On break from preparations for a nationwide tour, Reeve Carney was kind enough to field some questions about Carney’s first album Mr. Green Volume 1 and circus imagery.
Ian Doreian for melophobe: Congratulations in advance, what with the album release and the tour ready to start.
Reeve Carney: Thanks. It’s been a long time coming. But in some ways a blessing with the long lead in.
melophobe: Why’s that?
Carney: We’ve been able to work out these songs over the past few years. They’ve developed through shows; in many ways, they feel like old songs at this point.
melophobe: That’s like the new National album. So many of those songs have been played live or on the late night circuit. For your record, are they where you want them now?
Carney: They are what we intended, but not in some intended form way. We get dissatisfied with the past and try to make it be shaped for now. Our intention is to have the songs work differently every night. To feel the energy of a room and have them match the audience.
melophobe: How is that going to work with your upcoming support of Athlete?
Carney: It’s a big change from playing to 12,000 opening for Fergie. We’ve done shows with 20 folks, so we know how the atmosphere can affect the music. It means changing up the set list, and adapting the songs for the venue. We’re not robots hoping to become popular…well that would be nice. It’s more about being true to the music and to the crowd.
melophobe: On that, I’ve been listing to the album over the past week, at work, at home, dancing with my daughter. It fits so many moods.
Carney: Ha! In Australia they put a sticker on it, something about “family friendly” lyrics. Glad that’s not in America. Though I had some weird idea about having a fan base that’s from birth to death. There’s been folks in their 90’s at shows.
melophobe: Family members, grandmothers?
Carney: Not the primary demographics; most of our fans are our age. Still, there’s a strong following with an older set.
melophobe: In part to your work with Gov’t Mule?
Carney: Yeah, maybe. It’s an honor to be mentored by them.
melophobe: How was SXSW for you this year?
Carney: I enjoy the pressure and buzz. It isn’t something that gets to me. Sure, there’s a huge struggle to get noticed. But it’s a great experience.
melophobe: Reeve, I need to ask: do you think the circus motif works?
Carney: You mean the visuals for the album?
melophobe: And the videos.
Carney: First off, we don’t have a stylist. Those are our own clothes. The look is an extension of who we are.
melophobe: Are you worried about being pigeonholed with some image, or persona?
Carney: I can’t really worry about the future. Sure there are artists who chase after an image, who place priority on look. I see us just as who we are right now. It could change; for now this is the feel and the mood of the band.
melophobe: On that, the album jumps all over the place. Did you have any trouble selecting a single?
Carney: In recording, I never guessed that “Love Me Chase Me” would end up being the single. Now that it is out there, and is the first track, it does encapsulate (if that’s the right word) what happens on the album. And it is popping up in places beyond KROQ.
melophobe: There sure are musical shifts in the song, a grinding blues that ends somewhere with Beatles harmonies. How are the other songs doing?
Carney: We just heard that a station in LA [KCRW] is playing “Amelie,” which is the one song I never thought would get on the radio.
melophobe: Reeve, you’ve been getting much attention for being picked to play Peter Parker in the Spider-Man musical on Broadway. How does the acting mix with your music?
Carney: I just fell into it, really. Music is my love; in some way it grabbed me by the shirt at a young age and carried me. I didn’t get into playing music to meet girls or anything. The acting is something that if I am honored to do, then I’ll do my best with it. It’s the same way with the band. The main thing is to do it like nothing else matters.
melophobe: As an English teacher, I loved that your acting started big with "Snow Falling on Cedars". Now, you were cast in "The Tempest". These are very literary films.
Carney: Humbling to be doing them, yes. In school I saw Baz Luhrmann’s "Romeo+Juliet," and this gave me an appreciation for Shakespeare. Julie Taymor [director of Spider-Man and The Tempest] has given me a chance to go for these complex roles. Again, the acting is something that I am trying to do like nothing else matters. I think that it rubs off with the music, too.
melophobe: You mean stage presence?
Carney: I’ve never had a problem on stage; it feels like home. The acting is more of working out an idea, refining a vision, making a connection with the audience, breaking down walls. So, not presence exactly. Something else.
melophobe: Looking back to your album and your lyrics, I see a connection with Bono. He and Edge wrote the music for Spider-Man, and there’s a very U2 quality about some songs you wrote. I mean that there is a layering of the spiritual and the not-so-sacred.
Carney: The lyrics, like everything else, all come from who I am, who the band is, who we are as individuals. There are moments where I have this alien feeling - that something is deeper than what we see.
melophobe: On songs like “Think of You” there’s ambiguity. You can’t tell if it is about a girl or God. That’s the Bono connection; there are layers of meaning that make for a good complexity.
Carney: I need to think more about that, the layers. The aim is for a heavy sound, something going for the eternal. Not in a religious way, but music that is raw and passionate. It bothers me when music is untrue. My grandfather was an Episcopal priest, and there has always been something special about the Psalms of David. How not everything was all, milk and honey, or happy. There’s realness there. That’s what my songs try to do.
melophobe: You’re in good company with that, thinking of bands like Arcade Fire, or even Sigur Ros. I can’t always follow Jonsi’s lyric, but I know that it seeks after deep things. So if you had to host “Carney-roo,” an outdoor festival with you headlining, what bands would you share the stage with?
Carney: First off, we’d still be the supporting act! But guess we’d invite Renée Fleming. Ha! I think Kings of Leon have opened lots of commercial doors for bands like us, so them too, and I have been a huge fan of Muse. Let’s go with them.
melophobe: Last question. At melophobe, we don’t fear music, but there are some things that make us afraid. Can you share what brings out fear for you?
Carney: I think the quality of fearlessness is something I most admire in a person, and especially a musician. But for my own fear, fear of the music business.
melophobe: That record companies are imploding?
Carney: No, that people just aren’t going to listen to music. More that they won’t need music, that they won’t be affected by it or that it stops being relevant to them.
melophobe: Thanks Reeve, and best wishes on the album release and tour.