By Doug Wallen
Photos by Brent Stewart
Regularly called “indie rock’s poet laureate,” David Berman has released a string of indelible albums—all on the revered label Drag City—under the guise of the Silver Jews that are just as fawned over as his canny 1999 collection of poetry, Actual Air, later reissued in hardcover by Drag City.
1994’s debut Starlite Walker and 1998’s American Water featured members of Pavement, 1996’s The Natural Bridge and 2001’s Bright Flight explored downcast country, and 2005’s Tanglewood Numbers and the new Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea adopted a ramshackle, more pop approach, with Berman’s wife, Cassie, joining the band on bass and back-up vocals. Most notably, after years of Berman refusing to play live, the Silver Jews began touring after Tanglewood Numbers.
Certainly the most idiosyncratic, quotable, and gifted writer of his generation, Berman has spawned an obsessive global following. Below are excerpts from a long and winding phone conversation with the man about the sixth Silver Jews album, politics, poetry, and playing in a band with his wife.
Tell me about the title of the new album.
On one level, it’s a pun of the address Lookout Mountain, Tennessee. There’s an aspect of “Look out, Earth. Beware of us.” It’s also a mock epic sort of title.
The album is fairly loose and stripped down.
I’m like a painter, and maybe I was never good at colors anyway. But [by] limiting my palate …that’s how I think I’m able to do what I do. I pour a lot of myself into the empty areas.
Has living in Nashville influenced the way you write?
It’s just something that’s on your mind. It’s something that’s even built into the civic structure, a respect for imaginative language and wit and storytelling.
You’re a bit of a history buff.
A real lynchpin is the [album’s] sample of a speech Teddy Roosevelt gave [in 1913]. He’s trying to inspire these kids. 1913 is the last time you could travel the world freely, the last time you could say something heroic. No one could possibly understand how the world would change in the next year or two. And I’m positing that maybe this is a 1913 kind of moment.
There’s tablature for the songs included with the new album.
That just occurred to me while I was doing the artwork. It says, “Anyone can play these songs.” My hope is that someone who lives with a guitar but doesn’t play it could. Even though music is so participatory now, there’s not the whole idea of sharing songs. It’s like an old folk song. Are these songs really universal that people write these days? Can they be integrated into your life?
What’s it like having Cassie in the band?
In some ways I say, “I don’t want to look at you like the bass player.” But when we travel together—it neutralizes me having her there. I don’t have to interact as much. We can just go to the hotel afterwards, and the band can hang out. That’s the part of touring I never wanted to deal with. She enjoys people more than I do.
You successfully put off touring for about a decade.
I’d seen enough by the time Starlite Walker came out to know that not many of my friends were happy being on tour. The only reason that consistently came up [for doing it] was selling more records. It’s a slippery slope. I did go out on tour and I’m glad I did. I feel like if I’m gonna make stuff, I have to leave a door open for people to get back in touch with me.
What’s the state of your poetry career?
I’ve constantly been writing stuff and publishing them in journals, but I haven’t had the time to put them together in a book. I never presumed to be an institution. I got a literary agent, so that might change now. I’m thinking endlessly about the wide possibility of pen and paper.