02/04/2008
VISUAL NOTES: Campfire Songs and Drawings in the Sand with The Bowerbirds
The Bowerbirds (Beth Tacular, Phil Moore, Mark Paulsen), an earthy trio out of Raleigh, North Carolina, have officially floored me. It's not just their achingly sweet and delightfully catchy guitar-and-accordion tunes. It's also their bountiful harvest of artistic talent. All three members are visual artists, most notably Beth Tacular, whose design skills grace both The Bowerbirds self-titled EP (hand-printed on felt pouches) and their website.
Beth and Phil have been in a relationship for the past few years, and together began The Internest Collective, a web design business.
Detail: Bowerbirds Poster/Website Design by Beth Tacular
I had the opportunity to ask Beth and Phil a few questions about their music, art, relationship, and life in the woods in an Airstream trailer...
Robin: Do you have a message? If so, how would you phrase it?
Beth & Phil: We don't really think about ourselves having a singular message in our music. As artists, we end up making art and music about the world around us, as do most artists. We just take a lot of notice of the non-human world because we feel more connected to a lot of that world than we do to a lot of human culture.
R: Is music or visual art the preferred vehicle/outlet of communication?
B & P: All three of us are visual artists or designers, as well as musicians, but Phil and Mark have focused more on music in their lives, and I have been more focused on visual art. But I think music has the ability to touch people more deeply than visual art does. Music feels more participatory to me than visual art. It's also something we, as artists, can relive over and over again when we perform the songs.
R: Do you camp out while on tour?
B & P: Yes, depending on the weather and where we are. It's hard to camp in cities, and it wouldn't be very fun or safe. We camped in Bend, Oregon; Montaña de Oro, California; White Sands, New Mexico; as well as random, side-of-the-road spots. We sometimes stay at people's homes or in hotel rooms, especially on nights when we don't know anyone in town. Or when we need to watch Meerkat Manor.
But camping is the Real Live Nature Show, and it's always the best.
R: Do you have a favorite camping story?
B & P: When Phil and I went on our first tour as Bowerbirds, we made sure we would be in White Sands National Monument for the full moon, because it is unbelievably gorgeous.
When we got back to our blanket, we opened the wine and drew shapes in the sand. Then this moth landed on my face. It walked right onto my lips and extended its proboscis (coiled up mouth-part) between my lips and drank the wine out of my mouth. It started flying really off-kilter, sometimes bonking into me or Phil, but it kept coming back for more.
When we woke up in the morning, I saw that the moth was sleeping on my shirt, its wings all tattered and beaten up. I poured a little wine into the cup I had, so it could have some "hair of the dog" and not have a hangover.
R: What would be your dream performance location?
B & P: Around a campfire at our home, so we could drink a lot of wine and go to bed afterwards. There would be other bands playing too, and lots of people camping out here in tents or Airstreams. And it would be a full moon.
R: Do you two ever go a little nuts? What was your last silly argument?
B & P: Yes. Overall, it's really fun to do everything together, but sometimes we want time to ourselves and end up arguing about stupid stuff. We run a design business together, play music together, are working on a building project together, live together, are raising a dog together, and are dating.
We got really mad about something the other night, and decided to not talk about it and watch a DVD about baby polar bears and walruses. After ten minutes of the movie, we were like, "Who cares?! We love each other." Baby polar mammals will do that to you.
This Walrus loves The Bowerbirds in return! And for the pleasure of others...a download of Olive Hearts from Hymns for a Dark Horse (Dead Oceans 2007).
VISUAL NOTES is brought to you by Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction - a clothing company that hires innovative, contemporary artists to design exceptional and wearable pieces that combat the troubling possibility of artwork losing its presence and power in our image-saturated society.
MP3
Download 'The Bowerbirds - Olive Hearts'5:28 | 6.25MB
Posted by Robin on 02/04/2008 11:17 AM in Folk, Visual Notes
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