Applause, scattered chants and whistling filled Reynolds Coliseum for nearly two minutes, reverberating off the ceiling and floor, before the Avett Brothers returned to their instruments and wound up their set with “Pretty Girl from Raleigh.”
But before they took the stage, Technician sat down with Scott Avett, vocalist and banjoist, Seth Avett, vocalist and guitarist, and Bob Crawford, bassist, in a small, dimly-lit room located underneath the gymnasium floor.
TECHNICIAN: Did your father [Jim Avett, “Signs”] influence your choices to become musicians?
SCOTT: Not as much to go into the business as just for music to be a part of our lives. He was always playing songs as we were growing up, always had music around. It kind of went with the package with what it was like to be like a man – just playing a piece, just learning how to play a song on the guitar. Among those other values that our mom taught us was that music was a part of being well-rounded and just having songs around. It was something we just did.
TECHNICIAN: How do your Southern roots find their way into your songs, and how do you make those aspects – which can be pretty foreign to others – relate to your fan-base?
SCOTT: It comes off a little more exotic to some other parts of the world. We ate together every night, we had supper together every night, we didn’t get our food and go to different parts of the house – our family always ate together. Whether we liked it or not it forced us to congregate. If you’ve got all that time to talk to your kids you’re eventually going to instill some morals and some values, and we definitely got some of that.
SETH: The pace of the South is directly linked with courtesy. But it seems like we were raised in an environment in which camaraderie was important, and family was important, and being courteous to strangers is important. Also, we were around a lot of [regular, hard-working] people, so it made us be like that.
TECHNICIAN: How does travel affect your music?
SCOTT: We haven’t done a lot of international travel, but we can’t help but use our experience with travel – where we go, what we do makes its way into what we write. Stylistically, we do find influence from pretty broad areas.
TECHNICIAN: How do you convey the emotion and meaning of your songs through instrumentation?
SCOTT: I’m not sure if we do that. It’s not something we’ve considered. We’re a very vocally and lyrically-driven band. They take the forefront, they take the lead. If the actual instrument matters, it’s more the melodies and the changes. SETH: We occasionally will try to find a certain something with the instruments, like at the end of “Salina.” SCOTT: Instruments are a form of convenience. We just landed on these instruments [banjo, guitar, stand-up base and drums] live and we just ran with it. We didn’t make any plan for that. Simplicity was important and that makes its way into the songs.
TECHNICIAN: So when you use piano in your songs, is that a sign of the band’s instrumental progression?
SCOTT: The piano actually came before the instruments that we play now. We took piano when we were younger and we write with the piano – I know I write with the piano more than I ever have before. Seth’s always written with the piano. A lot of times the piano is the backbone.
SETH: More often than not the song is written for the lyrics, for the patterns, for the words, and then we’ll work out later how it needs to be presented, which instruments we’ll use. And we use the instruments that are at our disposal, which are the ones we know how to play, which are pretty minimal – guitar, piano, drums, base, cello. I’m a well-versed flutist. Is that the right word, flutist?
TECHNICIAN: Speaking of “Salina”, what’s the significance of the places – Kansas, Cleveland, New York, Indianapolis, et cetera – you mentioned. You could have chosen anywhere in the world.
SCOTT: They kind of apply to the people of those cities. A lot of times it turns into what people decide what it needs to be. It becomes something for somebody else once they do a lot of thinking about it. Once we validate the reason to write the song, it’s the people who relate to what it means. I forget sometimes what Seth or I might write a song about after I validate the reason to write it.
SETH: You’ve gotta let it go so you can work on the next one.
TECHNICIAN: You play so many shows and bring the same amount of energy – or more – to each. How do you keep yourself going, keep yourself from getting tired of what you write?
SCOTT: We’re pretty tired. Next question.
SETH: Something we always try to remind ourselves and consider is that we wouldn’t be out around playing shows and performing if there wasn’t an audience. Part of performing is that you’re doing this for other people, to a certain extent, so you just have to consider them and just remember that we’re doing this in a big part for them and we want to offer them something good. And we enjoy doing it. We enjoy playing our songs and we enjoy sharing our songs. It sort of reminds of how Joe DiMaggio used to say, ‘Someone might be out there watching me play baseball for the very first time, so whatever made me known I need to show them some of that.’ Even though they’re expecting something from him, he’s not doing it ’cause they expect him to, he’s doing it so he can really do his best for them.
TECHNICIAN: What did you guys want to be when you were kids? Did you always want to be musicians? And Bob, this includes you. You haven’t said anything yet.
BOB: I wanted to be a lumberjack.
SCOTT: Bob Lumberjack Crawford.
SETH: Astronaut.
SCOTT: Veterinarian.
TECHNICIAN: So when did you decide this was it, this is your career?
SETH: Last year sometime.
SCOTT: Actually, I still haven’t decided. I said that to somebody the other day and the guy was like ‘Come on man, don’t say that.’ I was like, ‘I mean I’m pretty obligated.’ Seth’s pretty sure though, he’s always seemed like he wanted to be a musician.
SETH: I’ve always pretty much wanted to be either an astronaut or a musician. I think probably around maybe 10 or 11 years old, I knew I wanted to do something like this. I mean, I didn’t know it was going to be like this. But that’s when I realized this was what I wanted to do. I’m still keeping that door of opportunity open, though [to be an astronaut].
TECHNICIAN: Your appearance on Late Night with Conan O’Brien [May 11, 2007] seemed really short notice — it wasn’t on your tour schedule and the e-mail notice went out about three days before. How did Conan happen and when did you know you’d be performing?
SCOTT: We asked [the booking agent] if we could do it, and he didn’t say no the first time we contacted him … and when he doesn’t say no you still know you’ve got a chance and you’ve just gotta work it. So we just worked it and worked it. We knew we were going on Conan about when [we sent out] the e-mail. We only knew it was a real possibility two days before that, so it was pretty quick. They said they would call us on Tuesday and we were doing it Friday. They confirmed it on Wednesday.
TECHNICIAN: Did you notice an increase in your fan base post-Conan?
SCOTT: I think there was some spike in it, but we couldn’t say for sure. It was our national television debut. I wouldn’t say that we’ve noticed any sort of enormous change. People will come to us and say, ‘We saw you for the first time on Conan O’Brien,’ which is kind of weird.
TECHNICIAN: Who are your musical influences?
SETH: Scott Avett.
SCOTT: Seth Avett. Bob’s biggest one is Bruce Springstein. Right Bob?
BOB: I wouldn’t deny it.
SCOTT: You know he loves Emotionalism, Bob. He bought it two months ago. He heard us on Sirius Radio.
