Play that funky glockenspiel

[Welsh Rich]

From The Guardian today

 

Andrew Bird reels off his tour bus looking a little fuzzy round the edges. He stands blinking in the thin afternoon light, announces a need for coffee, and then his red corduroy trousers go striding off through the grey London streets. He is, you gather, a little weary of touring. "Your body adapts," he says, once his hand is safely gripping an espresso. "It just accepts that there won't be much joy in anything but being on stage."

 

Bird the performer is remarkably different from Bird the man. In person, he is quiet, still and somewhat reserved; on stage, he is a flurry of violin and whistling, with guitar, mandolin and - thrillingly - glockenspiel thrown in, all elbows and fringe, loops and flourishes. His shows have been met with five-star reviews and the word "genius". "I looked at my notes ..." one live review from Pitchfork read, "the only comment I had scrawled was, 'Wow!'"

Performing, he admits, is where he comes into his own. "I've always had that thing," he says. "In school I was painfully shy. But as soon as I had to get up in front of the class and give a book report, it was alarming - I'd suddenly be very articulate."

 

Bird's music is an extraordinary amalgamation of swing and folk, indie-rock and jazz, with a weird undercurrent of articulacy and academia. His latest LP, the acclaimed Armchair Apocrypha, his tenth record, contains tracks with such learned titles as Imitosis, Dark Matter and Scythian Empires; the latter mines his long fascination with the nomadic people who flourished in the steppes north of the Black Sea from the 7th century BC. "It was history class," he recalls, "and we had to choose some part of ancient history to write on. I was always fascinated by the anonymous tribes that brought down western civilisation. Like the Goths. And I came upon the Scythians. They were mine, my ancient tribe."

 

Bird was born in Chicago and began learning the violin at the age of four, using the Suzuki method. "It was the most relaxed way you could teach a four-year-old," he says of the Japanese approach that uses the techniques of language learning. "My mom had this romantic notion of her children playing classical music. The idea is you learn it when you're still learning language. It's using the same part of the brain."

 

By eight, Bird was an accomplished violinist; but he was not a great student. "I was designated as being slow, or special learning, because of my peculiar way of doing work," he says awkwardly. "But it always seemed redundant to do the same assignment as everyone else. I've always associated academia with what kills it, what takes the fun out. But I didn't have a total 'fuck you' reaction to it. I had a slowburn kind of rebellion."

 

Bird continued in his unorthodox ways at Northwestern University, where he studied violin but spent most of the time discovering other forms of music. "I was not the star student," he says. "I'd spend hours in the music library, which was all vinyl, early jazz to classical. I'd go through the stacks and listen to Norwegian fiddle-playing or Chinese pipa for hours." But it was early jazz that made a big impression. First off, he liked "that angular heavy post-bop stuff. Then I worked backwards - the traditional, old-school jazz was frowned upon in the academic world, but that's what I loved. And I really like the Kansas City swing style. The way I play now is not jazz, but that's my approach, to keep it in rotation, to not write songs that are going to pin me down."

 

Along with the early jazz, his college studies included English folk music: "Old ballads, Martin Carthy: that's what got me into lyrics, because I like archaic expressions; they spark my imagination. " Dark Matter begins with the line: "When I was just a little boy/ I threw away all of my action toys/ When I became obsessed with/ Operation". Bird laughs. "That's just a song about the oddities of science," he says. "But did I enjoy Operation? Yeah. Like almost all boys."

 

Does this explain the amount of scientific terminology on the record? "There's a lot of interesting words, nomenclatures, in science," he says, looking bashful. "I'll sometimes make lists of words," he says. "Or I'll find one and fixate on it. Then it takes me on this little journey where maybe I'll end up at a dictionary, or just start conversations with people, 'What does anathema mean?' That's kind of my ritual for writing. People might be disappointed. But I need a little ritual, a conversation piece, or a challenge to myself. 'Somehow I've gotta work Greek Cypriots into this song and it's gotta make sense.' That becomes my little kernel."

 

He laughs again, half-embarrassed, half-emboldened. "And I do care. It's not all random science - you just trust that the things you care about, that are really important to you, are going to end up in your songs. But I'm definitely the opposite of confessional singer-songwriters. I don't fill journals with poetry, thoughts and feelings."

 

Bird still lives in Chicago, but has a barn in north-west Illinois. "It's beautiful," he smiles. "I got 20 acres. And chickens." He built it with the intention of bringing a band out there to record; that didn't happen, but he did find the barn an inspiration. "When I go, I get really dark circles under my eyes and I get unstable," he says. "And I tend to do more songs that are less insistent, like Yawny at the Apocalypse. In the city or on tour, the ideas can be more dense, more dynamic."

 

He's already excited about his next record, to be recorded early next year. "I wanna do something very warm but minimalistic," he says. "My head is full of shifting patterns and polyrhythmic stuff; but I want to use all acoustic instruments and create this kind of tapestry of interlocking lulling parts." Has he thought of any titles? He nods. "All the songs have a sort of motivational speaker feel, so I'm trying to think of bad titles like Build a Better You - because, surprisingly, I've found a lot of the songs are encouraging somebody, maybe myself, to just, like, buck up".

[Mr. Kinsley]

He has ten albums?!?!?! Daaaaaang. I thought he was on #2. He sounds like an interesting guy - the type you don't want to just go see play, but rather go out to an all-night diner with in a small group with after the show for pie and coffee and pick his brain for a while. I've never actually seen what he looks like, but I'm guessing this is where the ladies start fighting over what happens with whom after the diner.

[DAngerer09]

Andrew Bird is my favorite. The man is just incredible.

[solace]

He has ten albums?!?!?! Daaaaaang. I thought he was on #2. He sounds like an interesting guy - the type you don't want to just go see play, but rather go out to an all-night diner with in a small group with after the show for pie and coffee and pick his brain for a while. I've never actually seen what he looks like, but I'm guessing this is where the ladies start fighting over what happens with whom after the diner.

they don't know how to count...

 

he has 3 solo records and 4 as Bowl of Fire, the rest are EP's or the Fingerlings live discs

[poppydawn]

On the ten albums, I think they're probably including the stuff he's done with previous bands. He's been kicking around for about a decade or so in different incarnations. He played on at least one Squirrel Nut Zippers album.

 

Seeing him live is amazing. Prior to the first time I saw him perform, we ran into him and his band at a Thai cafe across from the venue. We couldn't come up with a good excuse to interrupt this dinner and pick his brain, though, that didn't make us look like rude idiots. So we just gawked, and nearly fell out of our chairs the two times he walked past our table.

 

He's a wee little guy, but cute. Then again, I like nerds. Here he is, all prettied up for "Rolling Stone". And here's what he really looks like.

[TCP]

I've only recently discovered him (thanks Via Chicago) but I've been listening to him pretty non-stop lately.

[trevor]

i just got his latest the other day, and it's the first thing by him i'd heard. it's really great.

[Gobias Industries]

Andrew Bird is one of a kind.

[M. (hristine]

My 11 year old daughter is a huge Bird fan. She saw him live for the first time this autumn and was mesmerized.

 

This week she performs for the first time with the junior high school band playing the...glockenspiel!

[LouieB]

Four Bowl of Fire, four solo (one so obscure it is out of print), he is on two Kevin O'Donnell records which don't count and also didn't he do one additional album of kids songs?

 

LouieB

[solace]

Four Bowl of Fire, four solo (one so obscure it is out of print), he is on two Kevin O'Donnell records which don't count and also didn't he do one additional album of kids songs?

 

LouieB

which OOP solo album are you referring to? The Ballad of the Red Shoes?

 

if so, that's a 15 minute instrumental EP, i wouldn't count that as an album really.