Getting Better All the Time: CROWDED HOUSE
by Karen Koski (originally printed in Metropolitan Access magazine, Summer 2007)
The publicist pauses for a moment, then says over his shoulder, “She has to tie her nephew’s shoe.” And so begins my interview with Neil Finn, one of New Zealand’s finest exports and Crowded House’s resident musical genius.
Neil Finn’s career has showcased his undeniable gift for melody and haunting, delicately incisive lyrics, earning him accolades as his generation’s best songwriter. The list of hits goes on, from “I Got You” when he was in elder brother Tim’s band Split Endz, then Crowded House and “Something So Strong”, “Don’t Dream It’s Over”, and “Fall At Your Feet”, among others. Since the demise of Crowded House in 1995, Finn has been involved in various projects and collaborations – two solo albums, two Finn Brothers records and tours, a song co-written with brother Tim about their mother, who emigrated from Ireland to New Zealand, “Mary of the South Seas”, on the 1996 Irish compilation “Common Ground”, and more, all featuring the particular sweetly melancholy and deceptively upbeat sensibility of Finn’s writing.
Crowded House co-founders Finn and Nick Seymour (bass) were brought together again in 2005 over the death of original drummer Paul Hester, and found solace in creating music, a process which morphed into the resurrection of Crowded House. As a result, 2007 sees a new record (the superb Time On Earth, dedicated to Hester), a rejuvenated band, and a mad globe-hopping schedule of appearances before settling down to an actual tour in the US for the months of August and September, which continues into a world tour running through November. Just before this conversation, the band had given a mind-boggling performance at Live Earth in Sydney – or rather, their massive audience had, singing, for example, the words to “Fall At Your Feet” correctly – then skipped over to LA for a show, then New York for a ‘secret’ show the night before we spoke.
As a normal 21st-century female, I’m juggling babysitting and volunteer work while fitting in a suddenly-rescheduled interview. Neil is great about it, even offering to go on hold after my nephew comes back in and with a six-year-old’s critical urgency, announces - loudly enough that Neil hears it over the phone – “I’M HUNGRY!” My gut feeling is that Neil would be a great guy to hang out and chat with about whatever comes to mind – if I could abandon all those standard questions and just talk about kids, or sweat lodges, or whatever, I think we’d have a great time. He’d probably feed my nephew, too. Me, I shoo him out and try to remember what I’m doing.
I ask a couple of questions about the songlist and if they’ll take requests. A friend of mine is particularly obsessed with “She Will Have Her Way”, a song off Neil’s solo album Try Whistling This. It’s a fabulous song, and I ask if any solo material, and that song in particular, might be part of the set on this tour. “We haven’t worked it up yet, but I’ve been thinking about that song, and I really think it would work well as a Crowded House song,” Neil says. I agree and ask him to have it ready for the band’s Boston show, and my obligation there is fulfilled. But this leads to another question: to prepare for this interview, I listened to all the Crowded House, Neil Finn, and Finn Brothers records I had. What makes a song a Crowded House song rather than a Neil Finn solo song?
“Well, the songs always come out the way they come,” he replies. “I think with Nick involved, they just seemed to become Crowded House songs. We work hard on the production values and try to make them the best they can possibly be.
“As a band, we’re getting better all the time. Ultimately, though, I think it’s the friendships at the heart of everything.”
Crowded House, l-r: Mark Hart, Matt Sherrod, Nick Seymour, Neil Finn
The friendships include not only Seymour, but guitarist/keyboardist Mark Hart, who joined Crowded House in 1992 for 1993’s Together Alone album. To find a new drummer, Finn and Seymour “auditioned about 45 drummers in ten days over 4 continents.” They settled on Matt Sherrod, former Beck drummer, because “…Of everyone we auditioned, Matt probably knew the least about Crowded House. In some ways, that freed him up because he was able to express his own character on the songs, and we liked the freshness of that.” In other interviews, Finn has noted that they didn’t exactly steal Sherrod from Beck, as “Beck was off to have a baby” and Sherrod was looking for something else. He is not a temporary addition, however; they’ve made him a member of the band. Meanwhile, they made the classic phone call to Hart, saying, “We’re getting the band back together, are you in?” And he was, and so a band was re-born.
The first new-version Crowded House show was a gig on an old freighter in Bristol, England while recording Time on Earth – and other test-run gigs included playing in the desert at the Coachella Music Festival, on stage just before Rage Against the Machine. “It just seemed a logical pairing,” he chuckles. “But we’ve actually played with them before, when we were headlining in Europe, so…” (Also in the ‘interesting pairing’ category is Crowded House and Iggy Pop. Neil asks to send a “shout out to Iggy Pop’s family. We played with him before, and I know he’s from Ann Arbor, so…” Consider it done, Neil.) Neil acknowledges the inter-continental zig-zagging back and forth takes its toll. “It’s a lot of wear and tear – but it’s a chance to play the music.”
And playing the music is critical for Finn and the band. Crowded House has always been known for the energy of their live shows, and for the amazing long-term affection between the band and their fans. The last Crowded House show I saw was on the Woodface tour (1992), just before Tim Finn left, and it still lives on in my memory as a great show. I caught a clip of the band’s Live Earth performance – YouTube has over 1600 Crowded House clips – and remark on the fans’ taking the songs and singing them – without assistance from the band. “I have to say that our audience is probably the most musical audience in the world,” Finn says proudly. “They don’t just sing along; they can sing in anything from 3- to 10-part harmony! There’s a great sense of community there; I don’t know what I would do if we stopped playing a song and the audience didn’t pick it up.” There’s plenty of opportunity in a Crowded House show for the audience to showcase their vocal talents, too. When asked how the ‘secret show’ they performed the night before went, Finn is enthusiastic. And a bit humble. “It went great. We played over two hours… My wife keeps reminding me that you should always leave them wanting more, but we were having so much fun… we sort of plan out shows to be about an hour and forty minutes, but with encores and everything, they’re usually about two hours anyway. Sometimes it’s just hard to come off the stage.”
Crowded House won’t be off the stage until late November at the earliest, with an extensive world tour in front of them. What next? “Well, I’ve got a studio in Auckland, and I think we’ll be really good by then, so we’ll probably go into the studio.” As opposed to being middling-good now? I ask. He laughs. “No, I think we’re pretty good now, but we’ll be really good then, so we’ll have to get in the studio quickly – probably in January.” Which means more Crowded House in the future. And you can never have too much Crowded House.
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Livin' Live In Louisiana: BeauSoliel avec Michael Doucet
(This article was originally published in part in Metropolitan Access magazine. It is published in its entirety here for the first time.)
by Karen Koski
“The first time we ever played in Michigan was in Remus, Michigan,” reminisces Michael Doucet, “at this little festival. [The Wheatland Music Festival, which focuses on traditional arts. Check them out at www.wheatlandmusic.org ] No one there at the time had even heard of Cajun music, but they just loved us. And they kept asking us back…
“And we were playing in East Lansing so much they were joking about making us the official Michigan State band!”
Not necessarily a thing to brag about when you’re playing in Ann Arbor (home of cross-state rival the University of Michigan), mind you, but the appeal of BeauSoleil’s music crosses all boundaries. For over 30 years, BeauSoleil (consisting of brothers Michael Doucet (fiddle, vocals) and David Doucet (guitar, vocals), Jimmy Breaux (accordion), Billy Ware (percussion), Tommy Alesi (percussion), and Mitchell Reed (bass, fiddle) – a combination that has existed almost unchanged since they started) has been bringing the effervescent, toe-tapping sounds of Cajun music to the world and maintaining strong links with their musical heritage. “When our records first came out, they put us in the ‘world music’ category,” says Doucet. “Really, this is true American music.” They’ve played every state in the Union at least three times, traveled all over the world, won a slew of awards, including a Grammy. And their show at The Ark in June 2007 is part of a crazy-quilt tour that includes a quick pop-over to Scandinavia as well as zig-zagging across the US.
BeauSoleil, whose name is taken from the nickname of 18th-century Acadian resistance leader (and Doucet’s ancestor) Joseph Broussard dit Beau Soleil (brief history lesson: Acadian refers to the French settlers kicked out of Nova Scotia by the British in the mid-18th century; they resettled in French-owned Louisiana and ‘Cajun’ is derived from ‘Acadian’ – hence much of Cajun music is sung in French), are equal parts archivists, history buffs and music enthusiasts, interested not only in writing new music in the Cajun styles while preserving Cajun history and the songs and musical styles of Cajun music, but also in the particular traditions of the southwestern part of Louisiana where the band members were born. Doucet chuckles and notes, “So not only are we not in the mainstream of music, we’re not even in the mainstream of Cajun music!”
As a grad student, Doucet was awarded a Folk Arts Apprenticeship by the National Endowment of the Arts and sought out every surviving Cajun musician, including Dewey Balfa, Dennis McGee, Sady Courville, Luderin Darbone, Varise Connor, Canray Fontenot, and Freeman Fontenot and others. He studied their techniques and songs and encouraged some to resume public performances. “When we decided this music was what we wanted to do, it was no longer in the dancehalls or even performed publicly. We went into people’s living rooms to learn the old songs and techniques,” he says. “Then I went into the schools and we brought the music to this generation that had no connection to the music. It was kind of frowned upon as being drunk, partying music – which it is! – but it’s so much more than that.”
The show at The Ark demonstrates just how much more. With a dance floor cleared off to the side of the stage, the music sets your toes tapping from the very first note – and the dance floor is rarely empty all night long, with couples, children and anyone who just wants to move joining in. When the band plays a request, Michael obligingly translates, loosely, from French to English. “…The arrow of love, has pierced my heart… but you’re gone, and this bottle of whiskey is pretty much gone, and… I feel pretty good!” From rollicking dance hall tunes to stately airs to whirlwind fiddle solos that leave you breathless afterwards to slinky blues growls, BeauSoleil covers the gamut of the styles that inform nearly every form of ‘American’ music, showing the listener that Cajun music is indisputedly an original American art form. As well as just plain fun.
While Doucet grew up bilingual – speaking both English and Cajun French – it is less and less the case for most folk in Louisiana today. Future plans include going back into the Louisiana school systems to keep the Cajun heritage alive. “I still hear from people who were kids in those programs, and they are into Cajun music and their heritage because of what we did. It would be really interesting to go back now, with a generation that hasn’t grown up with the stigma that the music had.”
The band’s latest release, Live In Louisiana, is both a love letter and a tribute to the resiliency of the state. “We went through our entire catalog and chose a bunch of songs to play in all these cities that had been hit by the hurricanes, and each night we did a completely different set, which we recorded.” As we jokingly toss around ideas for subsequent releases of the material – Liver In Louisiana, Even More Live In Louisiana – I think back on the performances themselves, the sure and effortless musicianship that makes the music flow directly to your feet and tug at your heart. “I always wanted to show that Cajun music wasn’t just two-steps and waltzes,” Doucet muses. “I wanted to show the richness and complexities as well.”
With 29 BeauSoleil recordings, 12 solo recordings, and 7 as part of the Savoy-Doucet Cajun Band, Michael Doucet has undoubtedly done that. What’s next on the plate? “Well, after this tour is over, I’m going to record a solo fiddle record for the Smithsonian,” he says. “Which should be fun – I really enjoy doing that, as it gives me a chance to play things I wouldn’t play with the band – slower airs and such.
“And I’m going to… just live and enjoy life.”
Spoken like a true Cajun.
BeauSoleil: Live in Louisiana is available at select retailers and online at Amazon.com or www.waydowninlouisiana.com . Purchasers of the disc will also be treated to a bonus mp3 audio interview with Michael and David Doucet by emailing orders@waydowninlouisiana.com .