I'm really nervous about coming off as exclusive or elitist. At the same time, I recognize that when I put out vinyl or an expensive coffee table book not everyone can afford it or listen to it.
Phil Elverum
Nirvana was happening when I was 14, kind of the perfect age. Growing up in Anacortes, Washington, it was close enough to Seattle that it seemed like a local thing.
I wanted to make a record that would transcend the bad, hard feelings of a love relationship not working out, to make something that metabolized it into something useful and good.
I just can't turn off the part me that asks that question over and over.
I am drawn to cold, desolate places rather than Hawaii. I actually love Hawaii too, but I tend to go to Iceland or Norway or Northern Japan - northern places for whatever reason. Which aren't necessarily the best places to tour.
I'm not a perfectionist. I don't have enough patience to go over the same details over and over trying to get it perfect.
I don't really see myself in a lineage which is fine with me. Sometimes I do try to explicitly copy an exact song, an arrangement, a sound - and I fail. And so you can't even tell I was trying to do that thing. It makes sense in my own head but I'm incapable of copying.
Recording and touring are totally separate universes for me and it's strange and refreshing when they invade each other momentarily.
I want to create a life that is just healthy and peaceful - an enclave, really, of retreat. It's not helpful for the big picture. It's totally selfish to run away like that.
My grandpa is the funniest person in the world, straight up. But mostly everyone in my family groans when he is 'on.' I am his biggest fan.
I've sort of accidentally put myself in this position where I opened up the story of my life, and of course people want to reciprocate and open up to me. I'm OK at it, I don't make people feel worse, but it's strange to find myself in this role, all of a sudden, that I never would have pursued.
I have a hard time working with other people with my own songs because I have a pretty complete idea of how it should be. It's usually just me multi-tracking which is better than coercing someone into doing my idea.
I don't get to make many choices in my life as a single parent.
Comedy is deep and wild and I am excited about the mysteries within.
Being a musician means I am 'hanging out' a lot, like driving on tour or being at a show or whatever, so maybe there's more time to interact with peers and develop jokes.
All the books on my shelves, when I would go to them to look for help with my anguish, they all just seemed so crass. They didn't get it. Those books don't understand. Nobody understands.
It's easy to get swept up in the day to day ridiculous things that are in the news. They're not meaningless, they're legitimate and worth being engaged with. But it's easy to get overwhelmed and swept up and forget what real life feels like.
It would be amazing to write a song that could be sung 100 years from now by a teenage girl and still be relevant to her - that's a dream of songwriting, maybe.
It's a beautiful idea to focus on how everything is temporary and always in flux. It may feel bad now, but it will feel good later, and vice versa. To write about those things brings this satisfying feeling as a creative person.
I just play under the name Mt. Eerie. I started doing that in 2003 and I've pretty much been doing that since then.
I want to not be associated with death or cancer, I don't want that life.
I like the experience being in the audience and being overwhelmed by sound, like thick, oppressive loud sound and distortion.
After I made 'A Crow Looked at Me,' I remember people saying things to me like, 'You've made a beautiful tribute to Genevieve.' And I felt like, no! No no no, I haven't. I made a tribute to my own destruction and desolation. This is not a portrait of her. That's not who she was. She wasn't just a person who died.
I think that as a kid I was pretty drawn to melodrama.
They're all true - the cliches like 'one day at time' and 'ups and downs.'
Every tour is different. Sometimes I'll get a band together and sometimes it's just me.
When I first started recording music, I was actually singing about microphones, equipment, recording.
I love things like the Criterion Collection DVDs. I think those are really well done. I like how far you can push the deluxe-ness of things like that.
I'm pretty open.
I can't bring myself to release an instrumental album because I feel like I want some meat on the bone. Something to chew on, lyrically and content-wise.
I never want to keep doing the same thing more than once, honestly.
I'm open to making any kind of music, or maybe making no music ever again. That's also an option, always. Who knows what'll happen.
Profound thoughts and profound experiences get revealed to be tricks that we play on ourselves, and poetry gets revealed to be just, like, some dumb words that somebody put in an interesting order.
My shows have never been related to my albums at all because my albums have all kinds of crazy instruments and stuff that could never be performed live. I'm used to people expecting this 12-piece band to show up with three drum sets and an accordion.
I'm actually not fussy. I enjoy getting into it and talking about anything, really. It feels good.
I am not satisfied with the ending of 'Mount Eerie' the album, so maybe by calling myself that, I am attempting to elaborate on the ending.
Even when I was calling myself the Microphones I only really ever played new songs... because I feel, like, a pretty strong connection to the song when I'm performing it.
I don't want to return to places and sing the same songs a second time.
It's interesting to think about the different forms one place can take.
People used to assume I was a serious/sad person because of my music for some reason.
The Beach Boys were my favorite. I use to listen to their hits over and over, especially 'In My Room' and 'Don't Worry Baby.' There's something really sad about 'Don't Worry Baby.' Even though it's just a California song about racing cars, the melody is really sad. There's melancholy in it.
A weird side effect of being in close proximity to death is an urgency.
I listen to all kinds of music and sometimes I try to do something that's referential to an era or a genre, but it still sounds like me.
It even feels absurd to be writing or singing a song at all - in the context of actual death, being alive feels absurd.
Life here (in the Pacific Northwest, not in Vancouver, Seattle, Portland or the chain of buildings connecting them but in the rest of the place, out west and east from the north-south I-5 river) can sometimes feel like a half-dream, half-myth.
I like a bass drum. A big one.
It's nice to have a band that can adapt to whatever show we're in, so we can play on a big stage or a house show.
Music is only good sometimes.
I reach out. I ask for help. I tell my story.
There are a lot of names on the credits of 'The Glow Pt. 2,' but most of those people are just on one half of one song or something.
