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Interview: Megafaun
Megafaun (not to be confused with Austin band Megafauna) is a three-piece experimental folk group based in Durham, N.C. Last year’s full-length release, “Gather, Form and Fly,” merged bluegrass, folk and jazz to create a sound that distinguishes the group from the myriad other roots rock/Americana acts out there. Their talent, for better or worse, is often overshadowed by their backstory — before forming Megafaun, brothers Brad and Phil Cook and Joe Westerlund were part of DeYarmund Edison along with Justin Vernon, who left the band to form Bon Iver. In advance of Megafaun’s show tonight at Emo’s inside, Phil Cook spoke with us over the phone as the band prepared to play in San Francisco.
American-Statesman: This is your first tour as a headliner — what has that been like so far?
Phil Cook: When you’re an opening band for three years, you pretty much have a 45-minute slot, so you kind of get used to a very specific way to do what you do. No one has expectations when you’re an opening band; you’re more in a position to blow people’s mind like, “Wow, I had no idea, I’ve never heard of this band.” When you’re a headliner, a lot of people just come to see you, and you play for longer. You can relax a little bit, and the pacing is different. This tour has been all about settling in to that, becoming comfortable all over again.
Are you surprised how your audience has grown over the last year?
Yeah (laughing); it’s cool, you know. Totally awesome. We played in Montreal and there were maybe like 18 people at the show, but in Minneapolis there were like 600 people, so we’re still in transition.
What is the story behind your new ‘mini-album’?
We set out to make an EP, but as we started the writing and recording process, which were happening kind of simultaneously, we realized we had 35 minutes of recorded material, but it’s only six tracks. That puts it in a weird category because a lot of my favorite albums have been 35 minutes long, and they’re full-length. It’s a very complete cycle of songs, and we approached it just like we approach our other albums, where we really concentrate on how the tracks flow. From start to finish it’s very much a complete thought.
These days — it doesn’t happen that often — but people will come up to the merch table, look at your CD, turn around, ask how much it is and then count the number of tracks in front of you, literally like they’re making a little division sign in their head and they’ll say “does this equal 99 cents per track?” It’s only happened five or six times, but that didn’t happen five years ago.
Do the constant mentions of Bon Iver when people talk about Megafaun get annoying?
If he wasn’t our best friend, it probably would (be annoying), but the thing is, nobody knew who the (expletive) DeYarmond Edison was. People in Western Wisconsin knew who DeYarmond Edison was and like 100 people in North Carolina knew who we were. Up to that point, we had toured a total of two weeks, and been together playing music for like eight years. The breakup of that band ended up being the best thing for all of us. We’ve toured Europe twice in the last six months — that’s been a goal of mine since I was a little kid. We’re all just doing what we want to do. It’s super cool. Justin deserves every bit of success that he’s gotten. He still one of our favorite songwriters and always will be.
photo: D.L. Anderson
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