Though the members of Megafaun have played in bands together since 1997, they’ve only recently felt confident enough to self-title an album. The product of 15-plus years of musical growth, Megafaun is a stylistically diverse, improv-oriented mix of freak folk, instrumental jazz, traditional Americana and a general post-jam ethos. Recording in the home studio of their childhood friend and former band mate Justin “Bon Iver” Vernon, guitarist/bassist Brad Cook, his banjoist brother Phil and drummer Joe Westerlund hunkered down and created their American Beauty; an album that marries their experimental tendencies with a newfound studio focus.
Shortly before the album’s release, Westerlund opened up about his new songwriting approach, his recent clubhouse recording sessions and how Vernon’s copy of Hoist changed his outlook on music in general.
Megafaun is stylistically diverse, but feels like the most complete statement you have made as a band. Can you start by giving us a little background on when you started putting the album together?
We started recording at April Base—[former band mate] Justin Vernon’s studio—in November. We got there with about 30 different song possibilities, and we had 2 weeks there. We generally don’t record vocals until everything is laid down. I guess it’s probably backwards from the way most bands do it, but we got there and had at least 30 pretty good ideas. We just thought, “Let’s just do all of them—let’s not limit ourselves to picking them now. We’ll just take them in the order that we feel them.”
About five days into that process, we realized that we can’t do all 30 ideas—we were spending a full day tracking only one or two songs, and we still had to go back and fill in some of the old ideas we didn’t finish. So we just realized that we had what felt like 17 really important possibilities, and we just worked on fleshing those ideas out the best we could. We eventually got that number down to around 13 or 14 ideas that we felt really demanded the most attention—they felt like good springboards for the songs that they’ve become. So instead of focusing on so many different things, we learned pretty quickly that we just needed to fine tune our process and put a lot of the work into fewer songs.
When it came time to refine the process, did a certain style or sense of cohesiveness dictate which songs made the album’s final cut?
Really, they were just our favorite songs. For us, thinking about stylistic cohesiveness is a dangerous thing. We appreciate all different types of music and there is a [natural] cohesiveness because we are the ones recording these songs. So some songs on the album are more jazzy or instrumental while others use a lot more synthesized sounds. Then there are songs that sound like Jackson Browne or The Beatles or Drive-By Truckers. They’re all kinds of music that we listen to and all things that we cherish in music—and to leave something out because it feels stylistically a little too “across the board” wouldn’t be sticking true to who are as musicians and music listeners. Phish is a great example of a band that never stuck to one style—so are The Beatles. We just don’t care, I think. [Laughter.]
Did you find that recording at a friend’s studio gave you more room to experiment? If so, how did that freedom shape the record?
We always reserve time to experiment, no matter what. Even when we were not friends—or great friends—with the person who owned the studio we were using, we’ve reserved time to do things like crinkle paper in front of a microphone to add a bed underneath all the instruments. Doings those things might seem ridiculous, but it is important nonetheless. I think Justin’s studio, if anything, made us a little more comfortable in that it was familiar. His home studio is so close to his parents’ house, where we used to practice when we played in the band Mount Vernon together in high school. We used to split practice time between his parents’ basement and my parents’ basement. So it’s almost like we were in his parents’ basement again but it’s a much bigger, awesome-er basement and the upstairs is still ours too at the end of the day when we’re done! [Laughter.] In that way it feels like a clubhouse. And I think that’s the feeling that’s really key and really inspirational to the feeling of this record.
I definitely think the album captures a mood—a sense of season even.
I think that is true, especially on some of the more winter-like tracks like “State/Meant.” Some people think of spring and summer with that song but to me it’s very November—it makes me feel like I am snowed into Justin’s studio. I remember really taking in the cold, November, snowy scenery through the windows of the warm indoors while we were recording it. I got kind of nostalgic over the beauty of Wisconsin winters that we grew up with. I guess that’s one of the reasons why that song is the most classically “Megafaun” sounding song on the record to me. It sort of sounds like something we could have written at any point in our careers making music together.
The thing that’s great about Justin’s studio is that all of his instruments are there for us to use—that might have been a friend deal, though. I am not sure everyone else gets that luxury [Laughter.]. There’s just a much wider palate available to us. So we were really, really able to have an idea and then find the proper sound pretty quickly, as opposed to taking alternate routes like, “Oh, we don’t have that type of guitar so we need to make it sound like that instrument and then figuring out how to do that.” With all these instruments at our beck and call, you can make a record sound the way you want.
You mentioned Mount Vernon, your high school band with Justin Vernon and the Cooks. Can your give us a quick history of how that project turned into DeYarmond Edison and, eventually, split into Megafaun and Bon Iver?
Mount Vernon was our band in high school. It was a big band with horns and was kind of jammy—we’d really go out there. I wouldn’t say we’ve ever been part of a straight-ahead jamband with big guitar solos, but Mount Vernon had a community jammy thing going where everybody was playing all the time. We’d have all these sections in the songs where it would be this big horn/guitar/bass/drum/keyboard build into a totally free-form jammy kind of thing. I didn’t get a chance to see the new Bon Iver big band [this summer] but from the videos I’ve seen on YouTube I definitely feel that there’s some of that from that from our high school band in there. There’s a very similar way of jamming where it’s not about a virtuosic guitar solo—it’s a big build of all these guys interacting. It’s very much of a New Orleans structural band.
DeYarmond Edison came after Mount Vernon, which was Justin and everyone from Megafaun. That was definitely less jammy and the parts that were stretched out a little bit more were definitely in a frame. But everybody was playing—everybody was building it. It’s not just centered around one dude showing off his chops, and Megafaun definitely lives by that improvisational code as well.
We kind of all built off each other as friends and musicians, and we progressed through all these different styles together. I left home and went to college but [Vernon and the Cooks] continued playing all along. After college, we all moved to Raleigh, NC, and we kind of gravitated towards the same types of music. We got more into folk, folk-rock, experimental music and other kinds of jazz. We just never felt like we needed to separate our interests, you know? I think that’s something that has been there since the beginning of our relationship as band mates: we incorporate everything that we listen to. After DeYarmond Edison broke-up, [Vernon started recording as Bon Iver], and the rest of us continued on as Megafaun.
What was your gateway into the world of improvisation?
Actually, the first time I heard Phish was at Justin’s house in high school. He played Hoist for me. He liked them but he never actually went to a show with us. Before that I was listening to Nirvana, and I had a Germs record. I was either going to go the jazz route or the punk route, and the punk thing didn’t work out for me. After Justin played me Hoist, I bought it and I just couldn’t stop listening to it.
I’ve got this other friend Trevor who was in Mount Vernon as well—he was a trumpet player. He had Junta and Rift and that’s when I was like, “Oh wait, that’s what these guys do.” Hoist was something totally different but you could hear the musicianship even though they were playing really tightly constructed pop songs. You could almost hear them listening to each other and being sensitive to each other. They weren’t just bashing away on their instruments like a lot of the music I was listening to at that point. It was exciting for me to hear somebody blast off. So that was a big shift for me when I heard Hoist —everything else after that just took me deeper and deeper into that whole world. Those guys in Phish were into 20th century classical composition and they were into jazz and bluegrass and all sorts of stuff—it sort of took me on a journey. The first time I saw them was in ‘95, a few days before the Halloween show. That was a fucking revelation.
How did you meet the Cooks?
I met Phil first at a jazz camp that every jazz nerd in Wisconsin went to—it was a week-long camp in the summer, and we played a lot of Frisbee and learned a lot about jazz. There were always some jamband kids that would show up there, and we’d quickly find out who each other were and play together. Phil and I met there in ‘96 and went to go see Phish together, actually, later that summer at Alpine Valley. They played “Reba,” which was one of my favorite songs at that point. I think they might have played “Harry Hood” that night, but that might have been the following summer.
We kept in touch and saw each other every now and then over the year. The next summer Phil didn’t go to jazz camp but Brad did! I became really tight with Brad and it was kind of like, “Oh, I knew both of them.” The three of us went to see Phish at Alpine Valley that summer together, and it started a tradition of seeing Phish at Alpine Valley together for three or four years.
I just remember having some amazing experiences at those Phish shows. I just couldn’t believe that so many people were listening like I was listening. I just couldn’t believe that Phish were doing the things they were doing in front of that many people. I remember thinking, “Holy Shit! Those guys just went somewhere that seems very vulnerable and very off the cuff, and here’s all these people that either don’t know where they are or totally onboard with the whole thing.” It was unbelievable to me. There was this quiet moment during this “Harry Hood” jam, and I could actually hear conversations within 30 people of myself. The fact that this was a rock concert where people got that quiet was an amazing feeling.
We all also went to H.O.R.D.E. fest together in ‘97 and that was a real solidifying experience. We saw Claypool jam with Morphine, and we saw Primus and Beck. Brad actually brushed shoulders with Neil Young, and I remember that being a big deal to him. At that point I wasn’t listening to much Neil Young—that was something my dad listened to [Laughter.]—but Brad was already a huge fan.
We’d just see each other more often during the school year, and we’d go to more concerts—there were some bands around town that we both liked, so we’d make these little dates to go to shows together. When we started driving they joined Justin and I’s band—it was a really instant thing.
It’s funny, when I saw you open for Mountain Goats at Bowery Ballroom, I think you teased a few lines of “Icculus,” including something about the Helping Friendly Book. The Mountain Goats fans didn’t get it, and I actually heard someone ask if that was a Mormon reference.
[Laughter.] We’ve done that a few times and there always ended up being one or two people in the crowd—or maybe some of our friends going, “Oh my god, that was “Icculus.” We covered it for an entire tour once. That’s kind of become almost a tradition for us to throw in a line or something from “Icculus” that only one or two people in an entire audience might get and feel really special for understanding.
We used to get a rap for people thinking that we were a dark band. Maybe it is because we are part of the whole freak-folk thing or maybe it is because we have these experimental tendencies. So we like to have some comic relief in our shows, kind of like when Phish would have Tom Marshall come and sing. That’s especially true as the songs we are writing are getting more and more personal. They are getting kind of heavier lyrically—to us anyway—and I hope that comes across in the record. So it becomes more important for us to have a little bit of comic relief in the show. “Icculus” is a tool that we use for that sometimes.
As I said earlier, Megafaun definitely feels like a more mature statement and a personal album, too.
I think there are two areas where we’ve really worked hard to grow since the band started because they were the two things that we’ve had the least experience doing—one was singing and the other was writing songs. They’re both scary.
I’d say writing lyrics is still the scariest thing to me. I like singing as much as I like playing an instrument right now, but writing lyrics is just this really physical transition for us. But we feel pretty comfortable with it after this record. I can say for myself, at least, that I was afraid to write really personal lyrics about relationships when I started writing songs. I always felt that it was really cliché or cheesy—or at least everything I wrote came out sounding like it was really cheesy. But I feel much more confident after this record. There’s a certain confidence you get when you stand behind a song that makes you feel naked emotionally. That might sound corny but it’s true, and I think that’s something we talked a lot about when we were writing lyrics for this record—just saying what we meant and not hiding behind analogies, flowery wordings or descriptions.
We really wanted the songs on this record to be plain and straightforward—we just felt that it would be a more direct and honest way to approach songwriting. I listen to them now and there’s definitely moments where I’m cringing and going, “Oh god! If people actually knew what that line was about, I’d be really throwing myself out there.” [Laughter.] But at the same time it is exciting that we’ve gotten to this point where we feel confident enough to tell a story in a pretty straightforward way.
Is that why you guys decided to self-title the album?
I think that’s the only answer. I’ve come up with a bunch of them in my head because we were really fighting the self-titled thing up until the very end. Our label really pushed for it. We have pages of e-mails where all of us—and our tour manager Martin, who was also on the e-mails—were just like, “What the hell are we going to call this record?” We came up with as many lyrics from songs as we could—the things that just felt related to the album and ideas that were completely unrelated as far as their use in any lyrics. It was endless.
I think we just got to a point where we all thought that self-titling the record would be the biggest copout possible. But it just got to a point where it was like, “I think this is our most direct, simplest statement yet, and it just makes sense to call it Megafaun.” So exactly what you said is right: our songwriting is more direct now so the title of our record felt like it had to be direct too.
The album also has the potential to introduce you to a whole new audience. So for many listeners it will likely be your first album.
Absolutely, I think it was definitely a checkpoint. I feel like we’ve reached a record where we can stand behind every track and feel like we’ve definitely said something. Our other records have said something too, but this one just felt like we were closing a door on some things and opening a door to so many others.
Is it stylistically a door closer or more of a growth in maturity?
Both. It was a door closer on certain types of songs that we’ve done in the past. We’ve tried to make an album like this before but never reached this place. This felt like, “Oh, this is what we’ve been looking for, this is what I’ve been trying to do these last three times.” So in a way it’s a door closer, but it’s also a place we understand well.
We used to have this loose rule in place while recording—especially during Gather, Form & Fly —that if there were three harmonies, we’d each sing a part. Now we’re letting the lead vocalist stack his own harmonies more often, and reserving the other two voices for background parts, like “oohs” and “aahs” and stuff like that. Brad has really gotten the most mileage out of this approach. When he overdubs doubled melody parts or harmonies, his voice creates this devastatingly beautiful, fragile sound. In the past, we wanted everything to sound like the three of us singing in a room together, but lately we’ve been feeling better about letting our voices stand alone. It gives us a much wider palette to choose from, and also allows us to create an extra contour in the music, just like an extra instrument to pad things out.
We also sang at a fraction of the volume we normally do on this record. It was a conscious choice that we made the same day we started tracking vocals. It wasn’t anything we had talked about before that day, but once we started, we all got really excited and hooked on experimenting with our voices at really low volumes. We learned that when you sing at a low volume it’s easier to stay in tune, and its also allows the character of your voice to come out. Thus, there are many more subtle vocal inflections on this record. We’ve worked really hard at staying in tune with each other, and now we’re at a point where the bigger challenge is to allow our own individuality to come out in a vocal performance, take some risks, and allow our voices to just do what they do naturally.
I heard you are also working on a solo album. Can you give us a little information on that project?
There are a few projects, actually. I just went back to North Carolina for a month and recorded another record with some friends in Richmond. The other guys in Megafaun still live in Durham but I recently moved to LA where my wife went to school. Phil [Cook] and Heather had a baby so I saw the baby, and we did all sorts of stuff around North and South Carolina. So it’s been kind of a busy summer. Then I also just finished tracking a solo record this summer for Space Bomb Records, which is our friend Matt White’s label. We did Sounds of The South with him—he co-arranged all the horn parts for that project.
He has this band called Fight the Big Bull, which is a big jazz big band. It is seven people, and they all come from the university down there in Virginia. From my perspective, they are the kingpins in this deep web of jazz musicians who are keyed into the whole Richmond music scene. He’s just has this endless number of musicians that are willing to play on his records and support his record label by lending their talent. So he has this little recording studio that’s a tape-and-analog place in his attic, and his goal is to do a solo record for each member of Megafaun. What I did was I just wrote songs that were kind of coming from this funnier place, almost like an inside joke taken too far.
I’ve got this character named Grandma Sparrow that I entertain my friends with by kind of improvising songs when we’re having our hangout time. When he asked all three of us to do a record with him that was the first thing that came to my mind—to make an album of this silly poetry that’s been turned into songs and to really flesh them out. His whole thing is he just wants to be the arranger and the engineer. I had a children’s choir come and play on the record and there’s a badass rhythm section on there. It goes from orchestral, Frank Zappa-influenced songs to R & B and a bunch of silly songs that are kind of all strung together.
We’re still working on it—we still have plans to mix it in the winter, and it’ll probably be at least a year before we release it. But Space Bomb Records is definitely an exciting awesome project to be on the lookout for. They’re just doing an amazing, awesome, inspiring thing.
There is also Phil Cook & His Feat, Phil’s solo record that came out on Trekky Records last spring. It is Phil doing solo stuff just on guitar, bass drum and a tambourine rig. He wrote an album of all instrumentals that are really awesome, really beautiful and real folky.
But Megafaun is really our main focus right now. It is the quiet before the storm, if you can call it a storm [Laughter].
