Do you like being able to collaborate with other artists from “The Triangle” in North Carolina, and kind of help maintain a healthy music scene out of the area?
Oh absolutely! That’s like one of the first things that drew me to the area in the first place. That’s actually like the main thing that drew me to [Durham, NC], because I moved there four years ago to play with this band, Megafaun. So it was like a no-brainer to move there, because the music scene is so diverse and rich, you can do almost anything and people will show up and pay to see it. So the level and the volume of talent there is, its like this weird secret; [Laughs] it's crazy. But yeah, the hip-hop scene is nuts there right now, like Well$ and Professor Toon are obviously two of my favorites, but there’s like so many young dudes coming up that are really cool. This dude Ace Henderson just put out an amazing mixtape, they’re all over the place. And then there’s this other cool thing that’s started popping up is bedroom producers have started to emerge. I think that making electronic music has kind of made other people be like, “Oh, I’m not the only one that does this here. I can show up at stuff,” so that scene has gotten really cool. It's all the same group of 200 people, so if there’s constant intermingling, then everybody is really excited to work with everybody else, but it makes for a lot of weird output.
It's a cool, otherworldly collaboration, it sounds like.
Yeah, that’s the thing, I think especially in hip-hop, how that scene works is either by total chance or “Hey, why don’t you send this guy a packet of like twenty beats;” one is happenstance and the other is kind of depressing. [Laughs] That’s the cool thing about The Triangle, you’re around everyone all the time where legitimate collaborations happen, and you can work together and you can take the time to make something cool, which sounds like a low bar, but it actually doesn’t happen. So its only in places like that - well there are crews and scenes that are really good about that - but its cool to see it in action. To take something further than just sending a guy your beat. Its nice to really make something together, it's really cool.
So do you think that microcosm within The Triangle, and more specifically, Durham could be viewed as the “catalyst” for some of the area’s civic growth? Do you think it has a direct impact on the proverbial, “revitalization” of Durham?
Air quotes revitalization is the perfect way to put that. [Laughs] It's tough right now, there’s a lot of tension right now, and I think the correlation between the creative scene of people and developers is that developers tend to capitalize on places that are very rich in creative people. It's kind of been the thing since the dawn of real estate development [Laughs] more or less. So that’s the only real correlation I see there – any time a place has cool shit going on, people tend to build condos there. But, I think culturally, the interesting thing is that there’s just a lot more people in the area, and that means inherently, there’s a lot more creative people, or people who want to make music, or go to shows. So that has been really great and welcomed, and it’s a crazy scene of a lot of very different kinds of people there, and that makes for some really awesome chance happenings. But yeah, I’m not sure I’d credit it or correlate them more than that. I think we could have a whole other conversation about the successes and failures of the Durham City Council [Laughs], whether that went right and where its going wrong. And again, its tough for me to even talk about, I mean I’m a white guy in my thirties whose only lived there for four years. I’m not sure its really my thing to talk about.
I was just curious. I had noticed some similarities in the developmental struggles amongst fast growing secondary markets like Durham or Nashville in that regard.
Oh absolutely. I mean, it's not just a “your city versus out city” thing. It’s a ton of places right now, and its all at so many different level. In Durham right now, they’re trying to make it a startup town, like enticing startups to move here and stuff. So I think the biggest conversation I see, at least in regard to other cities that have been startup targeted as startup hubs is “Well how do we not make it turn into San Francisco?” It's everywhere, man.
What has Made of Oak allowed you to do that past and other projects – The Rosebuds, Megafaun, Sylvan Esso – haven’t been able to? Or is it all focused on getting out and playing for people?
Well it's definitely that. Everything has the same end result, its “Let’s all do something or make something, let’s communicate something.” It's like “There’s so many of us and we’re all going to die, so let’s just try to connect for a second.” I think bands are all different because bands are all different groups of people, its just like a conversation over dinner – every conversation between two, to four, to ten people will have this different dynamic, so a different thing will come out of it. I think if you’re being honest as a band – like if you didn’t get together before you made music and said “Let’s make this kind of music,” which I think is a silly thing to do – if you’re doing that, every band feel totally different, and feel different when you play it, and feel different when you write it, and feel different to an audience member. So in that way, the nice part about the Made of Oak stuff, I don’t feel like there’s any potential for it to get fenced in to sounding any one way; its just however I’m feeling at that time in my life. So in that way, the biggest difference is both the burden and the freedom of not having to compromise or split the direction or inspiration with anybody else. But outside of that, that is both freeing and limiting. I think when I first started doing the shows, the band I had been in, Headlights, had broken up, and I was kind of in this zone of “I need to take control of my creative life,” I can’t be dependent upon someone else to write songs, to book a tour, and somebody else to do something. I just have to stop being a fucking baby and just do it. So really, that’s kind of the other big difference, unlike my other projects, this is the only one born out of a desire to grow up.
I was up at Eaux Claires this past summer, and I know you’re from Wisconsin, so I was just curious about how that experience was for you to play a festival like Eaux Claires, because it felt different from most other festivals in my mind.
Didn’t it though? It’s a little weird getting asked just about Eaux Claires, because I don’t want to come across as hyperbolic, but no joke, we talk about this all the time – that is the only festival I would recommend that a music fan go to. I’d recommend other musicians go to it. Every other festival I go to, and I have a great time working them, but at some point that weekend I thought “I can’t imagine how anyone would pay go to this,” [Laughs] which sounds terrible, but Eaux Claires is the one that genuinely feels like it’s a celebration of music. It feels like that’s actually what it is, in every way, playing it felt that way, being backstage felt that way, walking out in the crowd to watch the shows felt that way, everyone in the audience felt like that was their purpose. No one was trying to wear some crazy thing to get their photo on a fucking blog or something; it’s the opposite of all that other shit. I think out of that comes genuine no bullshit, no pretense moments, and collaboration, because that’s the only environment where that can happen and not feel forced. I did an improv set with Chris Rosneau there last time, just off the cuff. Like two days earlier, we were like, “Oh, we should do this, so let’s see if we can do it.” And now we’re coming back this year to do that as an actual thing. That would never happen at any other festival. Imagine going to the organizer of Coachella two days beforehand and being like “Hey, can me and another guy in another band do a noise set on this day at this time?” and them being okay with it. That just doesn’t happen. And then [at Eaux Claires] they’re like, “Hey, that was great. You should come back and do that next year.” I’m excited about this year. I really hope it continues, because if it can stay – I hate to use the word “pure” – but if it can stay “pure,” and focused on its precision and not lose the plot, then it stands to become this incredibly important thing.
