Phil Elverum's Blog
January 29, 2017
In 2013 my band Mount Eerie played at the big festival in Spain called Primavera. Afterwards they asked for constructive criticism. I wrote:
Overall, it was an insane experience playing at Primavera. A festival is always crazy, but this was particularly insane. Starting with the airport greeter, there was some confusion about which hotel we were staying in and how many people we were supposed to be. It was a little disappointing to realize we were not staying at the Princess like last time (less convenient) but I understand the festival has grown. After rushing from the airport to the hotel to the stage for soundcheck (with no food all day) we were made to wait in the backstage area for 1.5 hours, very hungry, before our soundcheck. We ate the small amount of nuts and juice and cheese rolls backstage but were still very hungry and malnourished. It felt a little like prison. Nobody seemed to be in charge or have any information for us and I wandered the garbage covered closed festival area searching for something to eat but everything was empty. Normally I would not complain so much about hunger, but it felt strange that there was so little to eat/drink backstage, considering the huge amount of money clearly involved with the show. Also, it was frustrating to have nobody communicating with us.
Then, the show itself: Our soundcheck went great. The men running things were helpful and efficient. Everything sounded loud and good. We were scheduled to play at 6:20 pm, the first band on the ATP stage (Mount Eerie). After our first 2 songs the show started on the Heineken stage next to us, Adam Green. It was so extremely loud that we could barely hear ourselves on stage, and looking out at the audience I could see people holding their hands to their ears trying to hear us. It was so depressing. Every time one of Adam Green’s songs ended it felt like a relief and our show was audible for a moment, but then they would start again. The arrangement of those 2 stages and the scheduling of 2 simultaneous bands was a huge mistake on your part. Everyone afterwards who saw us said it was a very disappointing experience. It felt absurd to charge people money to experience that.
As an artist/band, overall, the experience of minimal food/communication backstage, and the horrible show situation, plus the omnipresent beer commercials, felt insulting. It was easy to feel like our only job was to help sell Heineken and not complain. It did not feel like the actual music or musicians were valued, at least for the less important bands like us that play at 6:20pm and stay in the Travelodge.
I feel uncomfortable complaining this much, and I usually hold my tongue, and I am grateful for the money and the opportunity to fund a tour in Europe, but since you are asking how to improve it I must be honest. The experience was one of the worst I have had, musically.
SUGGESTIONS.
Return the focus of the festival to creating opportunities for people to have quality experiences with music that they love. Shrink the festival. Remove the corporate sponsors. Sell fewer tickets. Remove some stages. Put some trees and shade around the place. Eliminate plastic cups and waterbottles. (The garbage was mind blowing.) Quality, not quantity.
I know it doesn’t make sense for you to follow my advice, business-wise, but this is what is necessary for people to have more than consumerist superficial “I was there” experiences with music.
December 29, 2016
I’m playing a show for the first time in over 2 years. Eleven...
I’m playing a show for the first time in over 2 years. Eleven new songs.
Fri. Jan. 6th 2017, 5pm, FREE
at The Business, 216 Commercial Ave., Anacortes, Wash. U.S.A.
December 24, 2016
pwelverumandsun:Annual christmas eve tradition in our house: A...
Annual christmas eve tradition in our house: A viewing of the 5+ hour long version of Ingmar Bergman’s Fanny & Alexander, the best christmas movie. Featuring: candles!
June 16, 2016
June 2, 2016
June 1, 2016
GENEVIÈVE ELVERUM fundraiserwww.gofundme.com/elverum
Here is a...
GENEVIÈVE ELVERUM fundraiser
Here is a thing I wrote:
Before I met her I carried around my love in a different way than I
do now. I used to walk around with my love held out in front of me,
eager to show it off, singing about the details of every powerful
personal experience, blabbing about places and dates, naming names, all
in service to my high ideas about true authentic expression and powerful
art.
After I met her I didn’t feel that way anymore. The love we shared felt
like a whole new category of human phenomenon, possibly never
experienced by anyone anywhere, ever. The idea of displaying it for
strangers felt obscene and perverse. It was too good for that, it felt
too important. Whatever priorities I’d previously placed on “authentic
art” were superseded by this way more powerful personal thing.
We gradually built a bubble around our real everyday selves and the
details of our life together. Being both semi-public semi-known artists
and musicians, we were participants in the constant self promotion and
personality-making that comes with those roles, and we knew that it was
time to think about where to draw the line, eventually settling into a
comfortable ambiguity, not touring together anymore, not putting our
names on each others’ things so much, not denying anything either, just
not being all loud about our love. I mean, just on a basic local level,
we didn’t exactly walk down the street kissing. Just as people we are
not the p.d.a. types and our affection took place in private. Seeing us
hug was rare. On the outside perhaps we resembled platonic housemates,
but we were passionate and deeply in love, quiet and powerful.
Now things are happening within our bubble that compel us to adjust
these boundaries, to let whoever in, and ask for help. The cocoon phase
is over. Here are the specifics:
I met Geneviève in 2003 at a time when I wasn’t particularly aiming
to fall in love. I was happy to just be a solo wandering dude doing my
thing. We met and it was instant. Each of us felt like we’d found our
person. No question. After some international border confusion and
many trips back and forth to Vancouver Island, she moved to Anacortes
and we got married. Some of our friends were freaked out by the speed
of all this, while those who’d met us both understood. The connection
was clear. Two people found each other from across a universe.
So it’s been 12 years of all kinds of projects and adventures and love.
We collaborated a lot, but mostly we existed as 2 sovereign creative
maniacs, not butting in too much to each others’ projects, and mostly
keeping quiet about who we were married to.
We wanted a baby the whole time, pretty much from day one, but it just
didn’t happen. There were some years of frustration and sadness but
probably not to the huge existential degree that some people have it.
We always both had so much going on that it didn’t seem like the end of
the world to continue devoting so much time to these art and music
projects. In early 2014 we’d both found some kind of peace and
acceptance of the idea of a childless future, and maybe even positivity
about the possibilities that would bring, but then she was pregnant all
of a sudden.
Our daughter was born in January of 2015. The secrecy around all this
was extra intense. No pictures on the internet, don’t tell anyone, it’s
private and too special, maintain the boundaries. Even now I don’t
want to say her name. She is the physical embodiment of our special
private love for each other so of course we’d be protective of the
details.
Then 4 months after having a baby Geneviève went to the doctor for a
regular check up, mentioning some abdominal pain, no biggie. There were
some extra questions and an ultrasound and a CT scan, triggering some
googling and some worrying at home, but she was 34 years old with a
ridiculously healthy lifestyle, so the worries were minor. Then the
lighting bolt:
Advanced pancreatic cancer, stage 4, inoperable, chemotherapy ASAP, “do you want to talk to the chaplain?”, get the wills in order, etc.
What the fuck? No family history of cancer, never smoked or drank,
mostly vegetarian, so much organic food, big water drinker, young, a
profoundly good person. It felt like conclusive proof of the absence of
god. We agonized over the logic. How could this be true? It is
preposterous. It’s so stupidly illogical and wrong. How could it
actually be happening, but then each morning we awoke to the same world
where it was indeed happening.
(To get perspective on the intensity of this particular cancer, it might
be worth looking it up for a minute. It has a vicious reputation and
pretty brutal statistics.)
Gradually the existential questioning faded into the grinding logistics
of appointments, insurance, bottle feeding, diet questions, acupuncture,
therapy, baby care, laundry, money worries, trying to keep the floor
clean, trying to keep the house warm, maintaining the basics. There is
simply no time to ponder the big questions right now. There are diapers
to deal with.
We’ve already long since adjusted our bubble boundaries locally and
have received so much crucial help from friends and family, as well as
remote support from distant friends. So much love has been beamed our
way in the form of meditations and thoughts and prayers and mail and
things and money. All of this is so necessary and huge. It’s strange
to remember our earlier attitudes about preserving the boundaries at all
costs. Even though we are essentially the same hermit weirdos, we need
the support and the priorities have massively shifted.
Now we make the broad public announcement and plea for money because
we can’t take it anymore. The savings have been depleted and financial
worry creeps in as the inability to do anything resembling “work”
continues indefinitely.
Existence is officially confirmed to be surreal and totally absurd.
Thank you for loving and supporting us and each other in this
ridiculous whirlwind, sloppily surfing on messed up waves, all of us.
Phil Elverum
June 1st, 2016
March 15, 2016
Response to a letter.
Dear Brad Claire Tollman,
Thank you for the letter.
You neglected to include either an email address or a complete mailing address to return it to, so I am posting my reply on my tumblr so that maybe you’ll see it someday if you ever google your name. Here is my reply:
I want to be polite and approachable and civil. I want to diffuse the inherent tension in our already awkward fan/artist hierarchy. I don’t want to be looked up to like that. I want to relate to everyone in a lateral way. I don’t like feeling the ways that adulation can pollute real understanding. I don’t know how best to cut through all that and answer your questions while staying true to my real thoughts and feelings and also without seeming abrupt and impatient. I will try to express myself as directly as possible.
It’s not lost on me, the big deal of you saying that I’m the reason you started making music. To inspire someone is a big deal. I appreciate it very much. It’s almost too much to really internalize so I think when I hear a thing like that I keep it at arm’s length, don’t really take it in, because I don’t know how to make sense of it. I mean, I do, I know what it’s like to be inspired and I know the musicians that have inspired me, but still, it remains surreal to picture myself on that end of the equation.
Your questions are mostly about gear and technique. I have to answer, in general, that I feel that most young men trying to get deeper into music-making are unfortunately fatally distracted by focusing too much on gear and technique. The truth is that it doesn’t matter. The tools are secondary to the ideas. It’s possible to make true and excellent work using whatever instruments, recording on whatever medium.
You also ask me about “nature” and what draws me to it. Honestly, this question has become such a big problem for me that I have made conscious efforts to sing about things like airports and traffic. I feel one dimensional. I can’t answer any more questions about nature. It is a deeply complicated subject and not the focus of my life’s work. I am interested in humankind’s nuanced and disjointed relationship with the un-built world, but I have accidentally created a body of work that seems to say to people something more like “nature is pretty”. This is disheartening to me and, at 37, I still feel like “back to the drawing board” every time I write a song.
To answer your questions specifically:
1.- I usually begin writing a song on guitar, with a general idea of the point and maybe a phrase of words. I don’t use alternate tunings. Compositions get weirder in the recording studio.
2.- In 2001 when I recorded the Glow pt. 2 nobody was using genre descriptions like “stoner” or “doom”, at least not in my world. I was just trying to make an explosive rock part. Most of my inspiration from that time comes from the band Eric’s Trip. I didn’t hear any black metal until like 2007, and even then I wasn’t that into it. I still am not. It’s OK. Generally, genre barriers are problematic and pointless. The sound of distortion on that song (and most other of my recordings from the time) was made by running the guitar through the mic input on a thrift store cassette deck, then out the headphone jack into the amp. Simple overdrive.
3.- I did use some field recordings recently of military jets and cars driving by, not exactly naturey. I don’t usually use them though.
4.- I’ve never gotten into Brian Eno. Someday maybe.
Good luck with everything.
Thanks very much for listening to my music and I’m glad you like it.
Phil
December 22, 2015
December 21, 2015
pwelverumandsun:
Annual christmas eve tradition in our house: ...
Annual christmas eve tradition in our house: A viewing of the 5+ hour long version of Ingmar Bergman’s Fanny & Alexander, the best christmas movie. Featuring: candles!
November 25, 2015
Lost wisdom from Ran (Akira Kurosawa, 1985)
Lost wisdom from Ran (Akira Kurosawa, 1985)
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