3
Nov
2008

7:17 am

“Fingers Crossed for the Election”

• filed under Music

A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to interview Ed Droste of Grizzly Bear at a small Obama fundraiser that he helped organize in New York City.  The event was a great success — Grizzly Bear, Zach Condon, and Nico Muhly played short sets to an enthusiastic crowd and I was able to talk politics with the band members (each nicer than the next) and the loyal Democrats in attendance.

Droste was a great guy, generous with his time, and passionately well informed about the election and politics.  The Grizzlies have been recording their new album, which is due next Spring, but are planning on being back in New York City for election day.

Howard Wolfson:  What was the motivation behind the fundraiser?

Ed Droste:  Well, I donated some money, but I knew this time with my schedule I wasn’t going to be able to canvass, so I wanted to to do more – so I emailed friends and thought it would be really fun to do some sort of performance that benefited the Obama campaign. The whole idea of it wasn’t mine but rather Piera Gelardi and Wildcat’s. It’s all super shoestring, last minute, but – because I’m bummed that I won’t be able to canvass like I did last election,  and we have to finish the album and I’d frankly much rather canvass. If I had a van and the time I would probably want to head down to Virginia or North Carolina.  But can you believe the New York Times and CNN put Virginia as blue? 

Q:  The country’s going blue.

A:  It’s pretty wild though, that they actually declared it as not a toss-up anymore.

Q: Well, it just gives you a sense of how far ahead Obama is at this point, that Virginia is like now considered more or less safe, Democratic.

A:  I’m sure you follow every other second of this, but can you believe that North Dakota is suddenly in play again?

Q:  Well, Obama – Senator Obama’s campaign has raised so much money that they just – they don’t have to make the same choices that a typical campaign would have to make.

A:  For me Ohio is the hardest to predict, it’s just unpredictable and I just like feel like I don’t feel confident in it.  I feel more confident about Nevada and Virginia and Missouri than I do Ohio.  Ohio’s just – you never know what’s going to happen.

Q:  It was interesting tonight, almost every person who came up to talk to me was like, I’m so excited about the possibility but I’m so nervous that he’s not going to win.  

A: I’m so nervous, I can’t shake the nervousness.

Q:  So everybody has like, well, he can’t really be that far ahead in Ohio or he can’t really be that far ahead –

A:  I wish I could have your level of confidence, but after the past two elections, it’s just like, of course you’re skeptical, you’re a Democrat. I just can’t feel comfortable saying “ oh yeah, it’s in the bag”.  Even though, if it were reversed, I would automatically declare it over.

Q:  We would be saying, Oh, it’s over.

A: If McCain had this lead? Oh yeah everyone I know would be saying it’s over, done. There’s no question about it.

Q:  Well, look, the truth is that over the last 40 years Democrats have become accustomed to losing and Republicans being ascendant. And they, you know, have controlled the dialogue and they’ve controlled the debate.

A:  The biggest shock to me is the glorification of ignorance.  The whole, they’re elitist because they’re educated.  It’s something where I don’t even understand that argument, wouldn’t you want someone that’s smart running the country?

Q:  You should read this book “Nixonland”. 

A:  It’s just so insane to me, I mean, I get the idea that you want to relate to somebody.  But when push comes to shove, do you want that person deciding, economic decisions for you if they don’t even understand the basic fundamentals?

Q: Let me ask you one other question about tonight.  I assume that the other members of the band are all on board with Obama.

A:  Yeah, definitely. I actually don’t know a Republican except for my grandmother in Texas.

Q:  So you’re going off to record?

A:  Yes.

Q:  Where are you in the process?

A :  We have probably like a dozen songs, but we’ve only started recording about eight of them, and we’re working on even more new ones.  So we’re really hoping to have like a surplus this time for B-sides and stuff.  “Yellow House” was very much, like, we have the amount of songs and that’s what we used.  There were no, extras.  So this time we want to have extras that we can pick and choose from so that it’s not like this feeling of, oh, we only have ten songs, we have to release them all.  And I think we’re going to have extras, so we’re excited about that.

Q:  When do you expect that you –

A:  April or May it’ll come out, I think.  That’s what we’re working towards. 

Q:  And then, I assume, a big tour?

A:  Yes, a very big tour.  It’s scary to think about because I’ve gone on extensive tours before, but I think the level of organization and new people that are involved in us now, like, you know, new manager – it’s just like, the more organized and professional it gets, the more I’m going to have to tour, basically.  So I’m expecting to be gone for – from the day the album’s released to a year after, I’ll probably be gone about eight months of that time.

Q:  Wow.

A:  Yeah.  You know, it’s Australia, Japan –

Q:  That’s like a political campaign.

A:  Well, not as hardcore as a political campaign.

Q:  Well nobody’s attacking you on a daily basis. How does the writing in the band work, do you all share it?

A:  Mostly Dan and I write, but I will say that the general base of a song will come from Dan and I and then Chris and Chris will add tremendous amounts to it.  But this album, I’ve actually written a lot with Chris Bear, including that new song “two weeks” we played on Letterman. Bear and I have a really good writing dynamic together.

Q:  Lyrically also?

A:  No, not lyrically.  Lyrically it’s Dan and I.  And usually, not always, usually when I’m singing, I wrote the lyrics, when he’s singing, he wrote the lyrics.  But on the new album we’re going to be doing some songs together where we alternate.  And sometimes he’s asked me for help.  For instance with “While You Wait for the Others”, he was like, I can’t write a second verse, so I wrote the lyrics for him, but he sings it, so we’re getting more and more collaborative as time goes on, which is nice.

Q:  That’s cool.  I noticed – did you have some sort of blog post in response to like, rumors that there was some rift between the two of you?

A:  Yeah, because Dan did a interview that took things out of context and basically was like, I need an angle, and the angle is a beef that doesn’t exist.  And so Dan was basically debunking it, after it came out he was really bummed because he had said he  had a five-hour interview where he was like walking around with the journalist, and then just for a second he was asked did you guys ever not get along?  And Dan said briefly yeah, the first year we were like a little bit awkward together. But the whole statement of that was in passing and just referencing how far we’ve come along personally and professionally. We’re probably the closest now then ever before, and we get along so well, and are super tight, but yeah, in the beginning, we were a little bit like, you know, two creative heads meeting. But then the journalist twisted it and made it seem like it was still an ongoing thing, and made it sound like one of the songs on “Department of Eagles” was about me, which is not at all the truth– and then when he called me for a quote, the first thing he asked was, are you guys, do you ever think you could break up the band?  It was baiting me, basically.  It’s very campaign-like, actually.

Q:  I was going to say  – sounds all very familiar.  And you used the campaign-like technique, you responded yourself. 

A:  Well, Dan just felt horrible about it because it made me look like I was some sort of manipulate asshole, that didn’t want to share any sort of credit, or whatever?  And it’s just not the case, because we both come from solo projects, basically.  I had an album for Grizzly Bear and he had an earlier “Department of Eagles” album and then we joined together, and you know  the rest is history. The other annoying thing about it is that it essentially reduces Grizzly Bear to a two piece creatively, Dan vs. Ed and it’s very dismissive of the other members who are equally as key and integral. Ultimately Dan wanted to clarify and I’m glad he did, because – he never blogs, he’s never blogged before, it was his only blog post, so it means a lot coming from Dan.  He’s not a public speaker.  I’m much more like someone that will do the interview, and he set the whole silliness straight. Ironically he sort of brought more attention to the article than there was originally but it needed to be clarified.            

Q:  Let me ask you about the BAM tribute for Paul Simon. Was Paul Simon an influence?

A:  Well, he asked us via Feist.  We went on tour with Feist and we became really good friends with her.  One night we had a show at the Wordless Music Series last year –

Q:  At the Society for Ethical Culture, right?

A:  Yeah.  And it was the same night that she was playing “Saturday Night Live”, and I guess Paul is really good friends with Lorne Michaels?  So he was there, chatting backstage, and he was talking about how he wanted to do this project in the spring, people were going to cover him, and she mentioned how Dan had already done his own cover of “Graceland”, and told Paul about how we were playing right now at the Society for Ethical Culture, and he’s like, that’s two blocks from where I live.  So he came, we met him, he saw the show, he loved it, we played the cover of “Graceland” for him, and then he invited us to play the spring series, we were excited because we were all fans, but it wasn’t like something we would have expected, you know.  We weren’t thinking about that.  And then, so we had to figure out a couple of other songs, and the one that they picked that they liked the most other than “Graceland” was “Mother and Child Reunion”, and so we performed those two.

Q:  I assume you’ve heard this from other people, like, that version is amazing. 

 

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Mother and Child Reunion (Grizzly Bear cover, Iive)

 

A:  Oh, thank you.  Eventually we want to record it, maybe for a B-side or something.

Q:  You should.  It was incredible.

A:  Oh, thank you.  Definitely different from the reggae, upbeat original, it was a very melancholy take on it…

Q:  – haunting, and just really affecting and powerful.  How was opening for Radiohead?.

A:  Insanely amazing.  I mean, it got me back to go back and re-buy all their albums on iTunes just so I have the little thumbnails of their album or re-mastered version.  It essentially reignited my obsession with them. It was really, really great and especially the Greenwood Brothers were particularly friendly to us, and talked with us every night, barbequed with us in the parking lot.  I did not get to hang out with Thom as much as I wanted to, but you know.  He’s super famous, so what are you going to do? 

Q:  Now, did they ask you guys to do this? How does that work? 

A:  Yeah, I mean, it was insanely out of the blue.  That’s all I can say.  No expectation or rumor or anything.  It was like a call one day. 

Q:  All right, I will let you go. 

A: Fingers crossed for the election.

Comment now