Devendra Banhart: The Essence of Things
By Team JamBase Nov 1, 2007 • 12:00 am PDT
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“When Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon [his new album released September 25 on XL Recordings] was done I didn’t have a title. Something in me was giving me instructions and I didn’t totally follow them. I was worried in the end this wouldn’t work out, and the instructions change every time. It’s like the voice of the creative spirit,” says Banhart. “The last time I heard, ‘Look at every book. Look at all the lyrics. Reread Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee, Son of Old Man Hat, Lame Deer Seeker of Visions and Black Elk Speaks.’ That’s at least half of what Cripple Crow is about. But, as I searched in that direction the instructions told me the answer would come from the opposite direction. I was looking in the wrong direction on purpose, and as I did that the title Cripple Crow came to me slowly from the left side of my head while I focused on the right.”
“On this trip, I knew I had to leave, to go to the desert and have some kind of encounter with a snake and then I’d know the title. But, I couldn’t leave because we had to be here every single day to track, then work on the art and lyrics, then the website, the special book, finding someone to do a video and fighting with the label about them not hearing a song for radio,” continues Banhart. “I thought, ‘Fuck, I’m never going to get a title!’ Then suddenly, I looked to my left and a branded king snake just slithered right on by. I took pictures of it. Then, at the top of my stairs there was a king lizard with a huge red spot, which I’ve never seen before where I live. I walk up to it and it walks up my arm. I took it downstairs and fed it a peach, which it ate right in front of me. Then, I look out the window and I see the guy I’ve been drawing, who I consider to be a smokey, and he approached the cactus I painted for the cover and did a strange dance with the cactus where he approached it four times, back and forth. He broke off a piece and took it with him. And it was a piece too small to be turned into stew to eat with his tortillas. He was doing a shamanistic ritual with this cactus that lives right next to us. At that moment, my mother calls and tells me, ‘I’m sorry but your name doesn’t mean what I told you it does your whole life.’ I found out my name actually means ‘Lord of rain and thunder.’ All those things were beautiful. I felt the creative spirit cut me a little slack even though I didn’t follow the instructions.”
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“I think you’re supposed to come from experience but approach music as a gift meant to be shared,” Banhart offers. “The only song I didn’t write in this house, in this Los Angeles canyon we’ll call Thunder Canyon, was the beginning of the last song on the record [“My Dearest Friend,” which begins mournfully, “I’m gonna die of loneliness”]. I wrote that in New York, and that was how I was feeling at that moment. I was really worried that would be the song, which is totally hopeless. Then I moved to L.A. and I felt hope and things did change and the rest of the song was written. And that is fuck, man, the best feeling when that happens.”
Smokey Rolls fully represents Banhart’s innate eclecticism, ranging freely but smoothly between English and Spanish, finger-snapping love hosannas and soaring, reflective musings, acoustic textures and electric outbursts. He skateboarded as a kid and has recently taken up surfing with drummer Greg Rogove (Priestbird), and says a lot of his initial exposure to music was through skateboarding pals and his father’s diverse tastes.
“He’s the one who turned me onto Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Ali Farka Toure, Caetano Veloso and Neil Young. And skateboarding turned me onto Desmond Decker, David Bowie, Prince Buster, The Specials, even Frank Sinatra. The Specials are thought of as this British ska band but they blended a lot of styles together.”
“I went through the worst breakup of my whole life that made it the worst year of my whole life. I didn’t write a single song,” explains Banhart. When he rediscovered his muse, a score of new tangents poured out for Smokey Rolls like Motown-esque hand-clapper “Lover,” the sophisticated, slow unfolding of “Sea Horse” and a renewed passion for his native Spanish tongue. “On the last record all the English songs were more animistic, anthropomorphic and psychedelic lyrically, and the ones in Spanish were more poetic and symbolic, just straight up romantic songs. On [Smokey] it’s this total, weird reversal.”
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The Dreaded Freak Folk
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“It’s inescapable for anyone who appeared on Golden Apples [i.e. The Golden Apples of the Sun, a landmark compilation put together by Banhart in 2004 for Arthur Magazine] or who’s working with any aspect of that stuff,” says Jana Hunter, who’s released albums on Gnomonsong, the fiercely indie label run by Banhart and longtime pal Andy Cabic (Vetiver). “[That phrase] is absolutely degrading. It’s a write-off of somebody’s music from the beginning. It’s frustrating to me because a lot of my songs are coming from a completely different space. When I started I didn’t know anything about folk music and these aren’t even folk songs, let alone any sort of freakish tweak on folk. I understand with the proliferation of music in the past few years where people try to find a descriptor for things. But, of course, it’s always frustrating from the vantage point of someone making music and believes in it to try and sum it up in five words or less.”
“The whole assumption that it’s classifiable as folk – unless you’re using my definition, which is music made by and for the people – is ridiculous. Most of the time I just say, ‘Fuck it,’ and don’t get involved with definitions,” says Banhart. “With [Smokey Rolls], it’s the first time I’ve gotten a lot of bad, confused, even angry reviews. It’s a new thing but you gotta deal with it sometime [laughs].”
Other musical fellow travelers are equally effusive about Banhart’s infectious spark. Matteah Baim and Rio en Medio, whose 2007 releases, Death of the Sun and The Bride of Dynamite, respectively, JamBase praised to high heaven, have only nice things to say about their connection with him.
“I think we feel entirely natural around each other, so that the moments become full of possibility and always new,” says Baim. “It’s like the conversations become songs and the songs become us and we walk home and drink coffee.”
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One aspect Banhart and his peers share is an embrace of stillness and subtlety. Often, their work doesn’t immediately reach out and grab you. Instead, one is welcomed into a quiet world we don’t have to find entry into.
“That’s just kinda my speed,” chuckles Hunter. “Modern pop music plays to shorter attention spans, but then again, I write songs that are two minutes long [laughs]. I’m a quiet person when I’m writing. It’s intimate music made in an intimate fashion to be enjoyed intimately because it’s intimate subject matter. That does set it apart from modern pop music, which tends to avoid intimacy all together.”
“Dynamics are everything. Without it, music is mud,” observes Greg Rogove, who drummed on Smokey Rolls and has taken on an increasingly larger role in Banhart’s touring band, Spiritual Bonerz, where Rogove handles a number of spoken story sections live. “Music, in the end, tells a story. You’re not always using spoken language all the time, when you play guitar or whatever, but to get up there and have a moment where you get to tell a story like that makes a concert more of an entity, more of a full performance experience. There’s a bit of theatre to it.”
Despite being painted as cosmic hippies, this is no a flesh and blood retro exercise. Andy Cabic has gotten used to it, saying, “When people maybe don’t get the histories right or they’re skewed to some other perception, I figure those things will get untangled with time. It doesn’t frustrate or upset me when things aren’t represented as they are.”
For the most part, Banhart is equally blasé about wrongheaded interpretations of his work but now and again someone goes too far.
“We played the World Café [syndicated radio show],” relates Banhart. “We did ‘So Long Old Bean,’ which I sing in a lower register. At the end of the song, the guy says, ‘I guess I see where some of the Tiny Tim comparisons come from in that song.’ And I feel like no matter what I played he had that comment and wanted to use it. First off, have you ever heard Tiny Tim? Where the comparison lies I have no idea! Do I sit and talk about Elizabeth Taylor for four hours? No! He wrote a song called ‘Santa Claus Got The A.I.D.S.’ I think that’s a pretty funny title but I would never joke about that. We’re playing an A.I.D.S. benefit at the end of this tour. I don’t know anything I have in common with Tiny Tim. It’s one of the few comparisons I was actually shocked by.”
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Stardom And Creation
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“Right now I’m under a giant turd. I just need a little bit of time to get it together,” says Banhart. But in the next breath he adds, “I don’t feel I’m in the spotlight. I don’t feel any pressure. It isn’t like Axl Rose, who has people around him who to make sure he never reads bad reviews. It isn’t that I’m in some bubble, where I’m living this weird, enclosed little world with myself at the center of it. I feel like the same ratty pain-in-the-ass I’ve always been.”
To those who think he’s grown more commercial since his simple four-track beginnings, he offers, “My definition of selling out involving artistic integrity is essentially when you start premeditating shit that shouldn’t be premeditated. There’s a lot of things that should be done with discipline and focus but there’s a lot of things you can’t try and plan. When those two things get switched then that’s selling out. That hasn’t happened.”
For clear evidence of the immediacy and juicy zing in Banhart’s music today one need only speak to his collaborators like ’70s folk-rocker Linda Perhacs, who returned to making music partially because of Banhart. After releasing a single beloved album in 1970, Parallelograms, she’s got two new albums in the can including one with Banhart. Perhacs says, “When Devendra asked me if I could add some of my ‘otherworldly harmonies’ to his new CD, my answer was an immediate YES! All of us who know him, love him as a brother and just sharing time and creating music with him is pure high vibe! Because of this, when we experience Devendra’s music and his artwork and live performances, as well as the delight of recording with him and all his closest friends and musicians, what all of us are really experiencing is the total ambiance of his soul, that is both deep and sensitive with a generosity of spirit to all that is very unusual. The composite of all these textures is what draws people to him. And it is genuinely deserved by him for he is truly unique!”
“Music is like raw cedar and you chip at it until you get the form you want. Sometimes you mostly work elaborate, long lines in the surface or you chip at it until there’s just a splinter left. You’re guiding AND you’re guided. And you’re unveiling but you never unveil all the way. And you know it comes from a space outside of yourself and your job is to collaborate with that space, not excluding the interior or the exterior,” says Banhart. “At the beginning and now, it’s meant to be given as a gift. I’ve written a song for you, whoever you may be. The only way I ever got a four-track in the first place was Noah [Georgeson, bandmate and co-producer of Smokey Rolls] saying I want to hear what you do. It was always meant to be shared. But, when it came to recording Rejoicing In The Hands and Niño Rojo, it was done under circumstances that were the most affordable. Essentially, there wasn’t enough time or money and this is what came out. In the end, I had to get each track down by the fourth or fifth take because we had a completely unworkable deadline. There was no flexibility, and overdubs in that world were a complete luxury. I’ve never had an aesthetic that was minimalist. I try for a distillation that gets to the essence of a song by either adding and adding or by stripping away as much as possible. The goal in the end is the essence of the words and music.”
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