Street: You've been touring for a while. What's your favorite kind of venue to play?
Casey Wescott: There are some clubs that are very small, that are set up like sort of a dance. much more human mating-oriented. There are alcoves where you can speak quietly to someone that you're trying to skeeze on or something like that. Some of the larger places can be conducive to the music because the acoustics and the PA are good, but also because sometimes the way that the room is set up is a little bit more feng shui. They're more focused towards listening to music in a setting that everyone can hear equally well in every part of the venue.
Street: Have you had much time to be working on new music?
CW: Yes and no. Robin will have a song and a lot of times we haven't had much time to all be together and work on it. With things like harmonies, Christian and I will kick back and write harmonies and come up with arrangement ideas, and at sound check we'll present them to different folks and they'll give feedback and we'll keep working. I can work on music a little bit, but sometimes looking at a computer in the van can give you eye fatigue. We don't know how, but all of us want to somehow collapse recording the record and playing live into similar processes. We did this weird one-off thing at Capitol Studios which was such an honor. We just set up in the main room like we do live, so we were able to do what we do live in a studio setting. All of us were pleased at how comfortable and how conducive to creativity that sort of thing was.
Street: Tell us about working with Wilco recently.
CW: That was just insane. They could have been totally rude and mean to us, and we still would have been like, "It was so rad to tour with Wilco!" But the fact is that these guys are so nice. They actually are our friends, which is crazy to think about because they're so talented. In the amount of time that we actually played with them, I could not believe how well we got along. It was just an instant kindred thing. Those guys are amazing, and the fact that they are so humble is pretty overwhelming. They're veterans. There's so much that you learn and pick up, consciously or otherwise, when you're around people that have been "bringing it" for so long.
Street: How do you spend your free time in Seattle?
CW: All of us are pretty much hermits. When I go home, I only see my mom and these guys. I get on a nocturnal schedule so that I'm awake when the city is asleep, so that I can do my business much more freely. I've been buying a lot of VHS movies. I just make music all day. I just got all the Twilight Zone episodes, and its crazy because I've been watching a lot of Hitchcock silent movies and the music in that stuff is so amazing - it's generally a music focus. I lock the door on my room, and a week later we have to tour again.
Street: Why do you think your back-to-roots style of music appeals to people?
CW: I don't know. I think it's mainly just the human voice; I'm guessing that because it's a dynamic instrument that humans use to communicate, I think it naturally resonates with people. I like Robin's song and we work super hard to make it interesting to us, but beyond that I don't have any idea.
Street: What would be the theme song to the TV series of your life?
CW: I would probably opt for no music, because you could do something really quiet and pensive or you could do some big, loud, Wagnerian bombastic stuff. Actually I don't know. What part of my life would this be. the birthing sequence with me and my mom?
Street: No, it would cover your current life.
CW: Oh, so it's like the opening credits and the cast of characters. Gosh. I don't know because none of the music I like would be conducive to that sort of thing. I've been really digging this composer Ligeti. He has these piano etudes that I think is the best piano music written in the last couple of decades. So maybe "White on White", which is one of his later etudes. Otherwise you could just recycle the Three's Company or maybe even the Full House theme. Or the Family Matters soundtrack. Both of those have a really strong vague platitude in the bridge. They might be good, but only if you couldn't get the rights to the Ligeti.
Catch Fleet Foxes tonight at the Starlight Ballroom with opener Frank Fairfield. Doors at 8:00, all ages, $14.
