Okkervil River Connect The Dots

11/21/08 4:49pm

by Noah Love (CHARTattack)

Will Sheff was lauded as one of this generation's best new songwriters when he pulled off the one-two punch of Black Sheep Boy and its ensuing Appendix in 2005. For an encore, he simply did it again and got famous as a result.

The second concept package pairs last year's The Stage Names with this year's The Stand Ins. Both have gone a long way to making Okkervil River a band who are watched by 10,000 people at Lollapalooza instead of 10 people at home in Austin, Texas like they were in their early days.

CHARTattack spoke to Sheff shortly before the beginning of a tour that started two months ago and doesn't wrap up until almost Christmas.

ChartAttack: Do you look for connectivity when you're writing, or is it just something that comes as you go along?
Wil Sheff: Yeah, absolutely [the latter]. It's not a cerebral process. That's a really important thing to say. It's not like I sit down and plan out the whole set of interlocking ideas. It's more just like I'm writing a certain way and feeling a certain way, and I kind of encourage myself to feel more that way as I'm working. I'm sort of very, very slowly, without looking very carefully at what I'm doing, building the record.

Do you think you'll keep going in that direction, or change tack next time around?
I think you sort of see what comes. I think the most important part for me is going in a direction, just continuing to feel positive and excited about something you're doing.

Looking at it too cerebrally is always a mistake. I think that's something that people would assume about me, is that I'm very brainily assembling things. But in fact, that's not true. It's all very intuitive in terms of the way that things come together.

The recording of The Stage Names and The Stand Ins were not done at the same time, right?
Some of them were and some of them weren't. A song like "On Tour With Zykos" was recorded at the same time. But "Lost Coastlines" was written and rehearsed, but not recorded, and then one like "Singer Songwriter," which was written very much at the last minute when I thought of something that would be fun to sing.

So I think it's quite a wide variety of approaches. These were songs that we thought, very early in the recording process, "Let's not put them on The Stage Names."

And the plan at that time was to continue those ideas later?
We knew when we knew we weren't going to do a double record all at once that we were going to be putting these songs out later. It was more like, "This doesn't feel right, right now, and it seems like if we take these other songs, these are the ones that should go first. These are the ones that are kind of setting the themes that we will have a chance to comment on with the other one."

Since Black Sheep Boy/Appendix, Okkervil's sound has moved out and up, rather than inward and down like it did on the group's older records. Was that intentional?
It was pretty much a deliberate process of going, you know, if we keep on doing the Black Sheep Boy thing again and again, our hardcore fans will be happy, and people who love Black Sheep Boy will be happy, but we will start becoming like a parody of ourselves. And instead of moving forward and doing something that's exciting to us and meaningful to other people, we will sort of just be trying to fulfill their image of us.

So it's far better when you finish something that it's something you had to build to make it, so you had to come up with a whole new way to do the next thing. And you know, after you've made a very insular, heavy, dark record, you don't just make another one like that. That's when you start to get cartoonish. The thing to do is knock the entire structure down and sort of let the sunlight play all over the thing.

I take it that was a bit of a liberating process.
It was very, very liberating, and it was a way to express ourselves musically in a way that had always been there, but the people hadn't really picked up on — you know, humour and playfulness and joy are a big part of Okkervil. And maybe people who didn't know us that well or only knew Black Sheep Boy maybe thought it was doom and gloom and sort of pseudo-goth naval-gazing.

Not to denigrate Black Sheep Boy, because I actually love that record, but you know, the point that I'm making is that I think the people who didn't know us very well had a very exaggerated image of us, and from that they got an exaggerated image of me. I'd hate for people to think that I take myself too seriously.

You lost Brian Cassidy and Jonathan Meiburg from your touring lineup this year. Since you were constantly touring, was it difficult to adjust on the fly?
Well, Jonathan had actually not played a tour with Okkervil in a while. He's been so busy with Shearwater that we had Justin substituting for him for quite a bit. We weren't expecting Jonathan to play with us this year. Shearwater are very busy. They have a schedule that's just as busy as Okkervil, and going to the opposite places at the opposite times. So it's just not very feasible for him to do both bands. We have a very grueling schedule that puts a lot of strain on people's personal lives, and they have quite a hefty schedule as well.

Do you think you have a lineup that will be solid for a while?
I think so. It's a great group of musicians that puts my musicianship to shame, certainly. They're wonderful. We get along really well. It's always been really familial in Okkervil. Even though we have had a lot of turnover in band members, there's never been a feeling that anyone is a hired gun. And that feeling continues to be the case.

Unfortunately, we just had really bad luck trying to keep a stable lineup. And a lot of that comes from the fact that in the past, nobody was making any money. We were spending money to put gas in the van and then, more recently, people have made life changes that they should have and should not be avoided, such as having kids.

I mean, if you're going to be a new father, you probably should not be touring the world in a rock 'n' roll band. It's just not a responsible thing to do. So we've had a lot of issues like that where the band has suffered some, but everybody's lives have gained some.

The last year was kind of Okkervil's coming out, like there was definitely a leap in the band's popularity after The Stage Names came out. Was that something you were able to absorb?
I guess so. You know, it's funny when I try to conceive of the differences between when we could not get a show in Austin and we would play these Monday nights and the club would give away 20 drink tickets as a way to get your friends to come out so they could make some money off the bar, and then only your friends would come out and they would leave halfway through.

You know, the difference between then and now, when we're playing to a gigantic crowd at Lollapalooza, it's almost impossible to even cast your mind back those 10 years and think of it as the same band. It's an entirely different membership besides me. So it's just very odd to even think about, kind of surreal.

But I'm extremely happy. I feel very lucky. But I think, ultimately, you have to remember what you're trying to do is make something that's exciting to you, and I always go from the standpoint of not trying to please other people but trying to please myself and hope that if I am truly pleased with what I've done, then other people will respond to that.