Sound Stories & Interviews

Plenty of musicians struggle with identity and write songs about how they're trying to find themselves. Some do this well and other times it seems contrived, but on Erin Cole-Baker's new album, Big Sky, we find an artist addressing a fundamental question she's dealt with for most of her life.

Ryan Hayes is about to head out on an 11-day tour with his band, Hurtbird, but he's not spending this particular Thursday morning packing or making sure the Portland band's set list is ready for the road. Sure, that might be on his to-do list, but at the moment, he's in the middle of building a bar. Out of wood – coincidentally – for a live music venue called The Woods, which is partially owned by Loch Lommond front man Ritchie Young, a frequent collaborator and longtime friend of Hayes.
In addition to writing the highly cerebral and poetic lyrics for Hurtbird, a hip-hop-meets-every-other-type-of-music-this-side-of-Yanni band, Hayes is also a carpenter who builds items out of reclaimed wood. Since work building and remodeling houses dried up in recent years, Hayes has refocused his talents, making use of his college fine art education to make creative custom furniture. He likes the autonomy the solo venture allows him, making things like, say, setting out on a tour with your increasingly popular band a hell of a lot easier.

It's a chicken/egg thing with Red Fang. They're a band that, on its Relapse debut, sounds exactly like they do on stage. Exactly. So it makes you wonder, are their live shows exactly like their records, or did they just perfectly capture the energy, fuzz and grit of their live show in the studio?
Whatever it is, at this point, you can tell that Red Fang is just stoked to be getting attention for the music (and hilarious videos) they make – and maybe that's what we're hearing on Murder the Mountains.

Empty Space Orchestra has, over the course of a couple of years of regional touring, invented a game. It's called P.T. Cruiser, the rules of which are unexpectedly complicated and apparently quite rigid.
Here's how it works: The four members of the band not driving the tour van (safety first) are to keep a watchful eye out for P.T. Cruisers, which for the less-than-automotive savvy is Chrysler's decade-long-minivan-meets-old-timey-sports-car mistake. They're rare, but not too rare, because as the band is riding down the freeway to Portland, Seattle, Eugene or wherever that weekend's schedule is taking them, a member of the quintet will see one of these vehicles. He or she will then declare “P.T. Cruiser!” and then is allowed to slap a band mate of their choosing in the face. It sounds like a classic game of “slug-bug,” but this has the potential to get more violent, and easily more hilarious, because if someone sees a Smart car, they're free to punch one of their fellow musicians.

While it might be hard for some not to hear the flannel shirts, soy lattes and overall bearded hipster nonsense that's associated with their music, Fleet Foxes aren't exactly poster boys for a new genre and don't even belong in the “indie” realm.
Their 2008 self-titled debut possessed honest four-man folk harmonies and Brian Wilson pop sensibilities. The songs felt strangely out of place in an age of digitized electronic swirls and pulsing beats. Even though folk ideals and guitar strummers with airy vocals have been “it” for sometime now, Fleet Foxes avoids this classification because their sound doesn't hover the corporate folk-rock/casual “indie” scene like Band of Horses or My Morning Jacket. Despite being oddly unique with arrangements that don't sell on paper, Robin Pecknold's ghost-tinged vocals are anything but a tough sell for radio listeners, apprehensive music buyers and Jack Johnson fans.

This year, Tyler Fortier will release three albums. Actually, if you include the live disc he's preparing, he'll actually have four full-length discs coming out before we hit 2012. In an age when bands are considered to be working at a hectic pace if they put out one album every two years, this is almost hard to believe.
What's even more incredible is that Fortier is commonly out on the road for tours that include as many as 40 dates, but still manages to find time to write, record and produce all of his songs. And he doesn't just write the dozen or so songs that appear on these discs – he'll often pen 30 or more tracks for a record, the majority of which are tossed aside with only the best cuts appearing on the album.

Bill Callahan started out in the early '90s as more of an experimental musician, partnering his lyrics with dissonance and odd instrumental choices, slowly building his melodies over multiple albums and eventually recording in a proper studio with other musicians. Since ditching his stage name (Smog), Callahan has been on a course of personal questioning. His songs still reflect his experiences with personal relationships, but on Apocalypse and 2009's excellent Sometimes I Wish I Were an Eagle, Callahan's focus seems more concentrated on landscapes and how people respond to distance.
Apocalypse finds Callahan all at once wearing the shoes of a gardener, cattle driver, sailor and songwriter as he ponders the rugged and untamed background of America. He does so with brief distorted riffs, flutes, distant keys, whistling and earthy percussion paired with his baritone vocals. This album is beautifully executed yet never feels like it was labored over. Callahan's voice is confident and casual (listen for Callahan's vocal clicks, and “oohs”) just as the instrumentation is assuredly rehearsed, but at times feels improvised over Callahan's delivery.