Breathe Owl Breathe Interview
When you began making Magic Central, did you have a goal? A treasure map? Was there a conceptual land-bridge between the new record and Ghost Glacier? How do you see these two records relating to each other?
A lot of songs on Magic Central were born out of our experiences living at the cabin (our home). Many of the characters on the album were a reflection of what we were going through at the time. Micah had lived there by himself for quite some time, working on setting up his print making studio, and battling keep the place warm through the winter. Trevor and Andréa would come up to the cabin when they could (before and after shows and small tours), finding Micah mixing inks and sustaining himself on peanut butter and pickle sandwiches. Eventually, we were all there together, and the cabin became our refuge for making art and music together.
The place transformed from solely being Micah’s print studio into a place for recording, recreating (there’s a badminton net in the front yard), working on art projects, and living. The separation between the printing press, the kitchen, the light table, and the old piano was starting to blur…printed t-shirts by the drumset, mail under the toy piano, marimba next to the dart board, cello leaning against the light table… There was never a time when an instrument or an old book was too far out of reach. At one point, we used the field of fresh snow as a surface to project Last of the Mohicans, and watched from the upstairs window [Daniel Day Lewis and the triumphant music echoing in the valley…”No matter how long it takes, I will find you!”]. The cabin slowly morphed into Magic Central- a place where there is no distinction between working, creating, songwriting, practicing, and playing.
So we started recording a lot at the cabin… on our 16 track, on cassette tapes, and VHS. Trevor would spend the late hours playing piano, and Andréa would be downstairs on cello. Micah was always recording us from another room while improvising lyrics over our music. Other times, Micah would go for a run and come back with a lyric or an idea for a combination of instruments, and they’d eventually turn into songs. In those initial months together, we came up with a ton of song ideas, constantly working with what we were surrounded by.
Late in the summer (2009), we started recording with Jim Roll in the studio. Many of the songs were still simple ideas when we started laying them down- maybe just a lyric, or a banjo or piano line- and our goal was to let the studio shape the song arrangements. We knew we wanted to do the instrumentation for the album all ourselves- like doing our own stunts. We wanted the challenge of digging deep with the instruments we were familiar with [as well as the instruments we didn’t know well at all]. In the studio, we were constantly trying out different instrumentation [and recording approaches], trying to take advantage of the opportunity that the studio offers to collage songs together. The goal was to get as much recorded as possible, and spend the following months sculpting out an album.
In the early winter, Andréa left for Brazil. The songs that would make up Magic Central started to live a little. Up at the cabin, it became a time for epic cross country ski adventures, digging deep into the mixes, and coming up with song orders. With Andréa in a tropical climate, and us (Micah and Trevor) back in the depth of winter up north, broader themes in the album started to materialize- distance and proximity, chill and tropic, opera and grumble…
Andréa came back from Brazil in the heart of winter (mid January). We (Micah, Trevor, and our friend Weston Currie) were finishing up filming the video for Own Stunts. Andréa brought back with her an equatorial vibe, a pandiero (Brazilian tambourine), some tropical gifts, and some new beats. There was a feeling of reintroduction between us all, like a member of our tribe had just returned from a spiritual journey. Andréa put on an Inuit parka (formerly belonging to Micah’s Grandpa), went out deep into the snowy surroundings, and finally the characters, the feeling of longing, and the epic journey of Own Stunts (both in the video and in song) started to make complete sense. We were also thinking about our final mixes at that time, and realized that there was another song out there that belonged on this album (Across the Loch). We went back to the studio, let the tape roll, and the song came together instantly between the three of us, bringing us all back into the same world …full circle… wrapping the album shut.
Tell us about your instrumentation and your songwriting process. Who does what, and how?
We each have our core instruments (Micah- Acoustic Guitar, Andréa- Cello, Trevor- Drums, Keyboards). But, we are also each constantly rotating through different auxiliary instruments. A lot of them we find at garage sales, or they are given to us by friends. Trevor has been into instrumental multitasking- playing drums, percussion, and keyboards at the same time. He has a very special solid-state electric organ called the Wandering Genie that allows him to lay down a drony bass foundation while playing one-handed drums and other instruments. Lately, Casio keyboards have been a huge source of inspiration for us all. At any show we have at least three on stage within arms reach. Andréa has been playing more and more percussion. She definitely has a newly found passion for a blend of Hip Hop and Brazilian drum beats. On her last trip to Brazil, she picked up a Pandero and started taking lessons… And currently, there is a Zambumba (Brazilian Bass Drum used in Forro music) on it’s way to her in the US. Micah is fond of tape players, lo-fi microphones, and Karaoke machines. He’s studying the technique of controlled feedback with an old CB radio talk mic.
Micah writes most of the lyrics for our songs. He’s somewhat of a phenomenon when it comes to wordsmithing. He didn’t start talking until around 4 years old (and still makes up his own pronunciation and spelling for words), yet his lyrical creativity and craftsmanship are on another level of existence. He grew up living in a hexagon hut with a woodstove and a floor made of fieldstone (in the Jordan River Valley- where we all live now). In the early years there, his family fetched water from the creek, and cooked all their food outside. A lot was communicated through feeling… and playing with wooden toys that his folks built and sold at festivals. He was the kind of kid that was content with his imagination.
We all come up with song ideas/structures. A lot of them start out in Micah’s subconscious. He’ll go for a long run, come back with a frozen beard, and start singing, stomping his feet, or fumbling on the guitar in front of the VHS that we keep set up in the corner. Or, Trevor will sit at the piano while Micah sneaks into the room with a tape recorder and sings over top. Every song is born differently. We are never deliberately making time to write songs. We just try to recognize which ideas work when messing around together on instruments. Once an idea is recognized, it slowly takes form. We try to be completely open to what a song can be, which has been very rewarding. We usually have to scrape through the scraps of a lot of different inspirations, and it seems like we’re never at a short supply.
Tell us about your home --- the land, your house, how you all three live together. What's your daily routine like? What impact does the place, and how you live in it, affect your music and your creativity in general?
We live in a Lincoln log style cabin that Micah’s Grandma, Grandpa, and their sons and daughters built when Micah was young. His Grandparents would stay there in the winter time, to be where it was colder and spend time with their grandkids. Little reminders of their presence are constantly being revealed around the cabin. His Grandpa was a radical preacher, and moved around a lot to live and preach in different communities. He piloted a team of sled dogs to get around. Around the cabin we still find Grandpa Jack’s old books, some about who Jesus really was, with earmarked pages, and pencil notes in the margins. Out behind the woodshed is one of his old sleds, covered in lichen, almost returned back to the soil. And mounted on the front of the cabin are a set of antlers from an Elk he shot while living in Alaska. Grandma Barbie’s old piano at the top of the stairs (you have to raise a trap door in the ceiling with ropes and pullies to get up there) still resonates old hymns.
The more that we play music and going on tours, the more the cabin has become a place we return to. We find ourselves there in different small stints through the year, sharing snippets of the seasons together. The spring months slowly reveal various cycles of insects and other creatures that we happily tolerate in the cabin. Caterpillars completely swallow the place for two weeks. Then come the swarms of grasshoppers, then lady bugs, stink bugs… Up through fall time there is always some bug that dominates the indoor ecology of the cabin.
There is a lot of space to roam, both grass and forest. The cabin is at the end of a dead end road. There really aren’t any neighbors in sight. A tributary of the Jordan River springs out of the ground just over the hill through the woods. The water is pure and clear, and the creek beds are sand bottomed. In the winter we go right out the back door on night time cross country ski adventures into the pines, toting along a thermos of hot soup. The valleys around here are cut deep and narrow, so you can feel the quietness, like the snowy hillsides are your earmuffs. And there’s a lot of water springing out of the ground here and there in the valley bottoms. We build bridges out of branches and brush to cross the creeks on skis.
Out here, there’s never an excuse to ignore your creative pursuits. There’s really poor cell service, we have no TV, no phone line, etc. Micah has to borrow our (Trevor and Andréa) cell phones, because he has somehow remained cell phone free for his 28 years of life. Beyond taking time for the necessities of living, the only source of distraction from creative projects is yourself. So, in one sense we are incredibly fortunate to have the space and time to create, and in another, it’s a huge responsibility to make the most of every day out here. You’ve lived a good full day at the cabin if time is made to run to the river for a swim. The water is cold. It’s like being born again.
Does Breathe Owl Breathe exist without visual art? Does your visual art exist without Breathe Owl Breathe? No matter how you answer, please elaborate.
Micah’s visual art is definitely interwoven with the Breathe Owl Breathe experience. He set up a print making studio in the upper floor of the cabin. There are woodcut blocks stacked here and there, a press, washout sink, silk screening equipment, etc. There’s always some sort of visual art project happening, whether its stand-alone prints, t-shirts, or posters. We’re working on a children’s book right now- two songs/stories that are illustrated with woodcuts by Micah. One is about the friendship between a mole and an ostrich (and their meeting in the dirt), and the other is about a caterpillar that turns into a train, which turns into an airplane, which turns into the night sky. The songs will be on a 7” vinyl slipped into the hard bound book, using old binding techniques (with help from a old style printmaker that lives through the woods- and tons of friends to help us bind!).
I (Micah) try to have the music do its own thing, and the artwork too. I like to have each one tell you more about the other. But realistically, I write songs and play music, and when I need a break, I do artwork, illustrations, and prints…they are all extensions of myself. One inspires the other, but I don’t think they’re so deeply connected that they can’t exist independently. I do one to let the other one exist. Songs and stories… sometimes they are directly linked. Maybe I want this song to move like a book. Other times the art is just whatever spirit I’m feeling. When making art or music you are communicating with a spirit that is ever changing, and always keeping you surprised, and that is where I want to exist. The more I do visual art, the more I’m able to play music. The more I’m able to play music, the more I do visual art. The more I’m able run, jump, kick, and play, the more I’m able to think thoughts of songs or art. I try to let all those things happen.
There was a time where I thought that I’d have to choose either art or music…but now I don’t feel that way anymore.
What are you thinking about while you are on stage?
Micah: I tend to think thoughts like, “we have this night together” [us and the audience]. I do try to let my mind wander, but stay close to that feeling of wanting to share the experience with everyone in the room. I try to make something with the audience that can only happen that night. There’s always an element of story telling happening, whether it’s deliberately or through song. My Grandpa was always telling stories.
I try to think about having no separation between the band and the audience, like breaking down the illusion of the stage.
Andréa: I try to really get into each song. The stories they are weaving, the feelings they evoke, the landscapes they carry me through. I try to visualize what I’m singing~ the characters, the places, etc. I’m also trying to tap into what Micah and Trevor are doing~ always seeking that place where we connect in an experience of time that feels like space to me~ It is a huge space that opens up inside of me~ a space in which we function as one thing, one muscle moving, one creature roaming, one voice calling. It is one of my most favorite things.
Micah:I see Andréa as stretching landscapes that are unfolding. Like looking through a little pinhole, and it’s being opened up.
Trevor: I’m trying to figure out what Micah is thinking. I’m always trying to adjust to his on-stage-antics. But, musically, each song for me has a feeling that I try to enter and express. There may be some set arrangement that I have to quickly review in my head before each song, like making a game plan. Then, when we launch into the song, I try to forget about it. I go back to the feeling that was there when the song was born and recognized. When I’m fully there, in the song, the story unfolds slightly differently in my mind than it ever has, and I can see the musical arrangements, movements, and rhythms approaching before they happen.
What are you thinking about while you are at home?
Micah: I try to go for runs where I can end up at the river and run back. In the winter time, the day revolves around cross country skiing. Every day that you can explore a little bit is a really great day at home.
Andréa: I try to spend as much time as possible outside! I get excited because I have time to play scales and arpeggios (which just doesn’t happen on tour)! I love sleeping in, and eating reeeeeeeeeeeeel slowly. I like to help Micah’s mom in her garden. I like to draw with colored pencils and crayons.
Trevor: I’m reading books, making food [cookies especially- and perfecting the art of pizza dough], or working on my musical set up. I try to make home time a time to evolve- exploring different possibilities with my instruments so that performing on the next tour is as refreshing as possible.
Could you give us a breakdown of the Breathe Owl Breathe timeline? This should include the ways in which you found each other and came together. Your history.
Andréa and Micah met in the summer of 2004 (in a Dairy Queen parking lot). Their first interaction together was over ice cream. Later on in that day, they made a recording (cassette tape)with their friend Sari, in Micah’s bedroom back home. Micah and I (Trevor) met about 9 years ago (Fall 2001). Micah was in art school, and I came to visit an old high school friend of mine, who happened to be paired up with Micah as a roommate. When I walked in the room, Micah was playing one of his songs on the guitar. I sat across the room and played along on a drum. We were friends before we even talked. Later that night we went to a party with a few friends (at which we knew no one), and brought along a VHS camera. We ended up making a horror movie about zombies (composing the script as we went along). In the culminating scene of the film, Micah convinced everyone in the house to act like possessed zombies. There were about 40 zombies in the main floor of this old house… we busted through the crowd for our escape, camera in hand, out into the street running away…that’s how we left the party.
Breathe Owl Breathe originally started out as a duo of Micah and Andréa. They played together for a few years, as I (Trevor) had been busy in school studying earth history and landscape evolution (Geomorphology). Through those first few years, I joined them on percussion whenever I could break away from my studies for a bit. In the summer of 2006, the three of us recorded Canadian Shield in the old Hexagon hut that Micah grew up in. But it wasn’t until about winter 2007 (when we started recording Ghost Glacier), that I was able to be part of Breathe Owl Breathe full time. Since then we’ve been playing shows mostly around Michigan, with bigger and further tours starting to happen.
What music and art do you like to surround yourself with?
Micah: I like Inuit prints- wood cuts and stone cut prints. I like my Dad’s carvings that he did when he was younger. Someday I want to make a totem pole with my dad. When we were in Alaska last summer, I was inspired by a lot of carvings in the Tlingit native culture. I’m into Illustrations by Kyle Field. And I’m into old books that have different cultural costumes, or ceremonial dress. I also like snowboarding, skateboarding, and surfing art.
I like cassette tapes. I like making mixtapes as well. They are a real document of time. Sometimes I like listening to mixtapes made by others, found in different places. Even if I’m not into the music, I feel like they are an important documentation of someone else’s life through songs they love. Our van runs on cassette tapes.
Andréa: I chose to play the cello in 5th grade after being told that the beautiful song I had just heard on the radio was a movement from one of Johann Sebastian Bach’s suites for solo cello. I felt like I had known those pieces for hundreds of years some how, and just couldn’t wait to get to know them again… I LOVE classical music. Especially Bach, but also all the other classics like Mozart and Beethoven, and fun, more avant-garde stuff like Bela Bartock! I will always be immensely grateful to have had the privilege of studying classical music at an early age. In 5th grade, my best friend Emily showed me the Beatles, and that became a fantastic obsession for years to follow J Through highschool, I surrounded myself mostly with classical music again. I was a serious cello student- playing in multiple youth symphony orchestras and chamber ensembles, in and out of school. Everyone from school was shocked when I decided not to continue my studies at Oberlin half way through my first semester of college there… but I had met Micah two weeks after graduating high school, and I was just crazy to learn more about all the crazy new music under that head of wild curls… I feel like the past 6 years (all the time I’ve known Micah now) have been a crazy adventure I never saw coming. I feel like he has been the leader of our duo and then trio- always showing me and Trevor new weird art and music, that has gradually expanded each of our appreciation for art and music in huge and beautiful ways. With this past winter’s trip to Brazil, I began my exciting discovery of the love and connection I feel to music from the continent of my birth~ South America! I am deeply inspired by the creators of the bossa-nova movement when it was just starting, Joao Gilberto and Antonio Carlos Jobim. My favorite stuff is the striped down simple singing with guitar. I am very excited to begin to let my love of that music come out in me more…Man those rhythms just make me feel like I’m alive and all is right! I am also deeply inspired by Arto Lindsay, Juana Molina, Joanna Newsome, Andrew Bird, Dirty Projectors, and the band No Kids (to name a few artist off the top of my head). It is such great work pulling threads out of myself that are always trying to connect the love of old, orchestra sound with newer beats and stories.
As for visual art: Well, Micah Middaugh has to be one of my favorite artists of all time. I am extremely driven to do everything I can to help get his art out into the world and eyes of as many other beholders as possible!!! . I have a deep love for art from the renascence~ especially Michaelangelo~ I studied his life and work with extreme passion as a 7th grader, and even chose to give my “report” on him to my class be performing a solo act of him on his death bed, recollecting all he had done in his life. I “died” at the end of it. It was a powerful project for me. I am so into all kinds of elaborate and ornate borders, ornamentation and calligraphy as found, for example, in the Book of Kells, and old maps!!! I am very moved by Muslim temples (you know, the ones with all those geometric designs and amazing caligraphry inside!) In middle school I announced that I was going to someday do my PHD on them… I also wanted to be an architect…
Trevor: In the past couple years, I’ve been getting really into Indian art and philosophy. I like the writing and poetry of Rabindranath Tagore. But, I try to balance it out with my appreciation for Western science. Lately, I’ve been on the hunt for classic turn-of-the-century Geology/Geography textbooks. I recently discovered that I’m somehow related to a notable Geologist from that time period (William Herbert Hobbs, 1864-1953), whose text books have the most amazing pen and ink landscape illustrations.
I like simple piano music. Songs that take a chord sequence and elaborate on it in 50 different subtle ways. Like the music of Yann Tiersen. I also like compilation tapes…like the kind you can pick up at a Goodwill for 50 cents. Lately, I’ve had a really passive relationship with finding new music. I love when people give me new music. I absorb it for what it is in that moment of listening. For instance, I’ll hear the Rolling Stones on the radio, and it doesn’t speak to me at all. Then I’ll hear the same song on tape another day, and it’s a totally different context. It’s almost like appreciating how the song is delivered more than the song itself.
How would you describe Breathe Owl Breathe to a stranger on the street?
That’s a tough one to answer. We’ve never been good at explaining ourselves to other people. And we don’t pretend to be good at it. That’s why we have you guys to help! : ). But, hmmmm. Let’s see…Hacky sack…skateboard…song…story…clap…laugh…basketball…old and new creatures.