E-MAIL PRINT MOST E-MAILED

XL Cover Story: Weird As Folk

What's blowing in the wind? Psychedlic, free, outsider, freak — all ways to describe a movement in avant-garde music making

By Joe Gross
Oct. 27, 2005


Amber Novak for AA-S Shawn McMillen has been sending out psychedelic sounds since the early '90s.

A few Mondays ago — Oct. 10 at 10:30 p.m. to be precise — Shawn McMillen, an Austin guitarist, walked down Sixth Street toward Emo's.

Nothing too unusual there.

He intended to do little more than view a performance by increasingly renowned avant-garde folk singer Devendra Banhart, who headlined the Emo's outdoor stage that night.

The last time Banhart brought his childlike voice and wispy, whispered folk to Austin, on July 4, 2003, he packed Flamingo Cantina. Flamingo holds about 300 people. Banhart drew around 650 for this Emo's show, which is, according to Emo's management, none too shabby for a Monday.

McMillen walked into the club via the musicians' entrance, took the stage and started playing next to Banhart and his band. (You could tell which one was McMillen by his lack of facial hair, which every other fellow on stage sported.) According to witnesses, neither band nor crowd minded much as McMillen played for a few minutes, including a bit of one of his own grim folk songs, then left the stage as abruptly as he arrived.

This could happen at how many concerts?

The band remained chill and a goodly percentage of the crowd probably didn't even notice. A mess of Banhart's serious fans were down in front of the stage, while the back area and courtyard were filled with an assortment of Emo's regulars, indie rock types, a few hippies and what Emo's booker Phil Waldorf called "a bunch of Factory People types." One assumes those were the well-dressed folks in the back who would not stop talking. (Even for Austin, a town that flat out refuses to shut up at shows, this was a loud bunch.)

Two years ago, remember, Banhart was drawing guys like McMillen and 300 of his closest friends, hardcore fans of psychedelic folk music. A few Mondays ago, the Banhart show was the Austin place to see and be seen. The hip and nerdy had converged on the unlikely cultural focal point of psych folk.

New folk

Older genres go through hip-nerd revivals all the time.


Sandy Ewen The members of the Weird Weeds — Aaron Russell, Sandy Ewen and Nick Hennies — say they don't think of their music as part of the new folk scene. The Weird Weeds - "Paratrooper Seed" Windows Media \| Real Media Ralph White - "Down By The River" Windows Media \| Real Media

Back in the mid-'90s, the Beastie Boys practically invented a mass revival of dub reggae when they put legendary producer Lee Perry on the cover of their 'zine Grand Royal. A few years later, German "Krautrock" was all the rage, thanks in part to a terrific book on the stuff by British post-punk Julian Cope (whose Web site "Head Heritage" is doing the same for '70s hard rock). Post-punk is back, too, witness the legions of bands (Interpol, Killers, etc.) taking their moves from what they think they hear on Gang of Four albums.

Right now, the hot, hip genre is psychedelic folk music, also called "outsider folk," "free folk" or "acid folk." Other monikers include "freak folk," "beardcore" (no kidding) and "New Weird America," a term coined by British journalist David Keenan. The free folk sound is all over the place, ranging from monochromatic drones and tribal drumming spiked with improvisational goof-offs to sparkling acoustic guitar shimmer of no fixed headspace to a deeply personal, lo-fi mumble.

In short, much of the stuff sounds like a particularly grotty and distant Grateful Dead or Fairport Convention bootleg.

Suddenly, kids who traded in electric guitars for turntables three years ago are trading those in for cheap Martin guitars and listening to acoustic geniuses such as John Fahey, Bert Jansch and the Incredible String Band.

Some critics are completely appalled by this. Here's Robert Christgau, writing in the Village Voice: "So disdainful of the literal that it's effectively apolitical even when it wishes otherwise, the artier-than-thou traditionalism of psych-folk is a hippie revival rooted in acoustic eccentrics I'd hoped were behind me three decades ago." Other critics simply ignored it, keeping their eye on hip-hop culture's complicated, ongoing market-driven revolution of the pop charts.

Some avant-folk musicians seemed pretty hacked off as well, but their complaint seems the opposite of Christgau's. Here's Tom Carter — one lobe of previously Austin-based band Charalambides, a precursor to much of the new folk scene — writing for Volcanic Tongue, a Web site distributing and advocating for this music: " 'Folk' music started as a term broad enough to connote anything made outside the halls of academia. .... Free folk (was) a righteous attempt to reclaim the long-genrefied saw of Folk (capital F, definition frozen into button-down acoustic mediocrity by '60s ad-men) ... (This) is now bastardized as 'freak folk,' a transparent attempt to giftwrap smiling young faces for fans who think they want the 'new soundz' when they're really looking to fill the empty slots in their iTunes playlists."

Ouch.

Austin as incubator


Dennis Kleiman Sam Beam performs as Iron and Wine.

Of course, Austin — a town with a history of detente between hippies and hicks, psychedelic types and roots rock weirdos — has nurtured an enterprising freak-folk scene.

Sam Beam, whose gorgeous debut album as the act Iron and Wine is a new folk touchstone, just moved to Dripping Springs. (He plays with Calexico Sunday night at Stubb's.) Artists such as McMillen, Jana Hunter (who just released a split LP with Banhart), Ralph White, BC Smith, Bee vs. Moth and more have been building an avant-folk Austin scene for years.

Emo's booker Waldorf formerly worked at Other Music, a New York record store that often serves as a canary-in-the-mineshaft for hipster trends. "Three years ago, I could have told you the next big thing was psych folk," he says. "As someone who truly loves this stuff, I would have said that was great." But he also runs Misra Records and is reluctant to look for like-minded acts for the label. "The B-level music of this movement seems pretty thin, and it's just going to seem as if I'm jumping on the bandwagon."

Suddenly, modern outsider folk is in a strange spot: not commercial enough to make a serious mark on mass culture, yet it's getting too big for its hardcore fans.

As for McMillen, one of the town's quintessential outsider folkies, he blames the drugs for his little show.

"Mushrooms and tequila, man," he says, sounding more than a little sheepish. "I don't even remember what I played."

McMillen, 31, has been plying his psychedelic trade since the early '90s, when he was living in Houston and met up with Charalambides.

"I played in punk rock bands since I was 13, but I always was into the 1960s stuff because my stepdad was," he adds, "but meeting Tom Carter and (Tom's wife) Christina was just this avalanche of information." McMillen was turned onto artists such as Fahey and Steeleye Span.


Rodolfo Gonzalez/AA-S Jana Hunter, who released her CD 'Blank Unstaring Heirs of Doom' this week, moved to Austin a month and a half ago.

McMillen formed the psychedelic guitar duo Ash Castles on the Ghost Coast with his then-girlfriend Heather Murray and moved here in '96. The group disbanded a few years later, and these days, McMillen kills time in Austin with the obtuse psych acts Rubble and Iron Kite. (To give you an idea of how tiny these scenes can be, know that Murray is now married to journalist Keenan, who runs Volcanic Tongue.)

"Catfish," McMillen's solo LP (as in vinyl-only) of guitar, autoharp, analog synth, bowed bass and more, will be released on local label Emperor Jones on Nov. 8. It's a lush and heady listen, more dense and shifting mood music than straightforward songcraft. "I started that album to keep my brain from bursting after me and Heather split up," McMillen says.

So why are the trainspotters jumping on the freak folk festival express? "The right people saying the right things," he says, "especially on the Internet."

Waldorf agrees: "The Internet, blogs are the new 7-inch single," he says. Where 10 or 15 years ago, a 'zine might reach 500 to 5,000 people, a college radio station a few thousand more. Now, record stores such as Other Music and Aquarius in San Francisco champion this music though elaborate Web sites.

"It also photographs well, you know," McMillen says. "The beards, the weird instruments, the hippie clothes. It's easy to make yourself over into this thing, like being into rockabilly."

Everyone's doing it

This is exactly what Tom Carter railed against, and it's the sort of idea that might make Sam Beam nuts, if he seemed a guy who got angry about anything, ever.

As Iron and Wine, his 2002 debut album "The Creek Drank the Cradle" (Sub Pop) was hailed as modern masterpiece by critics such as Byron Coley, the critical �minence grise of the American rock underground.

Perhaps due to the traditional, almost Paul Simon-esque structure of his tunes, when speaking of national outsider folk/new weird artists, Beam's name doesn't come up much as Banhart, Sunburned Hand of the Man, Animal Collective, Joanna Newsome, Six Organs of Admittance and so on. That's fine by him.

"A lot of people ask me if I'm part of this new folk thing, and I have no idea," he says in a soft voice. "I just try to make a different record every time. I have no game plan."

Right now, Beam is touring with Calexico, the Ennio Morricone-esque rock band with whom he recently collaborated in "In the Reins" (Overcoat).

"My work's never really depended on being part of a scene," Beam says. He made his first recordings while teaching cinematography in Miami. "I started doing this as a hobby and I was pretty isolated."

Steve Gullick YOUNG GOD RECORDS
The hip and the nerdy have found common cultural ground with Devendra Banhart.

A New Weird American checklist

The roots of acid folk
1. Various Artists — 'Anthology of American Folk Music' (1952, Smithsonian Folkways)
2. John Fahey — 'The Voice of the Turtle' (1968, Takoma)
3. Incredible String Band — 'The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter' (1968, Hannibal)
4. Vashti Bunyan — 'Just Another Diamond Day' (1970, DiChristina)
5. Sun Ra — 'Strange Strings' (1967, Saturn)
6. Nick Drake — 'Pink Moon' (1972, Hannibal)
7. Elizabeth Cotton — 'Folksongs and Instrumentals With Guitar' (1957, Smithsonian Folkways)
8. Robbie Basho — Guitar Soli (1996, Takoma)
9. Jackson C. Frank — 'Blues Run the Game' (1965, Columbia)
10. Tyrannosaurus Rex — 'Unicorn' (1969, Regal Zonophone)

Five albums of modern acid folk
1. Various Artists — 'Golden Apples of the Sun' (Bastet, 2005)
2. Devendra Banhart — 'Oh Me Oh My ...' (Young God, 2002)
3. Six Organs of Admittance — 'Dark Noontide' (2002, Holy Mountain)
4. Iron and Wine — 'The Creek Drank the Cradle' (2002, Sub Pop)
5. Joanna Newsome — 'The Milk-Eyed Mender' (2004, Drag City)

From Craig Stewart, Emperor Jones Records
1. Pip Proud — 'Adrenaline and Richard' (1968, Polydor International)
2. Alexander 'Skip' Spence — 'Oar' (1969, Columbia)
3. Patty Waters — 'Patty Waters Sings' (1965, ESP—Disk)
4. Jandek — 'Ready for the House' (1978, Corwood Industries)
5. Tim Hardin — 'Suite for Susan Moore and Damion: We Are One, One, All in One' (1970, Columbia)

From Phil Waldorf, Misra Records
1. Roy Harper — 'Stormcock' (1971, Resurgent)
2. Bert Jansch — 'Jack Orion' (1966, Vanguard)
3. Jackson C. Frank — 'Blues Run the Game' (1965, Columbia)
4. Supreme Dicks — 'The Unexamined Life' (1993, Homestead)
5. Joanna Newsom — 'The Milk-Eyed Mender' (2004, Drag City)

Some Austin bands don't think they're part of the local avant-folk scene at all, but get lumped in with it nonetheless. Weird Weeds is a trio of musicians nearly three pop music cycles apart. Guitarists Sandy Ewen, 20, and Aaron Russell, 36, and drummer Nick Hennies, 26, came together in Austin two years ago. Though Ewen and Hennies come from an improvisational background (and Hennies recently played with Houston underground legend Jandek) the band's debut, "Hold Me," features rigorously composed songs that nonetheless sound like they would fit right in with Austin psych-folk scene. "I don't think there's anything psychedelic about our music at all," Hennies says. "If psychedelic means an altered state of consciousness, Weird Weeds is the opposite of that, and it's highly non-improvisational."

Ralph White, 52, was weird folk when weird folk wasn't cool. He spent seven years with the Bad Livers playing a punky, twisted take on bluegrass. Known as a fiddler with serious traditional chops, these days, he'll bust out Syd Barrett covers and folk tunes on the kalimba, an African thumb piano, or "Down By the River" on accordion. His strangely underrated solo albums "Trash Fish" and "Down By the Waterline" are mutant solo Americana of a bright and gleaming strain, the kind that comes from nearly 30 years of musical exploration.

White says he's had trouble fitting into any scene — a little too weird for the traditional crowd, too song-oriented for the free improvisors. "My banjo style has nothing to do with bluegrass, and the traditional Irish music groups I've played with aren't too into the banjo/kalimba stuff."

"I stopped listening to music because playing it is all I want to do, really," White says. "You can try to be faithful to traditional styles, but if you're dedicated to music, you pretty much have to find your own voice."

Jana Hunter, on the other hand, seems a product of the national freak-folk scene. The 27-year-old has only lived here for a month and a half, but grew up in Arlington playing classical violin. Like McMillen, she hung around the Houston Sound Exchange, becoming familiar with bands such as Six Organs. "I've never been the type to go out and try to find music; people have to bring things to me," she says. "Daniel Johnston's early recordings are a major influence."

After five years in Houston, she recently spent some time in Brooklyn, a move she openly says was an attempt to meet some folks in the avant-folk scene. She spent time with up-and-comers such as Vetiver, Akron Family and Banhart, with whom she shares a nifty new LP. This week, she's released a CD called "Blank Unstaring Heirs Of Doom;" it's the first released on Banhart's label, Gnomonsong.

Hunter thinks the new-found popularity is simply a response to a few years of bland corporate rock, but seems aware the same thing could happen to this scene. "A music made by people who only want to express something genuine will rise out of the underground, be enthusiastically received by people eager for something genuine, be made popular by these people, and finally be exploited for profit by big record companies. Maybe 'psych/folk' or whatever it is strange and varied enough to withstand that mill."

On to mass hysteria

Or maybe the mill has already begun. After all, "New Weird America" is a take-off on "Old Weird America," critic Greil Marcus' phrase for the smattering of insulated folk styles that dotted our national landscape in the days before mass communication and transportation. It's this America that folklorist Harry Smith was tapping into with his legendary three-volume "Anthology of American Folk Music," reissued to massive acclaim in 1997.

Austin record label Revenant Records is dedicated to keeping that America vibrant, releasing anthologies from Dock Boggs, the Stanley Brothers, Charley Patton and Smith's previously unreleased fourth volume of "Anthology." The label just released the second volume of its "American Primitive" series. Subtitled "Pre-War Revenants (1897-1939)," the double CD anthologizes all sorts of obscure gospel 78s.

It's also important to remember that Revenant was started by the late John Fahey and his then-manager Dean Blackwood. Fahey was perhaps the first freakish folkie, blending blues, finger-picking and classical discipline into a glimmering guitar language both beautiful and deeply moving.

Blackwood views much of this revival with a skeptical eye, though he was a fan of Banhart's enigmatic first album. "I think it's hard to continue to tap into that raw channel when you're surrounded by people talking about how great you are.

"For me, most of the original psychedelic folk seems sort of hopelessly of its time," he continues. "I think what made Fahey's work so important is that it doesn't appear to be of a particular time."

For Blackwood, the key to "American Primitive" is its lack of modern irony. "This music is without contrivance," he says. "These were people trying to make hit records and they happened to tap into something else entirely."

Which isn't a charge either side of the modern freak folk fence is going to level at this strange new scene anytime soon.

jgross@statesman.com; 912-5926