Fiction

Three Years in Brooklyn

The apartment was suffocating. When Loren cooked with garlic the smell sunk into the walls and upholstered armchairs for days—longer in the winters when she couldn’t stand to crack the windows and let the intrusive Brooklyn cold in. Tonight, Tuesday’s stir fry lingered in the studio, and at 5pm she clutched her brown tweed coat on the coat rack, felt for her keys in its pocket, and stepped out.

She slipped her arm through the silk-lined coat sleeve and tied the thick belt around her waist as she walked up 3^rd Street. She passed the Dominican men on the stoop next door and nodded with a timid smile, as she always did. Then left onto Union, past the skeleton bike that had been chained to the NO PARKING sign for weeks with no wheels (it was missing a seat now, too), past the pair of eyes spray-painted yellow on the telephone pole, past the dip in the sidewalk that always filled to a pond of a puddle, past the carousel on the corner of 1^st, always empty. She kicked up drops of the afternoon rain with each step and could feel them beginning to seep into the toes of her suede boots.

Here in the fog she thought.

She couldn’t get her own poem out of her head. It felt masturbatory, her own words tumbling over and over in her mind, but this line was persistent. The title line. The line that had come to her first.

The Brooklyn Lit had emailed her in the afternoon to say they would publish “The Fog” in their spring issue. It was her first poem for The Lit. They’d pay her 50 bucks. Her electric bill.

Loren’s salary was patchwork. 1,000 words to The L for groceries. 250 words to Brooklyn Vegan for beer. Four shifts a week at the Wilburg Café for her tiny studio. When tips were good, she would get things fixed—a broken zipper on her boot, a popped tire on her bike—or buy a broom or a new CD. She pieced this together monthly, and couldn’t believe she’d made it three years without missing rent.

She might get 50 bucks for a gig but she never booked them.

Here in the fog

We don’t make resolutions

She could smell the garlic on her coat as she pulled the collar up around her nose, holding the corners with both hands for a moment before fastening the top button. She had left the house with no destination but fresh air. She could feel her cheeks reddening, her lower back starting to sweat in the cold. She’d go to Glen’s.

Glen lived on Ainslie, in a three-bedroom with a fence and a concrete yard. She patted her pockets for her phone but she had left it at home. She buzzed at the gate.

“Hello?” Glen’s voice crackled in the speaker.

“Hey, sorry I left my phone at home. I was just walking by.”

“Loren? Great, come in!”

It buzzed. She pushed, and there was Glen in the open front door, the light warm inside. She was surprised at how good it was to see him.

“Hi,” she said. “I have missed you.” She had just realized this.

“Yeah, you haven’t been by in a while, babe.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I’ve been busy.”

“Are you holing up in that little place? Hibernating, Lor?”

“I’ve been out some,” she said.

“Right, we just missed each other at the Alligator Lounge last week. That’s what Nora said.”

“I had to get home. That was my break beer, but I had a deadline noon Wednesday. I’m sorry I couldn’t wait for you.”

“Finish ok?”

“What?”

“Did you finish ok. Did your piece turn out alright.”

“Oh. Yes, it did. It, uh, it turned out great.” She smiled.

“Here, come in. We don’t have to stand in the hallway,” he pressed against the wall and ushered her into the living room, his hand on her back.

His beard was long. He grew it out in the winters, and Loren liked it that way. His hair was short and his beard was long, the way she liked, and it felt good to be there.

“I’m a little surprised to see you,” he said.

“Glen. I know I owe you some phone calls.”

“Yeah. No, I mean, you don’t have to apologize.”

“I’m sorry.”

Here in the fog

we don’t make resolutions

Return phone calls

Drink less coffee

Write more poems

Because we know we won’t keep them.

He stood up. She looked around. In the adjoining kitchen, he bent over to look in the bottom of the fridge. She had forgotten how comfortable she was in his home—the tired denim couch, the honeysuckle walls.

She thought of the antique beige wallpaper peeling in the corner of her studio. Loren’s landlord wouldn’t let her strip it and paint, but the apartment was rent-controlled, and for $650 in Williamsburg, albeit fringe Williamsburg, she didn’t complain out loud. She could escape the beige walls in the streets. She walked a lot, especially in the evenings when she couldn’t work anymore, especially when her bike had a bum tire.

She had lost 20 pounds since college. Over-eating was now a luxury reserved for visits to her parents’ house. Their fridge was always stocked like a good suburban fridge should be—hummus and choices of cheeses and sandwich meats and Snack Packs. Loren was 24 and an only child and her parents still bought Snack Packs. At home, in Brooklyn, she budgeted. She ate light and cheap. Eggs. Tuna. Stir fry. Sundays she went to the City to the outdoor market in Union Square and filled a bag with veggies for the week. She liked the simplicity of this.

She thought of her neighbors. When she left the house, she had tucked her scarf in her purse until she got well up Union Street, hiding the offensive tan and red and black plaid. She unwrapped it from her neck now.

“Still in love with Brooklyn?” she asked. “Think you’ll live here for a long time?”

“Forever,” he said. “As long as I can afford it. I bet within ten years this place will be like the Heights. And we’ll get the boot.” He walked back into the living room and handed her a beer.

“Maybe we’ll have some money by then.”

“Maybe. Maybe we’ll get rich as Williamsburg gets rich. We’ll get gentrified.”

“I hope so,” she said.

“I do love the grit of this neighborhood, though. I love that everything’s a bit dirty, you know?”

“Yeah. I do.”

“So Lor, listen, I have really big news.”

“Yeah?”

“So do you remember in October when I went with Nora’s dad to that Condé Nast cocktail thing?”

“Yeah, I remember that.” Nora’s father did ad sales for Wired.

“Well I’ve been emailing with one of the editors that I met that night—Martin, a good friend of Nora’s dad’s—and I’ve been sending him a couple of things here and there. He’s at The New Yorker. And last week he emailed me to tell me that he finally got around to reading my stuff and that he loved my essay on Internet memes and he wants to use it.”

“Use it like publish it?”

“Yeah, in July.”

“Glen that’s—that’s incredible! I can’t believe you. I mean I can believe—your stuff is really smart, I just—“

“I know!” he said. “I know, it’s wild.”

“Really wild. The New Yorker.”

She shifted in her seat. The denim couch was no longer comfortable. It was the discomfort she had felt when she first read Glen’s writing, a year and a half ago.

*

They had met through Glen’s younger brother, George, who worked at the Café with Loren. It was August. A bunch of Wilburg kids were out after work at the Alligator Lounge on Metropolitan Ave and Glen came by. He pulled up a chair at the end of their table, next to Loren.

“Glen,” he said, sticking out his hand.

“Loren. I work with your brother.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Loren.”

He was a writer, had gone to Laguardia High School for the Performing Arts for the violin, to Brown for journalism and loved The Arcade Fire and McSweeney’s and Brooklyn. He loved Brooklyn. And he loved Tom Wolfe and Joan Didion, and he loved Messiaen and Stravinsky, and he wanted to write full time but he loved his job at the bike shop, for now.

She was a writer, had gone to public school in Scarsdale, to Syracuse for magazine journalism, played the guitar and wanted more than anything to be able to play the violin. It was on her list. She had heard of The Arcade Fire, had read The Believer, and loved Tom Wolfe and Joan Didion just as much as he did.

The journalistic compulsion to question on both ends kept the conversation going until four in the morning, when the bar closed and they were on the street, and when they kept trying to say goodbye and kept finding new things to talk about, they started walking. They walked the long way to her apartment (she hoped he didn’t notice) and when they stood on her stoop and still had things to say, they sat. They sat and talked until six. They watched the lights turn on in the café on the corner, and the man in the window flip the CLOSED sign to OPEN, and they went inside.

At 3 o’clock that August afternoon she woke up and reached over the side of her bed to grab her MacBook from the floor. She pulled it up onto her lap and opened her email to find songs in file attachments and a link to an article, as he had promised to send. It read,

Loren,

It was so great chatting last night. Here’s some of my work—I’d love to read and hear yours, too, so send it along.

My girlfriend Nora and some friends of mine are going to an Arcade Fire show next Wednesday and you should think about coming with. It’d be great to hang out again!

Cheers,

Glen

She read and listened into the evening, tracking links to find more of his writing, reading until she couldn’t find anything else with his name on the whole Internet.

It was stunning. All of it. And all she could think was I wish I had written this.

*

“So that’s my news,” he said. “I’m hoping this opens some long-term doors. Oh, man, I still can’t believe it. Anyway, tell me about you, Lor. What’s your news?”

“Ug, kind of the same old,” she said. “Yeah, I can’t think of much new to report.”

“You’re getting work?”

“Yup, getting work.” She felt her throat tightening.

“Good. For the usual places?”

“For the usual places.” She sipped her beer and looked at the wall.

“And how about music? You haven’t been sending me things lately. Are you writing anything new?” he asked.

“Yes, I have been. But,” she took a deep breath to loosen her throat, “it’s shit. It’s no good. I haven’t written anything I’ve loved in a year.”

“Who has? Isn’t that the thing?” he asked. “You know, I think you just have to get out there and play. Your stuff’s great, Lor. It’ll grow on you. Haven’t you heard those ‘wow’s in the audience at your stuff?”

“I don’t have time. I don’t—“

“See about Pete’s Candy Store—they do songwriter residencies. You just gotta get out there, Lor.”

The deep breaths and sips of beer were not enough and she cried. The tears were few and were caught heavy in her eyes, but Glen saw them.

“You ok, babe?” he said.

“Yeah. Just—“

“Are you ok?”

“Just stuck. I’m feeling—stuck.”

“Stuck with life? Stuck with work? Stuck with what?”

She thought.

“This time of year gets me down. March. It’s been overcast for months. Winter’s too long. It’s only that.”

Here in the fog

We don’t make resolutions

Return phone calls

Drink less coffee

Write more poems

Because we know we won’t keep them.

Here in the fog we are much too numb

To dig through worms and earth

To put our hands on the root

Sinewy and caked and rough

At the very bottom.

“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to—I actually have to go,” she said, standing up. She walked to the door, and he followed.

“Deadline?” he said.

“Yeah, tomorrow morning. A review. I’ve already head-written it, I just have to get it down.”

“Oh. Well, let me walk you home. We can talk through your piece on the way?”

“No, Glen, I am fine to walk alone.”

“Loren?”

“Goodnight.”

She shut the door.

It was raining. She buttoned her coat all the way up to her chin and sunk her neck into the collar, feeling her breath caught in the tweed. In the rhythm of her steps her mind got stuck in her own words again.

Here in the fog

We don’t make resolutions

Return phone calls

Drink less coffee

Write more poems

Because we know we won’t keep them.

Here in the fog we are much too numb

To dig through worms and earth

to put our hands on the root

sinewy and caked and rough

at the very bottom.

In our apathy

We are unkind to ourselves.

We float above the garden entirely

Here in the fog.

Her throat was hot and her eyes were wet. It was a shit poem, she thought. Not long enough. Not cohesive. Why did The Lit want it? When she was halfway up the block, there were footsteps, first slow and far behind her, then faster and closer and then right behind her. She tensed, shoulders up to her ears, and swung around and in the panic didn’t expect to hear a familiar voice.

“Here,” Glen said.

She regained her bearings. She could make out the shapes of his face in the dim fluorescent streetlight.

“It’s raining,” He put his umbrella over her head, wrapped her hand around the handle, and turned home.

Tunes!

If you can stand to listen to the sub-par quality of these recordings, check out the tunes that '09 yielded...

myspace.com/catherinedanaprewitt

Oh and this is my sweet band... oohs and egg shakers in tow.

Paste Magazine: Best of What's Next: Kristina Train

http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2009/11/best-of-whats-next-kristina-train.html

The soulful saunter of Kristina Train’s debut Spilt Milk hints at her roots in Savannah, Ga., the charming Southern city where, by age 19, frequent gigs had earned the singer attention from New York-based Blue Note Records. Home to Train’s soul and jazz forerunners Etta James, Miles Davis and Billie Holiday and peers Norah Jones and Amos Lee, the label began a conversation with Train before she had even started college. When her mother encouraged her to get a degree, Train put the discussion on hold for a few years, until music’s draw became too strong to resist.

In October of 2007, with a long-awaited Blue Note record deal and a team of sought-after collaborators including producer Jimmy Hogarth (Duffy, Sia, Paolo Nutini), Train hit the studio to lay down her debut. On Spilt Milk, her voice ebbs and flows between a gentle serenade and a robust belt, accompanied by instrumentation that’s as grandiose as it’s sweetly sentimental. The nostalgia-tinged record, finally out in October 2009, is perfect for a rainy day—there’s shelter in the soothing warmth of this songstress’ voice. On one such rainy day, as Train (now 27) awaited her record’s release and the kickoff of her fall tour with blues guitarist Keb’ Mo’, she chatted with Paste from her home in New Jersey.

Paste: Where in New Jersey are you, Kristina?
Kristina Train: I live in Monmouth County. It’s on the water, so when I look outside I can see the [New York] city skyline, but it takes an hour and change to get into the city. But everybody commutes so it’s not weird. It’s incredible to think how many people are willing to take two hours or four hours out of their lives to commute just to have a little patch of grass.

Paste: Did you move to be close to New York City? Why New Jersey of all places, since you grew up in Georgia?
Train: Well, growing up in Savannah, I commuted a lot. I would go from Savannah to New York or Savannah to wherever I needed to be to work on music, but I knew that if this was really going to [happen], it’s so important to have face time with people and be able to be there if something comes up. It was hard to do that from Georgia, so I knew I needed to move closer to the record company—Blue Note—which is based in New York City. I got as far as Jersey. I’m still working on getting into the city. That’ll take a little time.

Paste: What do you miss the most about Savannah?
Train: The pace of life. The familiarity. It’s such a small town and everybody’s on a first name basis. I love being able to walk everywhere. I rarely used a car, because I grew up in the historic district downtown, so leaving my house on any given day, I’d be saying, “Hi,” to Drew the mailman, “Hi,” to Al the UPS man, walking down the street saying, “Hi,” to Bobby in his hair salon, and then going to Starbucks and being able to say, “Hi,” to Ted the guy who made me my latte everyday. Everyone was on a first name basis and it was such a tight-knit community and I really, really loved that. Also, the weather, of course. It’s like living in a vacation all year round. There’s a lot to love about Savannah.

Paste: From what I understand, Blue Note Records was pursuing you even before you were in college, and then sort of waited for you, which is pretty incredible. Can you talk a little about the decision process and the conversations that went on in your family when you were deciding whether to pursue music or to get that degree?
Train: Well, I’m an only child and I was raised by my mother, and she’s a school teacher and she’s very, very rooted in education. Now that I’m at the age where I can think of it from an adult’s perspective and try to put myself in her shoes, I’m sure that she had her hopes and dreams for me, and she only had once chance to get it right because she didn’t have any more kids. It really was important for her that I get my education, that I go to college and get my degree and I respected that. But what was in my heart and what always, everyday drove me was music. I didn’t understand why I had to waste my time going to school. At that point we butted heads.

Paste: Was it a battle?
Train: It was a battle. It was a major battle, but I understand that it was only out of my mom wanting to protect me and make sure that I had the best opportunity possible to go forward in life. I completely respect that. Also, at age 18, how could she really trust me to know what I wanted in life? But I’ve always known that this is it, and once my mom got on board, it’s been really awesome to have her by my side because she’s my biggest champion and my biggest fan.

Paste: Was there a moment when you really felt like you two were in it together?
Train: Well, yeah, I remember the day I said to her, “Mom, I’m going to do this with or without you, so you’ve gotta decide.” And she said, “Fine, fine. You have my blessing.”

Paste: When was that?
Train: I was 21.

Paste: Was that around the time of graduation?
Train: Well, I didn’t actually graduate because as soon as I got her blessing, I hightailed it. I don’t know if it was just because I was so upset about not being able to do what I loved to do everyday, but I hated school. I actually really despised it.

Paste: I understand you went to school in Athens, Ga. Were you at UGA?
Train: I bounced around to a couple of different colleges, and I kept changing my major, because I was like “I don’t want to be here!” I wouldn’t show up for class and I joined a band because Athens is such a great community for music. I guess I was passive aggressive about it, but I did everything I could to not be in school. And I was like, “Look, you can spend your money and watch me fail, or you can save your money and watch me do what I love and be happy and hopefully succeed.” Looking back I think I was completely immature and naïve, and listen, I one day I will get my degree. I do value the influence of education, but I couldn’t not follow what was in my heart.

Paste: After you got your mother’s blessing and decided you were really going to do this, what was the process like before you were actually in the studio?
Train: A number of years passed and it was a really, really valuable time. While it was frustrating in the moment, I look back on it and realize it was the best thing that could have happened, because it allowed me to grow as a musician and songwriter and allowed me to meet the people whom I needed to meet. In those years I was kind of figuring it out, realizing that I needed to be on Blue Note Records, asking them if they’d give me a second chance, going through a showcase, getting approval from Bruce Lundvall from the label, meeting different songwriters to see who I wanted to collaborate with for the album, then finally going to London back in October of 2007 and songwriting for the album. Everything seems to happen quickly, but there’s just so much more time and work behind what meets the eye—finding the right people, making the songs, making the album.

Paste: What was it that drew you to Eg White and made you choose him as someone that you wanted to be involved? Was he the primary songwriter for this record?
Train: It was split between Eg White and Ed Harcourt, who is also a really great producer-musician who does his own thing. Jimmy Hogarth was really the key to the whole thing. I wouldn’t have made this record without him. And then Eg White came in and we wrote the whole thing together. Eg is just a completely—well, his name fits his personality. He’s a quirky, eccentric kind of guy with a great appreciation and love for all things music. Music, everyday, just every minute, is pouring out of him. Being in a room with him could only spark something great happening. I appreciated that. Ed Harcourt is much of the same type of person—constantly moving, constantly going, constantly wanting to create, and both of those guys were key elements in having this thread of continuity moving through the whole album. That’s what I really appreciated—that it fits as a whole.

Paste: What was the songwriting process like?
Train: Basically, we’d get together, and all of us really share the same love and taste in music, so we’d get in a room together, start talking about music that we loved, listen to some songs, find our inspiration, and it just flowed very easily… The first song we wrote together was “Spilt Milk.” That’s a really important song for me. In being the first song that we wrote, it set the tone for the whole album. “Half Light” is also one that means a lot to me. Growing up in Savannah next door to a historic cathedral, out of my bedroom window I’d hear church bells ring, and that’s how the song starts off. “I Can’t But Help” is an Ed Harcourt collaboration about being in London not knowing what the heck was going to happen, but putting my faith in the city’s inspiration and appreciating the moment. “Far from the Country” is about missing Georgia, but also loving the place that I’m in. I love every song on the album and I feel lucky that I can say that.

Paste: What was it like to have other people do the bulk of songwriting and still feel like you were coming out with something that was honest for you?
Train: I think that we all sort of carried the same weight going into it. Something natural happened with the guys—we got to know each other. I mean, we spent a lot of time together just kind of hanging out getting to know each other, and that was really important because the guys were able to understand who I was. That helped them to write something that was appropriate and resonated with me. Then I put my two cents in and we came out with songs that I feel extremely personally attached to and emotionally attached to. I think that’s the key thing. When you’re singing, you gotta believe what you’re singing. If you don’t believe it, how can you expect anyone else to? I believe everything I’m singing on this album.

Paste: Was it Blue Note that hooked you up with all of these different players—with Jimmy and Ed and Eg?
Train: It really happened by chance. One of Blue Note’s greatest accomplishments is that they allow their artists to just be who they are. They don’t meddle; they don’t bully their artists. That’s something that has worked for them over the course of time. Once I went over to London, it was really up to me and Jimmy, the producer, to choose who we were going to work with and what we were going to play. So we got together with Eg on our own, because he and Jimmy had a connection, and we got together with Ed Harcourt on our own, because he and Jimmy also had a connection. Once we turned in the music, Blue Note was like, “Yeah, we love it. We’re into it. You guys keep plugging away.” That’s something I will always be grateful for.

Paste: When did you get to perform with Al Green?
Train: I got to perform with Al Green last year. It was truly one of the highlights of my life. Obviously, coming from a soul background, Al is one of my heroes, so to have been able to share the stage with him—I was humbled and honored at the same time. I will never forget that moment. It was so huge for me… Al is on Blue Note, and I had been chirping in everyone’s ear about how much I loved him, and I guess they took pity on me and finally threw me a bone and allowed me to open up for him. It was a nice little set-up.

Paste: You’ve performed with The Roots, also. How did that come about?
Train: Well that’s funny because Questlove produced the Al Green album, so, you know, everything’s like six degrees of separation. This world is a lot smaller than I had originally thought it was. I have a few other real favorites whom I love, and in a couple weeks I’m going to be able to sing with Willie Nelson and Wynton Marsalis and Diane Reeves. All three of those people I’ve completely loved from a very young age. It’s one thing to have finally made an album, but I’m starting to be able to play with my heroes and it’s so rewarding. It makes everything feel like it was worth it. It’s really cool to play with the people you love.

Paste: What are you most excited about in this coming season of touring and promoting?
Train: I know what music has given me in my life—it’s been a huge positive gift—so my main thing right now and the one thing I’m concerned about doing is giving that back, now that I finally have an album and materials to do that with. I’m looking forward to hopefully letting other people feel the same way that I feel when I play music.

Paste Magazine: Getting to Know... Adam Arcuragi

http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2009/10/getting-to-know-adam-arcuragi.html

Adam Arcuragi makes music like some folks host parties. Equal parts revival tent and corner pub, his sophomore LP I Am Become Joy (out now) sounds like get-together where everyone feels at home—in the room and in their own skin—and seamlessly connected. Rife with rowdy choruses, banjos, horns and handclaps, the record invites anyone listening to the party, too, calling us in to have a beer and sing along with a collective of folks called humankind, spanning time and distance. A day after the record’s Sept. 8 release, the Atlanta-born, Philly-bred songwriter caught a train from his new home in New York’s West Village to return to the City of Brotherly Love. After a walk around downtown, Arcuragi talked to Paste about how the record was made, why museums should be open all night and why a guy who gets such a kick out of life categorizes his own music as “death gospel.”

Paste: It sounds like you and the band are having fun on the recording. There is so much laughter and conversation and it’s great that you left all of that rawness in it. I’d love to hear a bit about the experience of recording—where did you do it? Who was there?
Arcuragi: My old manager introduced me to this guy [Carter Sowers] whom she had interned with at Astralwerks, the record label, just in the mailroom together. And they struck up an acquaintance. He started working as an engineer at Wyclef Jean’s studio, and he was kind of miserable there because he wasn’t really—I still don’t understand why he wasn’t happy there. He didn’t feel comfortable, because I think he was under the impression that engineers only do work that they like, you know? I guess he wasn’t feeling fulfilled because he wasn’t engaged in the process. People have all sorts of expectations. But, it worked out for me because he set up a home studio and was looking for projects to work on where he could have more of a creative input and be more of a producer than an engineer. I guess that was kind of like the crux of his dissatisfaction—not so much that he didn’t like the music that they were doing, just that he wasn’t the producer.

So we decided to do two weeks and have everybody sleep over—not at his house but throughout [New York]. My original plan was to go out to Montana, but nobody was going for that, so we moved it a little bit closer. But nothing binds together a group of disparate human beings like being in a foreign land where you have to band together, because that’s your biggest and closest source of familiarity. So it was kind of like going on a campaign—we packed up the elephants and hiked across the pyramids. I spent a lot of time preparing and getting everyone in order and then I just let it go and let it do its thing. It was two weeks of just intense stress but a lot of fun as well. Everybody else had a lot more fun because they weren’t—

Paste: Leading?
Arcuragi: Not so much leading, but making sure everything was kept together. Because I didn’t want to be the boss. I didn’t want to be the boss, Carter didn’t want to be the boss—we just understood that to make sure that it got done and got done well, each of us had to do a little bit of wrangling, but other than that we didn’t want to be telling everyone what to do. If they had a question about what to play or what to do, we’d answer those. But other than that it wasn’t like, “Here, do this” or, “You do that.” I mean, Brian—BC from BC Camplight—at first he was just like, “I’ll play some piano on a couple of the songs,” and then by the end, he was organizing and arranging, he was helping to get the choir together and singin’ the high parts. It was crazy. It was a lot of fun. Tommy [Bendel], the drummer, the day after he got back from his honeymoon he came up. His wife still doesn’t like me because of it.

Paste: Were you staying at the same apartment or were you scattered?
Arcuragi: Everybody knew at least one person in town, and I knew a bunch of folks in Brooklyn and so we were able to get everybody a place to stay. Actually, yeah, there was one night where David [Hartley, of The War on Drugs] and I slept on Carter’s floor. It was just great. Not to sound new-agey but there was a concentration of activity and energy, so tapping into that was nice. And I think we really did band together like a temporary mercenary army. Even Lauren, Carter’s girlfriend, who ended up singing—we were just invading her house, and Carter mentioned that she sings and I said, “Well then, why don’t you sing?”—even she had to kind of throw off and get into the spirit of it. She had to throw off any sort of claims to rights of, “This is my space.” Everybody had to, at the same time, take their hand off of it and let it go. So we did. We all trusted each other, and it was really cool because it’s not often that you can get that, especially when you’re doing music, because it’s such a charged thing when everybody’s looking at everybody else going, “What are you doing, man?” kind of thing. And it was really nice just to have everybody relax and let the excitement take over rather than having to match the excitement with anxiousness or frantic energy.

Paste: You can hear that.
Arcuragi: It makes me really happy to hear you say that because that’s really what we were going for. And like, the sound of the record is great, and the performances are fine, but there are a lot of little bits, sonically and arrangement-wise that if we had taken any more time, they would’ve gotten fixed, because everybody who worked on the record is a consummate artist in some way… If they took any more time, they would’ve tried to fix all that stuff, because that’s what you do when you’re very skilled: you’re a critic. I wanted to short-circuit that. I wanted to make sure that this was more of a photograph—well, not a photograph but an aural-graph of just that moment, you know?

Paste: How many people were there?
Arcuragi: Twelve? Thirteen? Around there—I’m probably forgetting somebody. They all were circling through though. It wasn’t everybody all at once, although there were about two days where it was everyone overlapping.

Paste: I understand that you’ve played with lots of different set-ups of bands over the years. Is your social circle pretty packed with musicians so that you can always just grab a friend to play on tours and recordings?
Arcuragi: I mean, if you play music with somebody, eventually you’re going to be friends, because you’re touching all sort of parts of the ancient human brain—our animal brain, you know? Being in concert with other humans. I mean, there are a lot of evolutionary correlatives to the necessity for these things, like the early primates defending themselves in groups—coordinated groups—so you will eventually become friends with the people you play music with. I don’t necessarily try to make friends with musicians so that I have them, but I also wouldn’t say that I only use friends. People, unless they’re busy, they generally get into the music. So it hasn’t been hard to convince people to play. It’s been harder for me to try and keep them, because I’m not a very good bandleader or namesake of the musical project. Maybe I don’t have enough mirror neurons or something, but I don’t do a good job of reciprocating. If someone is excited and I’m not excited, it’s harder for me to get excited and so a lot of people have complained over the years that when I’m in a bad mood, it sets the mood of the room. So there will be practices where I’m not angry or sad or upset, I just don’t have the energy. And you have to keep musicians interested, especially when you’re not paying them, which I unfortunately have never been able to do. But hopefully, that’ll all change in the next year or so. Actually, we’re going to be going to Europe in January and we’re going to be able to pay those musicians, so that’s going to be nice.

Paste: I read an interview in which you referred to your music as “death gospel.” Is that something to take seriously, and if so, what does it mean?
Arcuragi: [Laughs] I wish! I wish. Let’s see… I kept complaining that people kept trying to call—you know, God, everybody’s gotta have a genre, so I kept wrestling with that and complaining, so someone came up with the idea that, “Hey, you should just come up with your own label. And call yourself that and then there you go.” So I came up with that because, well, it’s kind of like gospel music, because we’re going for the same thing.

Paste: In terms of sound?
Arcuragi: Well, structurally, I guess, it’s traditional folk music—you know, country, gospel, anything with stringed instruments and group-singing and revelatory moments of ecstasy. The “death” part was put on there because… well, the application of a label is to cordon off and separate something from something else and give it limitations so you can clearly define it as something. And so I thought, “If you’re applying a label to isolate this thing, and separate it and make it distinct, why not make it a label that points out how we are ultimately all the same? We are all the same animal?” So instead of calling it something that’s a mouthful, like, “we-are-all-the-same-animal-gospel,” or “mitochondrial-DNA-gospel,” it’s just “death gospel.” Because we are all going to die. One time Peter [Wonsowski] was taking to his friend at a party and he introduced me and the friend said, “Oh, is this the guy that you play music with?” and he said, “Yeah,” and we started talking about it. He said, “What’s it like?” and Peter said, “I got this one,” and he put his hand up and he stopped me from taking. And he said, “It’s like going to church, but without all that annoying religious baggage.” And that always stuck with me, and so I thought, “Wouldn’t that be great? Wouldn’t that be great if that was the thing—having the good word with us? The good word about what makes us all the same?” In a roundabout way it points out that this isn’t something to be afraid of but something to encourage you to enjoy the time that you have.

Paste: The fact that we’re all the same?
Arcuragi: Yeah. The fact that we are all the same. I mean, we killed off the only other intelligent animal that was genetically distinct from us—the Neanderthals. We’re the only one left. And so we might as well get together. So yeah, we’re all the same animal. We’re all the same animal, we got a lot of things in common, and when we get together and do things together, sometimes it’s a good thing. That’s it. And so, I put it out there. I tried to say it a bunch of times. My new manager doesn’t like it at all. She hates it. The first thing she thinks is “death metal.” So she thinks I want it to be a real macabre, black mask kind of thing, but it’s not that.

Paste: It definitely sounds dark, but it sounds like you don’t intend it to be dark at all.
Arcuragi: Sounds dark? Hmm. How so?

Paste: Well, “death.”
Arcuragi: Oh, the name. See, that’s crazy. That’s crazy—that’s your crazy white man’s world fearing death. There’s no need to fear death. See that’s the thing—it’s the attachment. It’s not so much that people fear dying in that it’s a scary thing. It’s unnerving to not know what’s going to happen, and I understand that. But it’s more, I think, the adherence to a living organism, you know? People don’t want to give that up, which is understandable. Since we know no alternative, why would we want to cash that in? It’s the whole, “What would you rather have? The quarter in my left hand or what you can’t see in my right hand?” It’d be great if we could go back to the old nature of cultures that celebrated life and death equally. Those people were a lot of fun. They all had way more sex.

Paste: Now, you grew up singing in the church, right? Is that where most of your musical training came from?
Arcuragi: I took cello in school for like a year or two, played saxophone for a long time, and was in choir all through high school. Those were the two sides—the sort of more ceremonial aspect of church, where everybody’s coming together for a specific purpose, and whether or not they meant it, the purpose was higher and ethereal and based on faithful belief in something that you couldn’t prove. And people did get ecstatic. Church did its thing—what it’s supposed to do—which is to whip people into this frothy fervor, and pushed out all of this language that they’ve learned and made them organisms again. They just were responding to being a super-organism, connecting to everyone else and moving in tandem and all moving in accordance. And, I don’t know, that’s a really important part of being a human being that you don’t need church for, but you do need. It’s as essential as solving word problems or any sort of mental exercise. Crossword puzzles, things like that. There are different aspects of your brain, and that’s one of them—working in tandem with others just for fun. Whereas in school, it was more of an academic thing—studying what makes a sound and what makes a sound work with another sound and how to conduct yourself in a group when you’re playing an instrument or singing.

Paste: Is the southern sound based on your Georgia upbringing very much related to the gospel sound? I’m just trying to put all of the pieces together in terms of location and religious tradition and all of that. I hear all of those things in the music.
Arcuragi: I think that for me in terms of what it is, I mean if you want to talk about the component parts coming together, I think it has more to do with sort of inquisitiveness. I like the fact that we have, whether on purpose or accidental, sentient intelligence as we know it in us that is singularly unique and totally awesome. Not only are we self-aware, and not only do we have a store or memory that helps us make decisions on future action, but we have the ability to appreciate things just for the fact that they’re there. The fact that a human being can get sentimental about a smell! That’s completely unnecessary in terms of being an adaptive trait that could have some sort of benefit, but it just is. That’s really neat. And so from that there’s just such a huge store of just things, you know—things that we’ve done or come up with or ideas that we’ve come up with. And we have language to pass it on. We don’t have to figure out how to make a fruit tart. We just learn from the people that invented the fruit tart. We can improve on the fruit tart, but we don’t have to rethink it or come up with it on our own. We have this sum total of all knowledge that was either written down or passed on, and so there’s just so much to learn and so much to know and so much to understand and all of it is a reflection of the world that we’re in, and so there are so many patterns to get into.

So I guess that’s the main driving force for me, personally. Because there’s way too much interesting stuff. And you’ll never get to learn it all, but I definitely—that’s what I get the most excitement out of. When it comes down to it, the only real thing I can do is observe something and then pass it on. Everything else is going to be just as transient and temporary as anything else anybody does, so passing it through my particular filter is, you know, it’s not more special or less special, it’s just particular. So that’s the part that I get the biggest kick out of. That’s how the town, location and experience and all that comes together. There are goodly portions of many days where I lament that I am not a businessman or something else, but if my brain wanted to be doing those things, trust me, I would love to be doing—having money. Being able to pay for things.

Paste: Are you doing music full-time?
Arcuragi: Full time? No. I’m picking up work where there’s work available. I’m up for a general handyman position at this one place up in New York which I’m really hoping comes through. I like working with my hands and by myself, and that would afford me the opportunity to do both.

Paste: Since you graduated from college at Temple, has there been anything besides music that’s been constant in terms of work, or have you been hopping between different things?
Arcuragi: I don’t know. I guess I taught for a long time, for like three years. I was a teacher. It was pretty awesome. I taught adult ed, ESL and GED preparation. Let’s see, what else has been constant? Nothin’. Going to museums. Reading books. Those are the only constant things.

Paste: What are you reading right now?
Arcuragi: P.G. Wodehouse was this turn-of-the-century satirist and essayist. He was a popular writer. He wrote a series of books about two characters—Bertie Wooster and his manservant Jeeves, which is actually how we got the name Jeeves. And Bertie thinks he’s really smart and clever, but, you know, it’s a satire so he’s always screwing something up or getting into a situation and polite English society won’t allow him to just take the most direct course of action. I got into it because the BBC did a series with Hugh Laurie and Steven Fry as the two characters, and I don’t know, I just really like Hugh Laurie, so I got really into it. I’ve watched every episode. So I’m reading that just for fun. Oh, somebody gave me a copy of The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley, so I’m supposed to be reading that. [Yawns] I’ve just been so wrapped up lately and feeling tired... Everything has been like, “Let’s get this together. Let’s get this record out. Can’t be 30 and working at Starbucks, and still writing home and saying, ‘Yup. Still trying to be a musician.’” I gotta at least give it that final push.

Paste: So it sounds like right now with the release of I Am Become Joy is a big moment for you.
Arcuragi: It is, only insofar as I’m very motivated to like, get on a train and come to Philadelphia on my day off to do this interview. Instead of being a hippie about it and being like, “Hey man, as long as everybody loves everybody it’ll all work out,” I’m just trying to think about it more practically. OK, fine. I have to acknowledge that there is a music business and there are certain strictures that I have to conduct myself with, and hopefully leverage something that I make into, if not a career, at least something temporary… You know, you spend so much time building up a discipline and trying to push and find all the little subtle attachments that you can use to make it really good. You know, like if you’re cooking something. Chicken is delicious. If you just heat chicken and cook the flesh, it’s delicious. Delicious chicken fat—there’s nothing in the world like chicken fat. If you spend a lot of time developing a palette, and really understanding flavors and how to put them all together, you can attach all of these disparate things and put them all together to make something great, and it’s refined and it’s something that’s really, really good. It’s something that makes us human—the ability to do something for the sake of doing it, or, for the sake of making it something that’s a little more qualitative and not just quantitative. It’s not just nutrients anymore. It’s nutrients that you can find subtle joy in from different combinations of things.

If you wanted to, you could get really into something creative, like music or writing or painting. Artists are crazy! They get so in their own world. Nobody ever really bothered me. When I was in elementary school, I figured out, “Man, if I just do this, no one will bother me anymore.” I stopped doing homework all through elementary school because there was a system, and if you figure that out you can get to a point where you can wring it out like a rag to get the most out of it. That was the thing. I was so busy for the last ten years just squeezing that rag—squeezing it and squeezing it and trying to get everything last drop out of it, and I totally wasn’t paying attention to all of the different things you have to do in terms of being part of the community. There is a huge community of musicians and promoters and things like that. If you’re not paying attention, it passes you by. I just wasn’t paying attention. Now that I have [my manager] doing all of these things, I’m getting in shape. Kind of like the difference between someone who’s a boxing historian and someone who’s a boxer. I’m moving from my dusty stack of books and I’m getting in shape. I’m gonna get in the ring.

Oh man. It’s not that I’m lazy, I don’t think. I like doing things. I just like doing things at a very protracted pace. Museums are not open long enough. I’m sorry. I have had daydreams about being super rich and being able to buy a museum and take over the trusteeship or whatever and just pump a whole bunch of money into it and have a 24-hour museum. I’d make the whole purpose of the museum that it’s open all the time and people can come whenever they want. It’s not so much that I like to do things at that pace because it’s easier—it’s that if you do something right over a long period of time… Like pit BBQ, where you dig a hole and put a bunch of coals in and cook something for like four hours, or like cold-brewing coffee, or brewing mead. If you do it right, if you maintain that balance over time, you get something delicious. So I’m in a slow-curing kind of mode.

Paste: So the title I Am Become Joy—does it have anything to do with what we were just talking about? About the process? What is it to you?
Arcuragi: Oh man, see, that’s the worst part about telling somebody the reason that you named something. I don’t mind, I’m just saying that your response was way more interesting than what I’m going to tell you. It’s just very simple: After the Trinity Test, [Robert] Oppenheimer was sort of the man of the hour. He had designed the most devastating weapon that everybody had ever seen. Well, not him specifically but he was the head of the Manhattan Project. So everyone asked him, “What was it like to see your weapon go off at Trinity?” and he quoted a part of the Bhagavad Gita. He was fluent in Sanskrit—he could read and write and translate like a champ. It’s the 11th book and the 32nd chapter, where Shiva has come to convince this reluctant prince to make war on his neighbor, and for whatever reason, the prince was like, “Eh, I don’t want to do it.” So Shiva transforms him herself into this divine, ethereal, terrible version of himself and he becomes the destroyer. He becomes this blinding flash of light that you can’t comprehend and you can’t look at. And Shiva says, “If the brilliance of a thousand suns would make itself plain, surely that is the visage of the divine one,” or something like that. “I have become death, the destroyer of worlds.”

But, Oppenheimer was raised with a classical education, and there’s an old poetic thing where you can reverse things. My grammar is really bad, but instead of saying, “I have done something,” you can say, “I am.” It’s like a poetical thing that Byron did a lot, and Shelley, where you take something that is grammatically off and it lends to the meter or the poem. It’s like enjambment—it’s a stylistic thing as much as it is a technical thing, because you have to fall within the meter but because you have to fall within the meter you can play with the language. So Oppenheimer said, and this was his translation, “I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” Then Time Magazine took and made the quote, “Oppenheimer says, ‘I am become death, the destroyer of worlds,’” and instead of taking the allegorical use of the quote, where Oppenheimer was the Prince looking at the destroyer, they kind of made it seem like Oppenheimer was saying, “I am become death, I did this.”

So while we were recording, I read that, and I said, “Oh, you know what? This is like our little Manhattan Project. We’re all sort of experts at what we do—you know, I’ve gathered together a fine team of scientists, and took them all out of their native, familiar territory, put them in my little Los Alamos laboratory, and hopefully at the end there will be a brilliant flash of right and a terrible sound. Terrible but great.

Paste: The good kind.
Arcuragi: Yeah. The kind that knocked the walls of Jericho down.

Paste Magazine: Best of What's Next: fun.

Hometown: New York
Album: Aim and Ignite
Members: Andrew Dost (keyboards, guitar, vocals), Nate Ruess (vocals), Jack Antonoff (guitar, vocals)
For Fans Of: Ben Folds, Queen, The Format

Last year, following the dissolution of his first band, ex-Format frontman Nate Ruess made a pilgrimage idealized by young Americans long before Sinatra’s famed salute: Having overstayed his welcome in his Arizona hometown, the songwriter moved to New York to start a new life. “There’s a big difference between comfort and what you’re destined to do,” Ruess says. “I needed a change in every aspect of my life.”

Now teamed with Steel Train lead singer Jack Antonoff and former Anathallo multi-instrumentalist Andrew Dost, Ruess has documented this change on his new band’s debut Aim and Ignite, on which frenetic lyrics and mille-feuille instrumentation capture the anxiety and thrill of being in a new city where everything is ripe for discovery. The new group is called fun.—an oddly-punctuated but perfectly apt band name if there ever was one. In rowdy bar anthems and reminiscing ballads, the record narrates Ruess’ coming to Brooklyn, coming of age and coming to terms with what he’s left behind

The trio took in a lot of Broadway theater while writing the record, and its sung dialogue, bellowing horns and bombastic choruses are begging to be choreographed—a notion that might not be completely out of the question. “We’re doing this group work-out together,” Ruess says. “We bought an infomercial DVD called Insanity, and we’ve gotten pretty synchronized. Maybe we can learn some dance numbers next.”

Paste Magazine: Mason Jennings: Blood of Man

More questions than answers on folk storyteller's somber eighth LP

This wiry haired, plaid-clad Minnesota musician has established himself as a glass-half-full kind of guy. Many of his songs celebrate family and love—he’s been known for simple, repetitive lyrical constructions with lines like, “You are the love of my life,” or “Keep on kissin’ me,” and love songs to Jesus and Buddha alike. It’s not that Mason Jennings has never tackled hard things—much of his early work is heavy with well-developed questions and doubts about God and human hurt, but they’re mostly channeled through playful poetry and breezy acoustic riffs. His latest, Blood of Man, is an oft-startling departure from his characteristically light-hearted sound, as Jennings explores dark material with crunching electrics more suited for a stadium than the coffee shops and small clubs we’ve pigeon-holed him into.

Opener “City Of Ghosts” hosts a lonely howl (to a lover or a god? Jennings leaves this open for interpretation): “Looking for you / Why won’t you show? / Waiting for you / But it’s a city of ghosts,” he sings over pounding drums and an electric guitar’s wail. The ominous “Black Wind Blowing” and “Ain’t No Friend Of Mine” are bloody murder songs, the latter ending in the eerie tinkling of a piano’s high keys. Hope peeks through on “Sunlight,” though the track is bittersweet at best; the idyllic season of young love and popsicles that Jennings depicts feels painfully out of reach. Tender and lamenting, “The Field” and “Sing Out” are the record’s aesthetic peaks, though both are just plain sad. The first is a desperate cry of a parent who has lost a son to war, and the second further expresses the weight of human loss. Completely self-recorded and mastered, Blood of Man isn’t dressed up in studio effects—it’s as raw and real as the writing itself.

Paste Magazine: Erin McKeown: Hundreds of Lions

McKeown continues to distinguish herself with clever lyrics and instrumentation

It can be hard to stand out in today’s landscape of female songwriters, where vocal acrobatics and wild orchestral accompaniment have become de rigeur, but on her latest, Erin McKeown offers a few blossoms in the brush. While the lush instrumentation on openers “to a Hammer” and “santa cruz” is bright and pleasant, and the playful rockabilly number “the Rascal” is a foot-stomping good time, Hundreds of Lions truly shines as it begins to slow down.

On “you, sailor,” the strong-willed and witty McKeown softens with gentle vocals and the stunning hum of whistles and strings. On raw, crackling closing track “seamless,” McKeown’s voice glides atop simple guitar strums and chirping birds, hinting at the conditions in which the multi-instrumentalist made the record—independently, in a farmhouse studio in the New England countryside. McKeown’s guard is down as she muses on the vulnerability and humility required for real intimacy: “We are tiny when held against the sky … we are fused you and I / what do I care how seamless is the line / where we begin and end?”

Paste Magazine: "Jay Farrar and Ben Gibbard Talk Kerouac Project"

"I shambled after as I've been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones that never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!'"

This dazzling bit of prose surfaces within the first several pages of Jack Kerouac’s On The Road. The 1957 book chronicles the budding Beat movement and has been a model for countless artists and adventures chasing after rich living ever since.

Amongst this throng are Son Volt’s Jay Farrar and Death Cab for Cutie’s Ben Gibbard, who, united by reverence for their artistic forefather, will release a collaboration inspired by Kerouac’s wild, winsome prose this fall. Titled One Fast Move or I’m Gone, the record was written almost entirely by Farrar, who adapted Kerouac’s writing into lyrics. The project was born when the writer’s nephew, producer Jim Sampas, asked both musicians to contribute to a documentary about Kerouac’s life during the years he penned the novel Big Sur, published in 1962.

“On The Road is the book that everybody knows,” Gibbard tells Paste via telephone from his hometown, Seattle, Wash. “On The Road is the early episode of optimism and youth and traveling across the country and three days on speed and pulling into town and seeing your friends and being loud in bars.” There was an episode of Gibbard’s life that was like this—“when the band was first touring and everything in the world was new and everybody you knew was on the road in some fashion or another because we were all friends in bands and no one had a real job.”

But what happens when optimism and youth fade? When those "fabulous yellow roman candles" burn out? Big Sur is the novel that depicts this less whimsical season of Kerouac’s life, and a novel that Farrar and Gibbard, each with a decade or two of touring behind them, feel deeply connected to.

“I’ve always really loved Big Sur because Big Sur is kind of the wake up call after the night of binge drinking,” Gibbard says. Kerouac was nearing 40 when he escaped the public eye and attempted sobriety at a friend’s cabin deep in the woods of Big Sur, Calif. Big Sur, a memoir thinly veiled as fiction by Kerouac’s use of an alter-ego named Jack Duluoz, is a dark story. “In the book,” Gibbard says, “he initially goes down to the cabin to dry out, and he’s unable to stay there longer than a couple of weeks because he just can’t do it. He has to get back to the city where he feels like things are happening, so he goes back to [San Francisco] and grabs everybody from the city and brings them back to this place... He went to it to get away from all of these elements, now he’s bringing all of these elements back and corrupting this very sacred place.

“It’s a very tragic book to me, because, it’s like, you have this person who has not changed. He has struggled and has been unable to change his life and to grow into the skin that he now has. After all of the wild nights, he’s become just a fat drunk man at a bar who is now not drinking because he wants to, but drinking because he has to." At some point, the wildness of the lifestyle ceases to be fulfilling. "I've learned from Kerouac that at some point, you just need to go home."

Using Kerouac’s own words, One Fast Move or I’m Gone captures the tragedy of alcoholism and depression that ultimately snubbed Kerouac’s once-luminous gusto and good-cheer.

As frontman of a roots-rock band, Farrar explains that though he was a longtime Kerouac junkie, when Sampas first contacted him he was unsure whether this project would be a good fit for him. “Jack Kerouac is pretty much synonymous with ‘jazz,’" he tells Paste. "But when I realized he also appreciated folk and even referenced it in one of his novels, that’s when I knew there was a way for me to bring something to this.”

Farrar hadn’t read Big Sur; it was one of the novels missing from his large Kerouac library. But after speaking to Sampas, he immersed himself in the book. “Because it was my first time reading it, there was a lot of enthusiasm about the project,” Farrar remembers. Truly in the spirit of Kerouac, Farrar set furiously to writing, churning out most of the record’s songs in just five days. “I started with the ‘Sea’ poem at the end of the book, and gradually got into the rest of the text."

Sampas cast the net out to a number of other musicians as well, hoping to have lots of voices on the soundtrack. “I listened to Jay’s demos and really loved them,” Gibbard says, who quickly agreed to be involved. “They’re kind of like little chapters in a book, where he’s taken lines from throughout a particular passage and created a really great narrative out of the narrative that was already there without compromising it or cutting it up. Every song feels like it is a moment in time. Jay is such a great songwriter that he did a phenomenal job of translating some of these bursts of words that, had they been in someone else’s hands, could have sounded sort of jumbled and out of time.”

Expecting to contribute to one or two tracks, Gibbard went to San Francisco to meet with Sampas and Farrar. “Jay and I didn’t really know each other,” he recalls. The two got drinks together the night before their first session, and met for the second time in the studio the next day. “We were just kind of blinking at each other trying to figure out how we were gonna make music together, not really knowing each others’ process yet but also having all theses songs to record. So initially it was a very nerve-wracking experience.”

Over time, though, the two developed a real friendship. “We have similar sensibilities, to the point where we realized we could quote the same John Wayne speech given to the ROTC,” Farrar says. Their love of Kerouac’s writing and the depth to which they feel wrapped up in his legacy was what ultimately brought the project to where it is today. As Farrar tells it, “We were the last ones standing. We both believed in the spirit of Kerouac enough to know that we had to see the project through.” What was meant to be a compilation drawing from a number of different contributors ended up a duet album between the two strangers, who now count each other as dear friends.

“Well, maybe we could do this together,” Gibbard remembers Farrar offering. “Maybe we could kind of just split vocals across these 10 or 11 songs and make a record that way.” So in February of 2008, Gibbard flew down to Farrar’s Studio in St. Louis, Mo., where the project really began to take shape. Splitting time between four studios and recruiting minimal help from a tiny covey of musicians and producers, the two spent the next year creating what would become not only a heartfelt homage to their literary idol but also the entire soundtrack to Sampas' film. They recorded the final track in Los Angeles studio The Ship in January of this year, and both the record and the film, titled One Fast Move or I’m Gone: Kerouac’s Big Sur, will see an Oct. 20 release date.

Channeling the rawness and candor of Big Sur's troubled author, the record sets Kerouac’s words to simple arrangements of guitar, piano, bass and drums, with the occasional whine of pedal steel and slide guitar. “Sea Engines” rings with marked tenderness as Gibbard reaches for the high notes, harmonizing with the characteristic wobble of Farrar’s voice. “A couple of those performances from that first session in San Francisco have a really nice beauty and vulnerability to them,” Gibbard says, remembering the clumsy nature of the earliest buds of their collaboration, “because you definitely have two people just trying to play off of each other in real time.” Even these early tracks weren’t dressed up much in production. Gibbard says that there wasn’t much of a band in the studio—just simple accompaniment by Son Volt's Mark Spencer.

While the two describe Big Sur as one of Kerouac’s darkest works, some light does sneak onto the record. There is hopeful momentum in the steady rhythm and slide guitar’s drawl on “These Roads Don’t Move” that evokes a long and pensive drive, an elbow on the window sill and a warm wind as Gibbard sings a line from the end of the novel, “Something good will come of all things yet.”

The name of the film and the record, predictably, is a reference excavated from the lines of Big Sur. “It’s like, ’You’ve only got one chance to get it right,’ which is sort of how Ben and I approached this album,” Farrar explains. Longtime witnesses to the Kerouacian esprit, Farrar and Gibbard went after this project with great spontaneity, letting the songs rise up organically with little room for regrets and revisions.

“Once we got the mixes back it dawned on me: ‘I think we made a really good record. I’m really proud of this. It’s really beautiful,’” Gibbard says. “A lot of it is really down-tempo and folky. I think people are going to find things they really like about it.”