke about making the material more opaque and mysterious, drawing out their darker underbellies.  A little over a year later, he’s the first person to be asked to pay a repeat visit to the Red Alert interview chair—and with good reason.  There’s plenty to talk about, from the shadow that he sees the superb new Palo Santo casting over the back catalog to his ongoing work alongside his Okkervil cohorts.  But first:  does Palo Santo deliver on the darkness?

When we were talking last year, I asked you about the future of Shearwater and you said that you wanted the songs to get darker, stranger and more unnerving.  Mission accomplished?

(laughs)  In general, yeah, mission accomplished.  I certainly am happier with the songs on Palo Santo than with anything else that we’ve done so far.

Had you been disenchanted in the past?

I wouldn’t say that, but I think your expectations for yourself change over time.  We certainly wouldn’t want to make the same record over and over again.

Many bands do.

Well, I’m certainly not guilty of that!

Obviously, there was a lineup shift with Palo Santo, with Will not taking the lead on songs, but there’s a palpable shift in your songwriting style.  Do you have a sense of whether that was inspired by something specific in your life, or was it something more nebulous?

It felt pretty normal.  And Will is on the record, playing on several of the songs, and he did a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff.  I’d talk to him about setting up a song in a certain way, or doing a certain effect.  He hasn’t left the building.  When we were getting the songs together for this record, I did songs and Will did songs, and it just seemed clear when we were done with that that these were the songs that wanted to be together.  It had a more cohesive feel to it.  In a way, focusing on that makes it seems like more of a shift than it actually felt like 

I read your response to that All Music Guide review…

(laughs)  You have no idea how much my bandmates have gotten on me about doing that.

The thing I wanted to focus on was that you mentioned that you’d been almost exclusively listening to music from people who are not alive.  Is that a reaction against something about contemporary music?

I don’t know how that happens, exactly.  It’s kind of like when you’re studying a subject, you want to spend a whole lot of time getting up to speed, then you start looking for undercurrents—all the metaphors that are coming to mind are scientific metaphors.  If I want to know the current state of research on X topic, I’m going to go out and look at journals and see where it is now, then I’m going to try to trace it back further to see what fed into it, what led up to it, what aspects appeal most to me.  So I’m not locked in a closet with vinyl LPs and unaware of what’s going on, but there’s a way in which keeping up with what people are doing now is like checking the stock market.  It feels more like a job, like you keep up because you have to, whereas things you listen to for pleasure are not necessarily what everybody is thinking about all the time.

How about abstraction?  There’s been a lot of talk about the abstract nature of the lyrics on Palo Santo—is that something that translates to your taste as a listener, too?

I like a lot of things that I’m not trying to steal from—sometimes the stuff that is least like you is a relief, because you feel no obligation to it, you don’t try to pick it apart.  As far as abstraction goes, there’s good abstract and bad abstract.  With the bad kind, it just feels like it’s not about anything, and it doesn’t evoke a response in particular.  My hope is that’s not what happened with this record.  The good kind of abstraction elicits a very specific, emotional response—but it’s different from the response you get when something is linear and leads you from point A to point B.

The other night I was watching 2001 with my girlfriend—she’d never seen it before.  She was like, “What’s up with that monolith thing?  What’s the point of that?  Who made it?”  And I said that I could tell her what the official Arthur C. Clarke explanation was—but wasn’t it great not knowing?  It’s not like it’s subtle; it’s right out there in front.  You keep seeing it over and over again, but that movie is not going to explain it to you.  It’s one of the many things that gives that movie its power—that movie is incredible.

You know, I was just watching some silly AFI countdown on the 100 Most Inspiring American Movies or whatever, and 2001 made the list and even the little clip made me want to revisit it again—it’s been a while.  And my girlfriend has never seen it, either.

(laughs)  It’s worth it, yeah.  I’ve seen it probably six or seven times, and every time there’s something new to appreciate.  And if you have an unsuspecting audience, so much the better.

I consider myself a film guy – I’m in L.A., I work in the industry – and I was kind of appalled by how many from the “Top 100” I’d never seen.

I feel kind of guilty about this, but you also sometimes feel a resistance to watching or reading or experiencing some sort of artwork that you’re supposed to know about.  It kind of takes some of the joy out of it.  But if you get through that and actually do go and read the book or watch the movie, there’s a really great joy from seeing something that’s supposed to be good and still going, “Oh my god, this is great!”  Or you go the other way.

Going back to our interview last year again, you’d mentioned that a reviewer had come to see the band and had written something about how he loved the band, but didn’t feel like he knew anything about you—and I think you said that made you so happy that you could have kissed the reviewer. 

Yeah, yeah, I still feel that way.

Does that make this sort of thing uncomfortable?  Some Shearwater fans will read this, and you’ve been talking openly about more than just the band—that you have a girlfriend, that you enjoy certain movies, and so forth.

Well, you’re not asking the kinds of questions that would make me uncomfortable.  If you started asking about what the songs meant, that would be another thing entirely.  I don’t feel like the art should give away anything in particular.  Do you know what I mean?  I mean, you’re absolutely right.  There’s a funny dichotomy.  I really enjoy reading interviews with people where you’ve enjoyed some things that they’ve done, but you have a hard time connecting that person in the interview with the artwork that you enjoy.  “How could this taciturn person produce this exuberant art?”

Yeah, you know, death metal dudes are often happy-go-lucky pranksters.

Of course, there were those Norwegian black metal bands where the guy ate the other guy’s brain—there’s always the exception to prove the rule.  But, yeah, a lot of times it’s people who make the darkest art who can be some of the most delightful people.  They’ve met that part of themselves and almost defeated it—or exorcised it through their art.  It’s the people who make the really happy stuff who you have to watch out for.  Will had a whole article one time about how it was no surprise that pop rock singers were terrible people all the time in their personal lives.

Gary Glitter.  Allegedly.

(laughs)  That’s a whole other magnitude.  I was thinking of Don Henley or something. 

I suppose we can’t ascribe Gary Glitter proclivities to the whole gang.

He’s kind of taken it to another place.

Okay, back to Palo Santo!  In the past, even when you and Will were kind of co-principals, you’d each have songs pretty well completed before you’d bring them in.  So did the songwriting routine feel about the same for this record, then?

Yeah, it did, except I just kind of liked the songs more.  I felt that these songs were more comfortable to me.  Of course, they change some as you’re recording them, but essentially I’d sit down and write these things out, then bring them in to the band and we’d work on them and see what we could make out of it.

Can you take a moment to introduce the band, so to speak?  The lion’s share of the attention has obviously typically been devoted to you and Will.

Oh, absolutely.  Kim is a playwright living in Minneapolis.  She just completed a year-long fellowship there, and she has a couple different writing and teaching assignments coming up.  Every time I talk to her, she sounds better and better.  Howard has a computer job doing information security, which has turned out to be kind of really exciting.  A few years ago, it wasn’t the big deal that it’s become—trying to prevent identity theft at the university.  He’s gotten a window into all kinds of interesting worlds.  Thor is always at his house; he’s been building a new house for his girlfriend.  It’s beautiful, a work of art.

That’s pretty smooth.  “I’m building a house for my girlfriend – what are you doing for yours?”

Yeah!  It’s not just a labor of love, but it’s a wonderful thing to see.  He’s hired a lot of his friends to help him work on it.  And then Will, you know Will.

Yeah.  Is Okkervil on break?

Okkervil is lying a little bit low—there will be a new record starting in the winter of next year, and more touring in the fall in the U.S., Europe, and Australia.

Are you continuing on with them for the foreseeable future?

As much as I can, yeah.  I really enjoy it, for one thing.  Another thing, it’s a decent living—while you’re doing it, anyway.  Okkervil has been extremely supportive of Shearwater.

I saw Okkervil at the Echo your last time through town.

That was the one where they pulled the plug on us at the end?

Yes.  I was going to come say hey to you guys and Band of Horses afterwards, but they booted us right out of there.  I guess there was that disco party coming in.

(laughs)  That was an unfair labeling by us.  It wasn’t their fault.  It’s a little bit silly for the club to schedule that, but in Europe, that happens at every club—every single show, you play and then there’s a disco dance party.

Space is at a premium.

Yeah, they try to get as many people as they can.  It’s frustrating to go a long way and have an audience that really wants to see you and not be able to play as long as you’d like, but…you know…tough.

L.A. was the end of a leg?

No, it was the beginning.

But you’d just gotten back from somewhere or something?

They’d gotten back from Europe—I hadn’t been on the Europe tour—and they’d done like 28 shows in a row or something.  I joined them in Tucson and I saw them in the van and I thought, “Oh, no, this is not going to work.”  They looked pretty rough—and we still had a full three weeks from that point.  There was one show where Will had no voice at all, and I sang all the songs just so we could do a show.  It went okay.

He was struggling even that night at the Echo.  It made it all the more valiant that he was singing with no power at the end.

I’m glad that “valiant” is the word.  (laughs)  Okkervil is sort of a “To Infinity and Beyond” kind of band.

Are Will’s Shearwater songs being retired, or are you singing some of them?

There are still a couple of them that we do every now and again.  It’s not impossible that Will will ever play with Shearwater again.  I still do “Wedding Bells Are Breaking Up That Old Gang of Mine” and “My Good Deed.”  But mostly we’re playing new songs.  We do a handful of older ones, but—this is what people always tell you, I guess—but the stuff I really identify with and am excited about are the things that are most recent.  So that’s what we’re playing.  Also, it’s not like those last records sold a million copies or anything.  They didn’t really shake the world.  I don’t feel like there are songs that people are demanding.

Some of us are demanding.

(laughs)  But you know what I mean.  There are very few surefire crowd-pleasers, which is always what you hope for in your back catalog.  Even after the point where they don’t mean that much to you anymore, they can mean something to you again if people like them.  There are a few of them, but, in general, the response has been strongest for the stuff that is newest, which is very heartening.  This is the kind of thing that makes for a boring interview because everybody says the same thing, I’m sure:  “Well, I don’t identify so much with my older material, I like the new stuff, blah blah blah.”

Actually, I don’t think so.  Everybody always says that their new album is their best album.  But a lot of times it’s not “I don’t identify with my older material,” it’s “Oh, that’s like asking me to choose which of my children I love most.”

Oh, I don’t feel that way at all.  Back when I first started Shearwater with Will, I’d been in this sort of rock group thing, and it didn’t feel right, so I thought I’d scrap it entirely and go with something entirely different.  So I started with a really quiet approach, and did that for a while, then gradually felt more and more confident and brought louder stuff back in along with different things I could do with my voice.  I feel like I’ve developed it to a point where there’s more variety that feels truer.  But it’s been a while getting there.

With that variety, is it harder to find the arc of the record?

That’s always difficult for people.  Will actually sequenced this record.  I had a sequence that was similar, but I liked Will’s better.  I think there’s a dramatic arc to it.  To me, there are very concrete things that are associated with each one of the songs, and there are some overarching themes.  It doesn’t bother me if they’re not apparent, though—I kind of wanted to build this thing and erase the blueprints.  For the European release, they dumbfounded me by printing a lyrics booklet with it—which I’d expressly forbidden.  (laughs)  So people can go and find the lyrics now.  I mean, I do think they are the best lyrics I’ve written, but I didn’t want them divorced from the music. 

I’ve noticed that there’s been a little fan debate about that—whether fans would be affected by reading the lyrics independently.

That’s up to them.  Now you can go get them, fine, enjoy—but I wouldn’t if I were you.

At least they’ll be getting the correct lyrics, I guess.

But I love the idea of people trying to transcribe them, “What’s he saying here?” or just getting them completely wrong.

Yeah, you’ll see those lyrics sites where there will just be parentheses and question marks in place of words. 

Yeah, I love that!  There’s so much room to maneuver inside of parentheses and questions marks.  The thing that I think is important, though, is to have moments that are very clear.  If the whole thing is murky, then you tend to lose interest.  I like it if it’s coming into focus and then going away from you. 

Are you still thinking about making that solo CD more readily available?

Yeah, there are plans—I’m trying to do it in the cheapest way possible for me.  I don’t have enough money laying around to just press it, even if I would make the money back.  I was thinking that offering it online might be the way to go.  It’s a very modest little record.  I did it in one day.  I like the songs on the new record better, but it has a special feeling to it.  I’ve got nowhere to hide on that record.  I’ve started doing a few more solo shows—well, so far I’ve done four.  (laughs)  But I’ve had a really good time doing them, so I think that’s something I may be doing a little more.

Great.  I mean, it sounds like your bandmates are pretty involved with different endeavors in their lives.

Well, they are, yeah.  It’s difficult for everybody, you can’t just say, “We’re going out on tour for three months.”  It might be able to keep us out there a little bit more if I can do some stuff on my own.

Were you pretty nervous stepping out there on your own?

Oh, yeah, absolutely.  There’s nowhere to hide.  But also it’s like steering a bicycle, as opposed to a band, which is like steering a train.  (laughs)  You have very little control with a band; you’re sort of locked in to doing things a certain way.  When you’re on your own, you can come to a stop or add a few measures here or tell some goofy story and not feel like you’re putting everyone else on the spot.  I played a little solo show in Paris the other day, and it was such fun.  I started off with the first song on the record, and I was nervous whether it would work solo, and when I did that line that’s really loud at the beginning, I could feel everybody in the room gasp and kind of freak out.  And I was like “Yes!  This is exactly what I want!”

That is an arresting moment on the album.

I thought it was important to try to lay out the ground rules for the record really fast.

That song had always been pegged as the opener?

I wasn’t sure if it was going to work.  We really weren’t sure until it was done.  If it didn’t work, it was going to be the biggest failure on the record—it was the most risky.

It took me two days to get to track two.

(laughs)  Well, good.  It took us a lot longer than two days to make it. 

How are you keeping your voice intact?  It seems like it would be a vocally demanding show.

Yes, we’ll see.  I haven’t done multiple shows in a row on this stuff yet, so I’m a little scared about that.  We’ve got our first tour coming up in a week and a half, so we’re going to give it a try.  I have learned some of the things that seem like they would be common sense, like wear earplugs, don’t shout, don’t talk to people before the show, keep your mouth shut during the day in the van, try to conserve your resources.  Unfortunately, it also makes you understand why singers get a reputation for being so weird and withdrawn.

Last year we closed by talking fondly about Austin.  I was wondering whether all the time on the road makes you feel disconnected from the city.  That’s a frequent comment that comes up when I’m interviewing bands—it tends to especially come up during interviews with more politically-driven bands, who may say that they feel like they’re able to keep a finger on the national pulse, but feel out of touch on a local level.

I don’t know that I’ve ever felt that plugged in to Austin.  I have my friends and my life here, but it’s a pretty small orbit, really.  I don’t go out much; I never have.  I’ve always felt welcomed when I’ve come back.

I think it’s important to find those small orbits.  I know with L.A., at least, that people can be set adrift otherwise.

It’s so huge—you have to pick one small part of it to focus on, otherwise you’ll lose your mind, I would think.  That city is not on a human scale.  It’s the same with New York.  You go there at first and it’s like, “Oh my god, it’s just like it is in the movies!”  But I would guess that the number of close friends and relationships that people maintain is actually pretty consistent across the board, no matter where people are—except for occasional freaks.

I think that’s true.  I grew up in a town of 4,000, and even there, people will carve out those smaller orbits.

It probably has something to do with the optimal size of a foraging group, somewhere back when people were wearing rubber ape suits.

Does that mean that the social butterflies are more highly evolved than the rest of us?

(laughs)  I don’t know.  I would expect variation within that trait, and it would depend on the availability of food.  Or it could be… well, nevermind, we’re not going to go into off-the-cuff evolutionary psychology.  (laughs)

That’s probably for the best.  I’m fascinated by it, but I’m not a science guy.  I did, however, share a house in college with a few science guys.

Great, you could qualify as an expert on FOX News.

Definitely.  I’m reading a Richard Dawkins book right now, so we couldn’t tell them about that.

Which one?

A Devil’s Chaplain.

I haven’t read that one.

It’s an anthology of essays and excerpts and miscellany.  I thought it was a good starting point.

He’s great.  He’s entertaining.  He’s all you’d want.

I think I would be overwhelmed if I were to meet him.

Yes.  Isn’t it nice that these overwhelming people write these nice little portable versions of themselves that you can experience at your leisure?

Yeah, for sure.  But I do feel like it’s cheating somehow, like buying the cheap Greatest Hits album.

No, but that’s what we were talking about earlier—you’ve got to start somewhere, and you might as well start with the thing that’s the most well-known and then go from there.  Listen to The White Album, you know?  Maybe it’s that urge for exploration, a hallmark of the species, but you’re almost supposed to have some obscure musician who you are the sole champion of, and somehow you haven’t earned your stripes if you haven’t done that.  If you stay awake and pay attention long enough, you will eventually notice some stuff that’s floated beneath the radar—but that’s not the only way to enjoy music.

This is taking that to a different place, but I was reading a review of an Ashlee Simpson concert that pretty much said “I thought it sucked, but, you know what, there were kids shrieking and singing along and crying, and that’s no less valid a response than whatever was going on over at the Echo at the same time.”

Right!  That kind of experience is pretty darned pure.  The thing that is frustrating is when you see things in the grey area, like when you see somebody get credited for developing a technique or approach that they did not, in fact, invent.  This is always a punching bag for me, and I have no animosity toward this band, but it’s funny to me that Wilco gets so much credit for making experimental records.  They’re the palest kind of experimental, you know?  And so shallow, a lot of it.

Yeah, that’s tricky, because those kids at the Ashlee Simpson concert could stumble across a Wilco album in two years and totally have their minds blown because, for where they’re coming from, it very well may sound completely out of right field. 

(laughs)  Right.  I remember getting into an argument with a literature professor in college; he was saying how he’d really loved Leaves of Grass as a teenager, sort of implying that now he didn’t think it was great as he did then.  I said, “What about your reaction then?  Was that an invalid reaction, this great joy that you had in reading this thing?”  And he really didn’t want to do that, even though it was a literary criticism class and we were supposed to be talking about this stuff.

A lot of music critics will do that with bands that they associate with their youth.  It’s this kind of detached, cred-protecting snobbery about “Well, obviously the Pumpkins aren’t as good as we thought they were when we were 16.”

I have to admit, where that stuff is concerned, that I didn’t like it then.  I failed to get engaged by it.  I didn’t think the Smashing Pumpkins sounded as interesting as Pink Floyd.  I didn’t know very much about pop music then, but I knew I didn’t like that.

Sure.  But I think that the parallel to your professor holds true.  People can place an unnecessary premium on growing beyond things from their past.

Yeah—and you do want to do that, but you don’t want to let them go, either.  And pretending that you never liked something is, of course, heinous.  One of the very first records I really, really loved was Dire Straits’ Communiqué.  I totally loved it, and even now it’s still kind of a guilty pleasure, although I was dismayed when I listened to it last that I liked it less than I thought I did.  But there are still things on that record that I love.