Mothers - The Weight of Adulthood

Having listened to the record, I can say you put a lot of emotional tension into it. I've read that you found it very difficult to perform on stage, especially when you started out as a solo artist. So how do you feel now that everything has scaled up, you'll be touring for a long time, and lots of people will be listening to the songs (and the pain contained within them)?

My experience has changed, but not because I feel any differently about the songs, or about music in general - it's just that the circumstances have changed and I'm playing much more consistently now. I've come to terms with the idea of sacrificing myself for art, and with what that means, and it's reassuring. It's always been natural for me to express vulnerability, sensitivity - it's still emotionally demanding, but it's also a way of building my own confidence.

Some of the issues that you (and the band members) dealt with on this record concern the "big cliff edge" of finishing school, of finally discovering what you're worth – a truly important moment, which you expressed well musically and that resonates a lot with me. You're now starting a music career, after having planned one as a printmaking teacher. How do you feel about all this, now?

We're taking it one step at a time. I have no idea what the next two, ten, twenty years will look like. One positive thing I've taken from being on tour all the time is the ability to adapt – you have to be ready for anything. When you're feeling sick and you're on the road, you're not allowed to coddle yourself, there's no place where you can really rest, you just have to do your best with what you've got. It's one of the hardest things I've ever done, so in a way I feel better equipped to handle whatever comes my way after the tour. I still want to be a creator of things, I want to do a lot of home recording in the future. "Music career" is a pretty daunting concept to grasp, I'm not entirely sure what it means.

Part of the result, I imagine, comes from the emotional quality of the recording process. How do you look back on that period now? Is it a relief that it's over, or do you miss those days?

I'm ready to work on the next record. It was such an important moment for all of us, when we made "When You Walk A Long Distance You Are Tired", and I think that aspect of the whole thing is properly documented by the record itself. I don't miss it – I was struggling, more than usual. What I miss most is being at home, building songs and arrangements, and the whole process of being comfortable, creative. It's been hard to write lately, since we've been on the road since the start of the year.

I read that the recording sessions began when you'd only been playing together for a month. Would you want them to sound different now? Have the songs changed after a year of live performances?

We've talked about it a lot – we all agree that we're lucky to have recorded everything exactly as it is. That said, the songs from the record have changed a lot, and sometimes they're quite improvised, the way we play them now. It's more stimulating that way, it keeps the attention and excitement level high. The record is improvised in a very different sense, because it was this process of stabbing in the dark, trying to evolve our identity as a group, in real time in front of the microphones. So in that way I think we were able to capture something that isn't the same anymore, and probably never will be again.

I particularly like the arrangements on the record, they have a lot of class and help transfigure the emotional impact of the songs. They make it easier to connect with the tracks, in a way, at least from a "detached" aesthetic standpoint. Can you tell us about the members of your band, how you met, how you managed to put the songs together in such a short time, and so on?

We were all playing in Athens. It's a small town, so we all knew about each other's bands, went to each other's shows etc. even before we were friends. It was obvious that we shared this mutual respect, that we took ourselves and our projects seriously, that we wanted to do something special. All the members are still heading up various other projects – Matt with Group Stretching, Drew with New Wives, Patrick with The Viking Progress and Bronze Brain.

I had already written almost all the songs on "When You Walk" before the full-band incarnation of Mothers, and I'd been playing them live solo for quite a while. So the skeleton of the record was already in place – all that was left was to carefully build the right space for those songs to exist in.

I think what makes this record stand out from other young "emotional" singer-songwriters is the richness of styles, the dynamism of the songs. Can I ask you about your main musical influences?

A little bit of everything. I started out with bands like Neutral Milk Hotel, Bright Eyes, Microphones, Sufjan Stevens. I got interested in the textures of Animal Collective. I was introduced to Don Caballero and Hella when I started college, and I started listening to instrumental music. Then I got into more abrasive stuff, Lightning Bolt, Arab On Radar, Daughters, Ex-Models. I love repetitive composers like Philip Glass and Michael Nyman. One of my all-time favorite bands is sBACH.

You started recording by self-financing, but then a label (Grand Jury, or Wichita) got interested in you and is now releasing the record. How did that happen?

It seems the catalyst was the CMJ Festival in New York, for both Grand Jury and Wichita. It was our first festival, it was only the second time we'd played in NYC. At first we had five shows in five days. By the end of the week, we'd played eleven times in five days. It was that brutal. Both labels were at all our shows, and I think they probably figured that if we were still coherent and having fun on the last day, it was worth looking into further. The people from those labels became our friends before things evolved further. It was very personal and human – exactly what we were looking for.

I read that the number of people who define their occupation as "artist" (or "musician," or "songwriter") is increasing, at least in the United States. It's something that makes me think, if I compare it to the plummeting profits from physical sales and, more generally, the shrinking resources devoted to the world of music. From your point of view as a young but emerging artist, do you think you can realistically look at your music career as a "day job" today?

I have no idea. After college, I worked at a restaurant, until we went on tour, earlier this year. I'll probably go back to work when I'm home, when I have time. That said, we're getting by out here on tour. We all make less money than we used to at our other jobs back home, but it's worth doing something we love in a more or less sustainable way. We haven't been doing this long enough to know what it'll be like in the long run. I'm not interested in having a "music career" – I'm interested in staying healthy enough and having the means to make art out of whatever I can get my hands on.

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