Tag: seth avett

The Avett Brothers’ Musical, ‘Swept Away,’ Heads to Broadway

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

It has been two decades since the Avett Brothers released their shipwreck-themed concept album Mignonette. This fall, the musical Swept Away, based on the album’s story, will premiere on Broadway as the latest in a bevy of roots-based musicals lighting up those storied theaters.

Swept Away is presented in 90 minutes without intermission. During previews in San Francisco and Washington, D.C., the cast and creative team received high praise from theater critics and Avett Brothers fans alike.

The Avetts’ original song cycle was based on the story of a shipwreck near the Cape of Good Hope that left four survivors in a lifeboat. To survive, three of them killed the fourth and ate him for sustenance. When they were finally rescued, the three stood trial, breaking a tradition of maritime law that up to that point had carried the spirit of, “What happens at sea remains at sea.”

It’s quite a story for a band of brothers who have become known for their stirring sincerity. But, Scott Avett told Broadway.com, “We were driving around to places that seemed unknown, in a van. We seemed to have nothing but this belief that we were doing something that was true. … It was easy to see that van as our vessel.”

“It was scary,” adds Seth. “We felt very driven to survive.”

Adrian Blake Enscoe and the Company of the Washington, D.C. Arena Stage production of ‘Swept Away.’ Photo by Julieta Cervantes.

The Avetts discovered the story via their father, Jim Avett, who had a special affection for stories of shipwrecks and handed them a book about its history, The Custom of the Sea: A Shocking True Tale of Shipwreck, Murder, and the Last Taboo. When they wrote Mignonette, the brothers Seth and Scott were 23 and 27, respectively, and just beginning to rise from the clubs. But the disc pointed the way toward a bright future for the Avetts, which then included only the brothers with bassist Bob Crawford.

It was that trio which caught the eyes, ears, and imagination of a young John Gallagher, Jr. Gallagher spent a summer day in 2005 at the Philadelphia Folk Festival, aimlessly checking out bands he’d never heard of before.

Folk audiences were a handful of years out from the release of O Brother, Where Art Thou? – the film that ignited a wildfire of interest in bluegrass and old-time music for a new generation. Plenty of bands in their 20s were throwing their flat caps into the ring. But, Gallagher recalled recently over Zoom, “The thing that struck me … about the Avetts is that they were feeling it, you know. You can’t fake that. You can’t deny that. When you see someone bring that to the stage or put that on a record, it’s totally undeniable.”

That night, while driving back to Delaware with his sister and friends in their mom’s minivan, Gallagher commandeered the discman attached to the cassette adapter that fit into the car’s tape deck to insist everyone listen to the CD he bought after the Avett Brothers’ set.

Mignonette was the only one they had on offer that summer. They’d released it a year earlier on Ramseur Records. Gallagher played its first two tracks – “Swept Away” and “Nothing Short of Thankful” – before moving on to Green Day’s American Idiot, which had also just released.

Fast forward a handful of years and Gallagher was developing a new musical for Broadway based on the very same Green Day album. In his dressing room at the St. James Theater, he’d hung a small poster that showed Seth Avett handing his guitar off to a tech at a live show.

Mignonette had long since turned the young actor into a self-described “fanboy.” Even as he sang eight shows a week of Green Day tunes, he couldn’t have possibly known he’d eventually be cast for another Broadway show, this time based on the Avett Brothers album he’d played in that minivan back in Philly.

John Gallagher, Jr. in the Washington, D.C. Arena Stage production of ‘Swept Away.’ Photo by Julieta Cervantes.

When it dropped in 2004, Mignonette was lauded by the roots music press of the day. Paste extolled the band’s “James Brown precision (in a bluegrass context of course).” No Depression, then still in its original print run, applauded tracks from the album that harnessed “palpable yearning and hope.”

The playwright and filmmaker John Logan (Moulin Rouge) recalls how, in 2017, he received an email from producer Matthew Masten, asking if he’d ever heard Mignonette. After listening to the album for a day, Logan was sold.

He flew to North Carolina, where he pitched his vision for the musical to the Avett Brothers, asking them to open their entire catalog and to write a new song only for the stage. Once they agreed, Swept Away was set in motion. Michael Mayer, who was directing Gallagher in American Idiot at the time – a very different show with a score written by a very different band – was tapped to direct.

The show these men and their team would create would be titled after the album’s opening song, “Swept Away.” It would be somewhat of a jukebox musical, but not really. Somewhere between Jagged Little Pill (which told a new story with Alanis Morisette’s breakthrough album) and Hadestown (whose Tony-winning set designer Rachael Hauck joined Swept Away’s creative team). Plus maybe a little Come From Away. On a ship. In the 1880s.

In recent years, Broadway producers have been more and more interested in revivals (Merrily We Roll Along, Cabaret) and movies-turned-musicals (The Notebook, Moulin Rouge). True originality is more rare on the Broadway stage. Swept Away may be adapted from a 20-year-old folk album, but its songs pull from across the Avetts’ catalog and its book is entirely new.

Like Gallagher, Adrian Blake Enscoe, who is originating the Little Brother character, is a musician away from Broadway. His band, Bandits on the Run, has the scrappy busking energy of early Avetts and he especially appreciates the way the show incorporates the “rough and spontaneous” elements of the Avetts’ music into a score that can resonate with the theater crowd.

“It’s really hard to capture the magic of the little things [about folk music] and translate it to other people,” he acknowledges. Then adds that the music supervisors and arrangers, Chris Miller and Brian Usifer, “did an incredible job of recreating the magic.”

Swept Away is set to open on Broadway October 29, 2024, at the Longacre Theatre on 48th Street.

All production photos courtesy of DKC/O&M. Shot at the Washington, D.C. Arena Stage production of Swept Away by Julieta Cervantes.

Lead Image: Stark Sands, John Gallagher, Jr., Wayne Duvall, and Adrian Blake Enscoe in the Washington, D.C. Arena Stage production of ‘Swept Away.’ Photo by Julieta Cervantes.

The Avett Brothers Go Lights-Out

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Over the nearly two-and-a-half decades since their debut, the Avett Brothers have constructed their own creative universe.

They’ve released 11 studio albums, earned a Grammy award (plus three more noms), and bounded around stages for countless tour dates and festivals the world over. May It Last, a documentary film about the influential North Carolina group, offered a glimpse at the band’s dynamic through big and small screens.

Scott has also been a working visual artist since before The Avett Brothers as a band even entered the public consciousness, earning a BFA in studio art from East Carolina University in 2000 and depicting Southern family life through paintings and sculptures that would go on to make moving exhibitions—all while he also created stunning album cover imagery (for his own band as well as the great Brandi Carlile) or provided the visuals for such epic music videos as “Head Full of Doubt / Road Full of Promise.”

Musical theater, too, has been touched by the Avetts: Their musical, Swept Away, will make its mark on Broadway this fall. But the band’s eleventh album, The Avett Brothers, feels less like a charge into new creative territory and more like a reflection on the other things that have sustained them over the years.

“There’s certainly an unsettling feeling in that shadowy twenties and thirties where you get trapped into thinking that you are what you make,” Scott told Holler Country last year. “I’m settling into a season of life where I’m welcoming the reality that I am because I am, not I am because I do.”

That realization gets top billing on The Avett Brothers. Classic ballad “2020 Regret” sounds so quintessentially Avetts that it could have easily appeared just about anywhere in their catalog, if not for the veiled references to the year. It, too, embraces the idea that a life without regrets is less about what you do than it is about the people you do it alongside.

“Life cannot be written,” read the lyrics on album standout “Never Apart.” “It can only be lived.” The song muses on a long-term relationship; it’s presumably a romantic one, but would it be so crazy to listen to it through the lens of the band and its legacy?

Most bands don’t wait twenty-plus years into their trajectory to release a self-titled album — in large part because a lot of them simply don’t last that long. It’s a banner accomplishment to forge a musical path that sustains itself in any capacity for multiple decades; it’s entirely another to push forward with nearly the exact same cast of characters you started with, still collaborating and creating with the same heart and satisfaction as before.

“It’s trust. It’s a trust that’s built in,” explained Seth to NPR last month when asked about the secret to the band’s longevity. “My trust in that Scott has my best interests in mind is something that it would never occur to me to question.” He may be referring specifically to the lifelong brotherly bond he shares with the other Avett in the group, but certainly the larger band has formed a different kind of family.

Bob Crawford, who has been playing upright bass (among other instruments) with the band since 2001, took a year off to support his daughter’s battle with cancer and Avett fans followed and supported the journey at every turn. Cellist Joe Kwon, too, has an immovable fixture in the band since 2007; crowds go wild for him at every show. “We’ve been lucky and blessed to transform with each other,” added Scott, “to change with each other and watch this happening to us.”

“Cheap Coffee,” one of the album’s underrated masterpieces, makes great fodder for the idea of a group that constantly evolves and grows together. Producer Rick Rubin, who has been with the band since their major label debut, I and Love and You, apparently cut all the lights out and had them record the song entirely in the dark. The story holds up well for a song that engages so many senses: the distant smell of coffee, the feel of an outgrown apartment, the sound of a kid imagining the very highest number they possibly can. “Didn’t know how, didn’t know how good it was,” the group sings, lyrically balancing major milestones with the types of tiny details in a memory that feel insignificant at the time, but become the stuff of nostalgia decades on.

“We’ve always had this quasi-fatalist attitude, like oh, this might be the last time we ever do it,” joked Seth in an interview between their tenth and eleventh albums. “Now we’re really like, okay, we’re probably only gonna do this one more time.” In the interview, this line reads as a joke, but fans have speculated the same thing many times, too, cobbling together similar statements from the documentary film and various other interviews to try and guess how many more albums they might get.

Regardless of the band’s plans for the future, this eleventh album embraces plenty that fans love about the past. “For the Love of a Girl” is the jump-around number you can’t wait to hear live. And “Country Kid” offers an ambling glimpse at a rural North Carolina upbringing, with a heavy twang and plenty of backwoods imagery to match.

Taken altogether, The Avett Brothers feels like a worthy prize for the five-year wait between releases. “We’re not in the same hurry we used to be,” Scott explains. “Our home lives are super busy. We’re teaching kids things.”

In a way, maybe the greater message of The Avett Brothers is that the work will always be there — the opportunity to create, to explore, to have some kind of output. So maybe it’s really not so surprising that the band would wait to release an eponymous album so many years into their career, or that they might take five years since their last full-length to release it, or that they might not make promises about the future. As their influence has grown, so have the demands for their time and the expectations around what they make — not just how much of it there should be, but what it should sound like and how it should reflect the world around them.

What a beautiful thing to ignore those voices, to be enlightened by the past without being imprisoned by it; to turn off all the lights and sing in the dark.

(Editor’s Note: Read more about our selection of the Avett Brothers as Artist of the Month, explore their discography, and check out our Essentials Playlist here.)

Photo Credit: Crackerfarm

Archiving the Heart: Greg Brown on Music, Family, and Throwing Out Old Notebooks

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

Iowa folk music icon Greg Brown is living that retired life. After playing his farewell retirement concert in 2023, he’s returned with a new book: Ring Around The Moon: A Songbook, which highlights a song selection personally picked by the songwriter himself, as well as family photos, personal anecdotes and self-penned drawings. The book features a foreword by Seth Avett (The Avett Brothers) who calls Brown’s songs “plain ​spoken ​expression ​of ​the ​nearly ​inexpressible.” In our conversation, we touch on topics like inner peace, happiness, personal growth and self-acceptance.

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He speaks of how art has impacted him in ways the artist will never understand. He talks about what it’s like to be on both the receiving and sending end of this exchange. It especially impacted him when he learned the poet Allen Ginsberg listened to an album of his while he was dying. I asked him about his music archives, which he calls “a ​bunch ​of ​old ​notebooks ​on ​a ​shelf” and “a ​couple ​boxes ​of ​old ​photos,” which assisted him in recalling family connections for the songbook. Going through the photos and old songs instilled a sense of music nostalgia, including collaboration with Iowa musicians at the Wednesday Night Jam at The Mill. Music nostalgia surfaces several times through the pages like his incredible story of founding the successful and beloved Red House Records.

There’s also discussion on a few choice Greg Brown songs like “If You Don’t Get it at Home,” addressing replacing love for materialism and drug use. We talk about “Brand New ’64 Dodge,” chronicling Brown’s personal experience with JFK’s assassination in 1963 and “Two Little Feet,” written in Alaska where he was inspired by Native American myths he heard and felt in the area. Greg Brown’s songbook was an awesome trip down memory lane for some of the best folk songs ever written from one very serious, yet very silly songwriter. It was an honor to dig in with one of the best to do it!

Photo Credit: Mei-Ling Shaw

Artist of the Month: The Avett Brothers

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

(Editor’s Note: On May 17, The Avett Brothers released a new, self-titled album. BGS is proud to bring them back as our Artist of the Month for June 2024.

Below, enjoy a musical exploration of their illustrious career and prolific catalog. Plus, you’ll also find our Essential Avett Brothers Playlist for even more discography digging. And, you can revisit our feature from June 2016, when they were first selected to be our AOTM eight years ago.)

Depending on how you reckon it, you could say The Avett Brothers’ career goes back about two-dozen years – or Scott and Seth Avett’s entire lives. Even if you know nothing at all about them, all it takes is a few seconds of hearing them singing together to realize that they really are brothers.

Elder brother Scott’s voice is usually earthy and down below to Seth’s angelic up above. They meet in the middle to harmonize on songs about a series of quests – for love, redemption, family, pretty girls from far-away places, or just to be seen. Small wonder that one of their latest undertakings is Swept Away, a musical inspired by the mythology of their musical world.

To celebrate our Artist of the Month, here are a dozen songs about The Avett Brothers’ remarkable journey.

“Pretty Girl From Matthews” (2002)

Pretty girls are, of course, a perennial songwriting topic for the Avetts – most of them identified simply as “Pretty Girl From.” It’s taken them far and wide, from Michigan to Chile, Annapolis, San Diego, Cedar Lane, Raleigh, Feltre, Locust and even “at the Airport.” But here is the earliest example in all the Avetts’ early, detuned glory, from a town southeast of Charlotte. Originally titled “Song For Robin,” “Pretty Girl From Matthews” was the opening track on 2002’s Country Was.

“Talk on Indolence” (2006)

Folksy Americana trappings aside, Seth and Scott started out playing in bands that did a lot more screaming and thrashing than crooning and strumming. And even as their music has grown more polished and stately over time, their raw streak still comes out regularly. This breathlessly paced head-banging rant, which kicked off 2006’s Four Thieves Gone: The Robbinsville Sessions at an amphetamine pace, is one they still play at most shows.

“Distraction #74” (2006)

Another Four Thieves Gone recurrent, “Distraction #74” evokes British seafaring vibes seemingly tailor-made for raucous pub sing-alongs. And it has a perfect Avett Brothers lyrical theme: Torn between two lovers, the protagonist mostly wonders which of them he’s going to miss the most. The only certainty is that he’ll blow it with both of them.

“Die Die Die” (2007)

In which the Avetts don’t just make a simple pop move, but pull off what might be the least-likely Beatles rip ever. “Die Die Die” opened 2007’s Emotionalism, their first album to crack the Billboard 200 and a showcase for new cellist Joe Kwon. Among the Fab Four echoes here are Beatle-esque vocal harmonies and a guitar solo that’s pure George Harrison. Onstage, they’ll sometimes make it even more overt by closing with flourishes from “I Want to Hold Your Hand.”

“Paranoia in Bb Major” (2007)

Nothing fancy, just a little banjo and glockenspiel number from Emotionalism that perfectly captures the Avetts’ manic whisper-to-a-scream mood swings. Then it closes with one of their quirkiest recorded moments, wordless falsetto chanting that is somehow adorable.

“Murder in the City” (2008)

From 2008’s The Second Gleam, “Murder in the City” came out right when this cult act was about to go mainstream. It feels like one last look back before stepping into the spotlight, a series of epigrams about love, jealousy, family and forgiveness.

“Murder in the City” remains one of the Avetts’ regular live set-pieces, with lyrics that have evolved to reflect the brothers’ evolution from children to parents themselves. It’s a cinch they’ll still be playing and updating it someday when they’re grandparents, too.

“Head Full of Doubt/Road Full of Promise” (2009)

Fittingly, “Head Full of Doubt/Road Full of Promise” was the song the Avetts played during their star turn with Mumford & Sons behind Bob Dylan at the 2011 Grammy Awards. “Decide what to be and go be it” might be their most durable manifesto, which is a big reason it remains their most-performed song live. According to Avett Brothers super-fan Tim Mossberger’s database, it’s closing in on 1,000 live performances. And it still kills. All it takes is hearing Kwon’s cello riff to bring on chills.

“Laundry Room” (2009)

Like “Head Full of Doubt,” “Laundry Room” is drawn from the Avetts’ 2009 big-league debut, the Rick Rubin-produced I and Love and You – their first gold record. It’s a beautifully poignant portrait of stolen-moment love that may or may not be doomed.

“Tonight I’ll burn the lyrics/ ’Cause every chorus was your name,” Scott sighs, contemplating a “head-full of songs” he dreamed up overnight. The double-time hoedown outro plays like a bittersweet wake. “Laundry Room” ranks second on Mossberger’s live-performance database.

“Live and Die” (2012)

From 2012’s The Carpenter, the Avetts’ first to crack Billboard’s Top 10, “Live and Die” is just about the poppiest they’ve ever sounded – even with banjo as lead instrument. In contrast to the Avetts’ usual outlook, it is surprisingly optimistic, which made it the perfect upbeat closing-credits accompaniment for director Jud Apatow’s romantic comedy, This Is 40.

“Satan Pulls the Strings” (2014)

The studio version of “Satan Pulls the Strings” appeared on 2016’s True Sadness, but this one was around for years before that. In fact, its best incarnation is as entrance music for the live show. Among my favorite in-concert memories of the Avetts was watching the entire seven-piece band enter the stage one by one and start in on this song on New Year’s Eve 2014 in Raleigh, North Carolina. That performance appears on 2015’s Live Vol. Four.

“No Hard Feelings” (2016)

In recent years, “No Hard Feelings” has been the Avetts’ customary show-closer, ending each night on a prayerful, elegiac note. As depicted in the 2017 biopic May It Last: A Portrait of the Avett Brothers (overseen by Apatow and Michael Bonfiglio), recording it for 2016’s True Sadness LP was an overwhelmingly emotional experience. It triggered a meltdown by Scott immediately afterward, a sequence that proved to be the film’s most memorable moment.

“Operator (That’s Not the Way It Feels)” (2022)

On-record as well as onstage, the Avetts have always had splendid taste in covers, dipping into the songbooks of Townes Van Zandt, John Prine, Bob Wills and many others. There’s also “Operator (That’s Not the Way It Feels),” a 1972 Top-40 classic by the late great folk-rocker Jim Croce. Seth started doing a stripped-down acoustic version of “Operator” with bassist Bob Crawford back in 2012, and it’s one they still dust off regularly 12 years later.

Read more about the Avett Brothers’ eleventh and self-titled album here.

David Menconi’s latest book, Oh, Didn’t They Ramble: Rounder Records and the Transformation of American Roots Music, was published in 2023 by University of North Carolina Press.

David would like to thank Tim Mossberger for assistance with facts and figures.

Photo Credit: Crackerfarm

LISTEN: Seth Avett, “Good Morning Coffee” (Greg Brown Cover)

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Seth Avett
Hometown: Concord, North Carolina
Song: “Good Morning Coffee”
Album: Seth Avett Sings Greg Brown
Release Date: November 4, 2022
Label: Ramseur Records

In Their Words: “When I heard Greg Brown’s music, it opened the door to a world of songwriting inspiration. And since then, I’ve been connecting to the arc of a man’s life and his story. It’s laid bare the simultaneous nature of the entire human experience in a way. When I was younger, I felt like he was walking me through a lot of these more grown-up experiences with such a friendly hand. This is a man who put forty records out because he had to. He made his own record label. He played the coffee shops, the bars, the little theaters. He built it. He’s a world-class artist who did it all under the radar, which is just mind-blowing to me.

“He has such a unique, incredible kind of sage-like energy. The most confusing thing to me now is how in the world he made so many records, because as I know him, as a man in his seventies, the day is coming to him. He doesn’t seem to be chasing anything, and the idea of ambition is just hilarious, when coupled with his spirit and personality. I see him as a master songwriter. I don’t think all of this work is indicative of his narrative. There is an autobiography through his forty records, but he is speaking for us. Like all the great authors and poets speak for us. He is in those records fully, but there’s a lot more in them than just him.” — Seth Avett

The Avett Brothers: Three Perspectives on ‘The Third Gleam’

Posted on by Editor

Back in March, the Avett Brothers — Scott and Seth Avett, along with bassist Bob Crawford — were scheduled to leave their homes in North Carolina and head out West, where their longtime producer, Rick Rubin, was waiting at his studio in Malibu. They were in a prolific place at the top of the year, and eager to keep up the momentum. They had just released Closer Than Together, their tenth studio album, in October 2019, and had written and recorded The Third Gleam, the latest chapter in a series of acoustic EPs. They had also written a ton of new material — enough for another album, by Scott’s estimation — and were all set to move forward with it when the coronavirus hit. Everything, including their flights to California, ground to a halt.

The only thing that’s gone according to plan for the Avetts in 2020 is The Third Gleam, and it’s weirdly fitting — fateful, even — that it’s a homecoming in many ways. The eight-song EP was ushered into a tumultuous time they never saw coming, one that’s forcing everyone to stay put, slow down, and count their blessings more fervently than usual. It’s a return to the sparse acoustic arrangements that the Avetts perfected in their early releases before they teamed up with Rubin in 2009 for their mainstream breakthrough, I And Love And You, which brought them into the rock arena.

The Second Gleam came out in 2008 just before I And Love And You changed their lives and their sound, and though they’ve never strayed from their bluegrass and folk framework, they haven’t returned to the simplicity of Scott and Seth working through ideas with only their guitars and each other for company to this degree in over a decade. (Crawford does join them on The Third Gleam; he wasn’t brought in for the first two.)

The Third Gleam was written long before the world abruptly changed, but it touches on themes that bubbled up from the tension and strife that’s shaped recent moments of violence, unrest, uncertainty, despair, and the embers of resilience, hope, and the pursuit of social justice that smolder in spite of all of the above. Gun violence (“I Should’ve Spent the Day With My Family”), facing the unknown with grace (“Victory”), considering mortality (“Prison to Heaven”), and the deep joys and struggles of the human condition (“The Fire”) are all explored here, in soft tones, plaintive strumming, and the meditative plucking of Scott’s banjo.

Each song is striking in its approachable yet profound sincerity, and this less-is-more approach is one they found to be particularly effective in this fractured time. These issues were on their minds before the coronavirus upended life as we know it, but the Avett Brothers find themselves finding new meaning on The Third Gleam back where they started: at home, in North Carolina, trying to make sense of the world with little more than two voices and two guitars in sharp relief. For Scott, it’s simple: “The smallness of the Gleam — that’s where its power is.”

BGS: When I think of the first two Gleams, some of the saddest songs you’ve ever written come to mind, like “If It’s the Beaches,” but also gems that became fan favorites, like “Murder in the City.” How do The Gleam, the Second Gleam and The Third Gleam stand out to you? What sets them apart from the rest of your work?

Scott Avett: If there was a heart or soul or spirit to everything we do, [The Gleams] orbit a bit closer to that. If there’s layers to an entity or a life, this is kind of at the pure center of it. I’m coming up with this theory for some reason right now with you. [Laughs] At the root of the songs, a lot of the songs on other releases, we have wrung them out — put them literally through the wringer — to see what they want to become, what they can become, what we’re trying to hear and get out of them. Are we challenging them or going too far with them? With these, we don’t ever take that journey. It’s much earlier in the inception of the life of the song that we stop meddling with them. There’s a little more to just be with them, which is at the root of things.

Seth Avett: The series itself sort of represents a simplification across many aspects of this whole thing. It represents the clearing out of many great things, many great tools, and many great advantages we have with our band and our resources, and our possibilities. It simplifies the process of collaboration, the process of artwork. It simplifies recording, mixing, mastering and everything else. Across the board, it’s just a process of simplification and reduction, to where the only real star is the lyrics. I think that we’re still attempting to make something that’s engaging, musically, but it’s no secret: what we put our time into is storytelling, writing words and then sharing them onstage. It’s always at the heart of our songs, and so the Gleam is presenting only the heart rather than the entire body in a way.

Bob Crawford: They’re Scott and Seth’s sketchbooks, really. If you knew these guys as well as I do — and I know a lot of people know them very well, because they put it all out there and they always have — but if you love a great painter’s paintings, and you become a connoisseur of that painter’s paintings, their sketchbooks are widely available nowadays, be it Rembrandt or Leonardo da Vinci. That’s how I look at the Gleams, stitched in with the fabric of all our work: they’re basically more broken down, raw thoughts that they guys have. They’ve always wanted these things to be quieter and less. This is the first one, I think, I’ve played on; normally it’s just Scott and Seth doing these. It’s just a chance for them to get quiet, be alone, and be brothers.

You’ve been very busy between Gleams. How has it been to return to this acoustic space after playing arena-ready roots-rock on Closer Than Together? 

Seth Avett: What it does for me, personally, is it takes a new inventory of our trust, of our brotherhood — my trust for Scott and his trust for me — with no other real considerations. It’s wonderful to be reminded in such a genuine way, with such gravity, that we still trust each other completely, and we’re not moving forward based only on the efforts of others. We still have each other’s trust and care, and we still hold those things in the highest regard. It’s a funny thing: on the first two Gleams and on this one, when we go into the process of finding out what the songs are going to be, and we present them to each other, there’s very little discussion.

All these full-length records, whether one person wrote the whole song technically or not, the other one will have a certain amount of contribution to it. There’s a lot of weighing: “What does it mean?” “Can it be said better?” “Is this too much, is this too little?” We do consider them in a big way, and we consider the songs on the Gleams in a big way as well — but we hardly talk about it. It’s like, “Hey, here’s four songs that are feeling really good to me and things I want to say,” and the other brother says the same, and that’s it. We just do it. It’s cool.

Bob Crawford: These Gleams give them an opportunity to come together and work together a little more than they have in recent years. We’re coming full-circle because of the pandemic. Since the pandemic, they’ve been living very close together and spending more time together. They were always close as brothers and best friends, but closer, approximately, so they could get together. We were actually about to go to Malibu to record the week the pandemic hit, the week of the shutdown. Ultimately, we tried to do it all these different ways; it just didn’t work out, so it turned into them recording demos themselves, sending me the demos, and me recording the bass and sending them back.

Did any of these new songs pose a new challenge you hadn’t confronted in your songwriting before? 

Scott Avett: What’s different about mine — and this is a change for Seth and I — we sort of switched places. Several years ago, I probably would’ve been the one that tended to be more rapid-fire, more erratic. I just chop it up with a lot of syllables and a lot of words. On this one, we switched. We were laughing about it. Seth’s songs have a lot of words and tell stories, they’re narrative, and then mine are very much personal and have a lot less words and a lot more space.

I always look at it that there’s only one character on the record, there’s one character in the story, and the two of us kind of make that character. We would do very different things on our own, probably. There’s a contrast to it, a gemini sort of approach to it I guess. [“I Should Have Spent the Day With My Family”] is a good example of what’s changed for us. It’s minor and subtle to anybody else, but it’s a change for us.

Seth Avett: If you look at The Third Gleam, it’s impossible not to compare and contrast between me and Scott — I know it is, I’m sure all of our fans do it — where the differences between the Seth and Scott songs have never been more laid bare, in terms of the difference of the vibe. Scott’s songs, they just have so much space and breadth in them. I don’t look at “Family” or “Fire” as songs that have a ton of breadth in them; they feel a bit more urgent.

The narratives have a bit more of an agenda. Whereas, “I Go to My Heart,” “Victory,” “Back into the Light,” they have quite a lot of breadth and space, and so I’m seeing a change in him. If we are writing the songs we’re meant to write, and we are giving reverence to our form, then the changes in us are the changes in the song. If you ask, “How have I seen his writing change?” I’m thinking about how he is growing and changing, as a man, as a father, as a brother. It’s all kind of wrapped in one.

The role of advocacy and activism in music has changed, even since you released Closer Than Together, and “Family” is a turning point for you especially, Seth. You mention your wife and child by name in a song about gun violence, and you’ve never done that before. How has it been to anchor the Gleam in this moment in that regard?

Seth Avett: I can’t say that there was a point where I said, “Okay, now I’m going to open the door and start writing these types of songs.” This sort of happened incrementally. A song like “Bang Bang,” there were multiple moments where I’d go to a hotel room, and I’d turn on the television, and it’s just one [show] after the next, from ridiculous garbage to the most eloquent sci-fi — but it’s always the leading man with the gun. It’s always presented with such power, and it’s just ridiculous. The idea of holding a gun to make someone powerful is absurd; it’s preposterous.

I had many moments like that, and then there were many shootings. “I Should Have Spent the Day with My Family” is an obvious, super-literal reaction; “We Americans,” that’s the first four years of a person’s life growing up as an American. I don’t know that there’s one moment where I gave myself permission, but there have been many moments that I consider wholly unavoidable in terms of taking that into the songwriting.

This has been a tumultuous time, so I was curious if you think there’s a connection between that and going back to the foundation with an acoustic EP. Do you find that it was an organic thing to take a step back and retract to that nucleus and get to the root of all things Avett with The Third Gleam, considering everything going on?

Bob Crawford: It’s definitely a time of reflection, and it does make you appreciate all we’ve done, because you don’t know when and how we’re going to do it again. … For me, “Victory” is the greatest song they ever wrote. We only win when we submit; we only find peace when we let go. How do we hold it all together in our hearts at the same time? How do we not lose our minds at that? How do we find true peace inside while there’s chaos flowing back and forth? I think, hopefully, the Avett Brothers can be part of the center of that. If you are the center of that, you’re not polarizing. You can’t alienate anybody. No matter what you know they believe, face to face is how we live the gospel, how we can make real change.

Photo credit: Crackerfarm

Asleep at the Wheel Navigate ‘New Routes’

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For nearly 50 years, Asleep at the Wheel have been anything but that. Since the Western swing outfit formed in 1970, members have come and gone, but bandleader Ray Benson — he of the towering 6’7” frame — has remained the one constant. The Texas institution now boasts musicians from Wisconsin, Washington, and beyond, with influences that inform an ever-widening soundscape. As Benson writes in the prologue to his 2015 book with Dave Menconi, Comin’ Right At Ya: “I’ve always played retro music that’s out of step with the mainstream, but that hasn’t kept me from being ahead of the curve on a lot of things.”

Asleep at the Wheel’s newest album, New Routes, touches on Cajun swamp, Irish traditional music, gypsy folk, and more. Although the band has released multiple tributes to Western Swing star Bob Wills, their new project closes with “Willie Got There First,” a clever tribute to Benson’s longtime friend, Willie Nelson. Written by Seth Avett and recorded with Scott and Seth Avett, the song claims that Nelson has already written and sung practically every feeling that needs to be written and sung.

That may be true, yet one of the band’s sultry new numbers, “Call It a Day Tonight,” marks the first time Benson has written with a member of Asleep at the Wheel since the 1980s. In this case, it’s Katie Shore, an accomplished singer and fiddler who joined Benson for a chat with the Bluegrass Situation.

What was the collaborative process like for “Call It a Day Tonight”?

Ray Benson: It was the first time I had ever co-written with somebody and could use texting and mobile phone.

That would make such a difference.

Benson: Yeah, you didn’t have to be in the same room, or make a tape and send it in the mail.

Katie Shore: For me, one thing that’s hard about writing with someone is I still have to go be alone with it. I think that Ray’s kind of similar. We had time to be apart and we ended up sending ideas back and forth, so the song wrote itself. We were really on the same page. … That’s the thing about this record—it was everybody bringing a piece of yourself and an idea. We recorded close to 30 songs at the end of it, and then had to whittle it down.

Benson: We haven’t been able to do anything more because we’re working: Getting up every day, getting on the bus. It’s been a month-and-a-half tour and a month before that.

That kind of daily grind, for anyone who’s creative, can take that impulse or spark out of the desire to write.

Shore: We spend a lot of time cruising down the road and I’m always trying to write little ideas or jot things down. But we don’t really have any space to get any instruments out, which all of us that write in the band kind of need.

Benson: But then again I wrote a melody today. I was waiting for our hotel room, and it’s like, “Ok, file that away.”

I know that it’s possible to write on the road, but I think there’s a certain kind of mental space you lack too when you’re on a bus.

Benson: Oh yeah. Just energy too. All you want to do is get a little bit of rest, shower, get your clothes on, get something to eat, and then go do the show. [“Call It a Day,”] it’s a good one though.

It is a good one, and I was also dumbstruck by the rhythm and feel you’ve got on “Pass the Bottle Around.” That deep, gritty sound.

Benson: I spent a lot of time in the Cajun world back in the ‘70s. I had this idea — I was listening to Blind Willie Johnson — and I started singing. Suddenly, I realized I had taken inspiration from him. You know, I wrote that for Emily Gimble, who’s Johnny Gimble’s granddaughter. She sang with us for a while. I had this idea for her, then I realized it’s for me. I remember when I brought it to the band, they said, “We’ll put saxophones on it.” I said, “No, no, no, this is swampy.”

It reminded me of Tony Joe White, but I love how you’re taking it in this whole contemporary direction.

Benson: Tony Joe came and played with us on my birthday last year. That’s as high a compliment as you could’ve paid me. I love Tony Joe. He’s the funkiest white man I ever met.

That’s the truth! The album’s title, New Routes, seems to juxtapose the ending song with its suggestion that everything’s been written — at least by Willie Nelson. Do you think there are still new avenues to explore?

Benson: Oh yeah. I started Asleep at the Wheel 48 years ago, and it’s always been a collective. The direction of Asleep at the Wheel is the direction that the personnel are capable of doing. This bunch really have a creative energy that’s going to create a whole lot of cool stuff with the Western swing mode, the gypsy swing mode, rockabilly. That’s what Asleep of the Wheel has always been about—that wide range of Americana music.

What do you look for in terms of your collaborators?

Benson: What we have, which is great talent and contribution. We might be the primary writers, me and Katie, but the other guys write too. Even if they don’t write, the arrangements they do…

Shore: Everybody is such a serious musician in this band. I think that is what’s kept Asleep at the Wheel going for 50 years—a lot of great players have come in and out of this band. What’s cool is a lot of us have been friends for a long time, even some of the younger folks in the band. Everybody comes from a different influence, and yet we all grew up loving the same stuff. It’s cool to see Western swing evolve. Ray hires people for what they can do, and everybody’s really different. We’re kind of a hodgepodge.

Benson: It’s a tapestry, not a hodgepodge. [Laughs]

You said you started off with 30 songs for this album. What was the recording process like?

Benson: Some of them are half-finished and sitting in the can at the studio. I know we’ll use some of them because it was hard to whittle it down to the 10 or so. Then with the Avett Brothers, Seth sent me that song [“Willie Got There First”], and I said to him, “Hey guy, we oughta do this sometime.” He and Scott got together and said, “Alright, we’re going to come down and do it with y’all.”

It is really magic and then to get Bobbie, who is Willie’s sister, and Mickey Raphael, who I’ve known before he joined Willie Nelson. I hadn’t recorded with Mickey since 1974 and it was really neat to have this homage to Willie, and of course Willie being the funny sonabitch that he is, I sent him the song before I recorded it and I said, “What do you think about it?” and he said, “It’s so hard to be humble.” He’s so funny. He’s still got that great quick wit.

I know you have a long history with Willie, but what brought about this tribute? Seth really just came to you with a song?

Benson: I had met them a number of years ago and we were kindred spirits in our love of roots music, so we became friends. [Seth] had read my book with Dave Menconi and we started texting back and forth. He sent me that song because it’s very sweet of him to do that; he knows my relationship with Willie.

In fact, that’s how they met. The Avett Brothers were coming through town and I was putting together that show with George Strait and everybody [an all-star fundraising concert for Texas wildfire relief in 2011]. I said, “Hey, you’re coming through town anyway. You can come up and sing ‘Will the Circle Be Unbroken’ with Willie and us. We became friends. It’s the same thing as the people who drew their inspiration from roots music but create their own modern music.

And they came down to Austin to record the song?

Benson: Yeah, we booked a show with the Avetts and Asleep at the Wheel. That’s how we made it possible for them to come down. They were very generous, and they happened to be coming through Texas in that time period, and it all worked out. As my friend Big Boy Medlin says, “Everything works if you let it.” You have to trust the cosmos is going to come your way when it’s supposed to.

I love that it’s a family reunion in a few different ways.

Benson: Yeah, that’s funny because we cut the track and we were done, and I said, “Seth, I’m going to try and get Bobbie and Mickey to do this.” He said, “Let’s do it. That makes this history as opposed to just another song.” I’m usually against those kinds of songs that mention the name of the song and get so corny, but to me it was poetry. You’ve got poetry, let’s go with it.

Photo credit (live shot): Patrick Carnahan
Photo credit (posed shot): Asleep at the Wheel

Avett Brothers Film Captures the Power of Character

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One of the many moments that jumps right off the screen during May It Last: A Portrait of the Avett Brothers comes toward the beginning of the nearly two-hour documentary. During an on-screen interview, founding member and one-half of the band’s namesake, Seth Avett, recalls meeting Doc Watson. Seth explains that, up until that time, he operated under the impression that, as a musician, power came from volume. But Doc, he says, taught him that power comes from character.

That lesson resulted in a paradigm shift for Seth, whose brother, Scott Avett, was about to encounter his own musical turning point in the form of bluegrass. It was an unlikely genre for the brothers to gain their footing. Growing up on a farm in Concord, North Carolina, they spent their adolescence rebelling against any semblance of the rural culture reflected around them. Amidst a landscape of NASCAR races and country music, the duo wore flannels and combat boots, idolized Nirvana, and started a heavy-rock band called Nemo.

“I was gone to art school when Seth was young and still around in Concord and able to visit with Doc, so the personal connection there was different for me. I had not found my voice with an instrument yet. I was used to being in bands where we would sit and we would just play and just jam loud riffs, and I would just write lyrics, so I was always just all about the show, the lyrics, the poetry of it, the art of it,” Scott says. “But when I picked up the banjo out of an attempt at irony — because I didn’t know people who played the banjo — when I picked it up, I instantly connected with it: the harshness of it, also the sweetness of it … the dichotomy of that.”

Scott had dreams of fame, even when he was a little kid. In May It Last, he talks about how he used to imagine that a camera crew from Hollywood would happen to discover him while walking through the woods where he was playing.

“That’s in the value of growing up in a small place, where the views of, let’s just say New York City or Los Angeles, through this window of TV in the ’80s, you saw neighborhoods and landscapes and places that you thought, ‘Well where is that happening?’ ‘What is that?’ and, ‘How does that happen?’ You romanticize about it,” Scott says. “Just being from a small place, the value of that is so huge to develop the reach that we all aspire to, and I try to maintain that to keep the romantic view of the Big Apple. I’m not looking to crack that and ruin that.”

He says his parents encouraged his dreams, instilling a belief and drive in him and his brother from an early age. “There’s a form of being privileged that we experienced that has nothing to do with money or economic status. Our parents, they raised us in such a privileged way, and we were privileged in the sense that they surrounded us with encouragement and love and motivation for imagination,” he notes. “Our upbringing is just a massive part of the whole story.”

After picking up the banjo, Scott began incorporating tunes by Ramblin’ Jack Elliott and Old and In the Way into the band’s live set, while never losing sight of the Avett Brothers’ signature energy and vocal delivery. The result was a fusion of punk’s grit and folk’s heart, which yielded an undeniable sound that was distinctly Avett.

They met Bob Crawford through a friend and invited him to join the band on the stand-up bass. Cellist Joe Kwon officially came on board a few years later with the recommendation of Crawford, solidifying the Avett Brothers’ core lineup. From the family farm in North Carolina to the stage of Madison Square Garden, May It Last chronicles Scott and Seth’s journey by combining home movies, curated performances found on YouTube, on-screen interviews, and footage filmed over a period of more than two years in which the band recorded 2016’s True Sadness, their ninth studio album and fourth consecutive full-length with producer Rick Rubin.

But May It Last goes beyond the confines of a traditional music documentary thanks to co-directors Michael Bonfiglio and Judd Apatow (who used the Avett Brothers’ “Live and Die” in the credits of his comedy This Is 40).

“The thing that we knew from the beginning was that we wanted to make something that was real, that wasn’t a promotional piece for a band, that wasn’t just a behind-the-scenes of making an album,” Bonfiglio explains. “If we’re following the making of an album, at least to start, we know there’s a beginning, middle, and end to that process … But we knew that we didn’t want to make something just for the fans. We knew that we didn’t want to make something just for people who are really into music documentaries. Judd and I are both kind of nerdy about that; either of us would totally watch a movie that’s nothing but the creative process, but we wanted to make something that kind of transcended that, that somebody who had never heard of this band could find things to relate to and could enjoy as a moving experience.”

May It Last is as much a documentation of the creative process as it is a study of the human condition. What Scott and Seth lack in commonalities, they make up for in brotherly love. “We were terrified a lot of the time because there’s no conflict. What makes things interesting and compelling is seeing strong personalities not getting along and being able to make something — and this is totally the opposite,” Bonfiglio says.

“There were so many times when we would be like, ‘Is anybody going to watch this?’ And obviously, as we continued to work, what we found is what was so exciting and fresh and different and beautiful about it was how well they do get along and how they respect each other and take care of one another as human beings, as well as artists, and that’s what our movie was about — in addition to the fact that we spent so much time with these guys that, throughout that time, life was happening. They were changing as people. Things were happening in their lives, and we were able to kind of document that and watch that unfold. It’s a movie about people and relationships.”

The pains and triumphs that arose for the Avett Brothers throughout the filming of May It Last weren’t byproducts of being Grammy-nominated musicians on the road. Instead, they were universal: heartache, loss, joy, success. The film’s most tender moments surround Seth’s divorce, the birth of Scott and Seth’s children, and the wake of Crawford’s daughter undergoing surgery to remove a brain tumor.

A through-line throughout the documentary revolves around the family you’re born into and the family you make. There’s a distinct, palpable bond between Scott and Seth, but the genuine, strong ties between all of the band members can’t be ignored. Scott says the band’s closeness didn’t happen by design.

Michael Bonfiglio and Judd Apatow

“This can never be constructed intentionally, ever; it never could have been. We can’t take any credit for that. The only thing that we can identify as reason for this happening is that we try to be truthful and sincere about how we include people,” he explains. “Everyone that’s in our band, we worked together before we ever got on stage together, so it was never a hired first situation. It was really a friend first thing … For this band, we’re just lucky that we let it grow and, at this point, now that Paul [Defiglia] has left, let it contract naturally and not just fill spaces with someone else. We are what we are, and we grow and contract as we should and try to follow nature. The family love is there because it’s grown naturally and at a realistic pace.”

In May It Last, the band extends that same care to viewers, inviting them into their world as one of their own by offering an intimate look at some of their most vulnerable moments. One such moment occurs in the latter half of the film. After recording the gut-wrenching “No Hard Feelings” in the studio, Scott and Seth take a breather outside after Rubin and company congratulate them on the song. From behind the camera, Bonfiglio asks the duo to discuss what’s running through their minds. In an emotional and creative haze, they lay out the difficulty they have receiving praise for songs that stem from the most dark, tragic experiences of their own lives.

“That moment, after we shot it and by the time we got to the edit room, it was pretty clear that that would be the emotional climax of the movie. It was the most visceral, raw scene that we had captured and it spoke so directly to who these guys are as artists and what they do and their relationship with that and how they reconcile their lives,” Bonfiglio says. “That song is an incredibly personal song that you see what went into it in the performance of it and their reaction after and you hear it in the lyrics. It was probably one of the first scenes we worked on and one of the last scenes we worked on, in terms of just trying to get every single moment of it right. There’s not a whole lot of cuts in it, but we just really worked on it a lot, in terms of what came right before it and what comes after it.”

Completely funded by Apatow without a studio backing, May It Last premiered at this year’s SXSW and made its public debut during a one-night only screening last month. Encore showings have been scheduled through November, and HBO has picked up the U.S. television rights with an air date of early 2018. With the Avett Brothers’ down-to-earth nature and endearing honesty, viewers will carry the meaning behind May It Last with them long after the credits fade to black.

“You’ve got to throw yourself out there. That’s really what being an artist is about — exploiting your weaknesses,” Scott says. “I really believe that in myself, that I have to expose and exploit those weaknesses to relate to other people.”

The Avett Brothers: A Truth That Soars Above the Bickering

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True Sadness is an album about duality. It would have to be, really, for the boys behind the big-smiled, unbridled, foot-stomping joy on-stage at an Avett Brothers show to be naming a record something that sounds like such a drag. From lyrical jabs at the aging process to a well-rounded foray into new instrumentation, the Avett Brothers' effort catapults the listener and its authors into a sort of maturity where sadness isn’t a monumental event, but rather an underlying part of everyday life.

“It’s not necessarily this ongoing bummer,” Seth Avett says. “True sadness isn’t about becoming this dark thing, where you’re just giving up and realizing, ‘You know what? Screw it. Everything sucks.’ It’s more about just sort of accepting, as Bob [Crawford], our bass player, has very eloquently put it many times, that the human heart is fully capable of experiencing great joy and great sadness simultaneously.”

For True Sadness, the band’s fourth consecutive full-length working with producer Rick Rubin, every song began with a bare-bones recording using only the core trio of Seth, Scott Avett, and Crawford. Then, the songs were recorded with the full seven-piece band all live in the same room — a studio setup they hadn’t pursued since 2007’s breakout record, Emotionalism. They didn’t stop there: With Rubin’s assistance, a third step brought the final tracks well outside of their boundaries, instrumentally.

“We worked with another engineer who took the raw tracks and sort of re-imagined them with all these different samples and synths — just all these crazy sounds,” says Seth. Then they re-performed every song with the added depth of the tape sounds and synths, with certain tracks maintaining more of the new territory than others.

“What we ended up with was about four versions of every song,” Seth offers. “’You Are Mine’ ended up being one of those that was in, like, that third stage … third or fourth stage … it’s kind of everything mixed up in one.”

While this experimental, synth-stained streak reveals itself most clearly on tracks like “You Are Mine” and “Satan Pulls the Strings,” the energy behind the songs is unmistakably created by the same band that came up screaming and stomping their way through Southern stages.

“The simple answer here is that we do our best to just follow the song. Whichever way the song is represented best, that’s the way we leave it. We try not to get too caught up in how we’re perceived,” Seth says. “Like, ‘Well, we’re an American Roots band or and Americana band, so every song has to have only acoustic instruments’ and all that. We’ve never really felt any kind of allegiance toward that. [If] one song was kind of an oddball, [it’s because] it felt right like that.”

While the band is tapping into new sounds for True Sadness, they continue to thrive thematically with material that can be continuously re-interpreted by the listener: On standout track “Smithsonian,” the narrator rails through universal truths about aging like they’re breaking news. The song zeroes in on the strange quality of certain lessons or life changes that you have to experience yourself to truly understand, keeping pace with the album’s overall perspective.

“It’s a lot about resolve,” says Seth. “Just coming to a resolution about breaking down, and how that is completely, 100 percent natural — 100 percent normal — and it’s all good. It’s fine!”

A scroll back through the Avetts’ catalog almost feels prescient. Lyrics like the forlorn mention of elections on “Head Full of Doubt, Road Full of Promise” feel almost political today, where they may have once felt coming-of-age. The Avetts’ songs evolve with the listener in a way that’s given them a timeless quality, and True Sadness expands upon that facet of their music admirably.

“The truth remains the truth,” Seth muses. You won’t hear the Avetts proselytizing about current events — despite the ongoing controversy in their home state of North Carolina — but that’s not to say there aren’t takeaways that feel bigger than heartbreak or personal strife. “If you have your heart in the right place and you’re making your comments about humanity from the right place,” he says, “I think that it soars above the bickering within the political landscape.”

Lead single “Ain’t No Man” makes a strong argument to that point:“Ain't no man or men that can change the shape my soul is in / There ain't nobody here who can cause me pain or raise my fear.” You can take it as a personal pick-me-up, a nod to religion, or a knowing wink at current events, but you certainly won’t come away from the song feeling weighed down.

“It’s meant to be self-motivating — a little bit of currency to buy yourself a little confidence when you’re not feeling so confident,” he says. “We don’t always wake up in the morning thinking, ‘All right! Now I’m gonna knock it out today. I’m going to be joyful and I’m gonna be confident, but I’m also gonna contribute!’ Some days, you’re stepping into ‘em feeling just like a wounded animal. It just takes everything you’ve got to act civilized, in a way. So I think the song is a little like just giving yourself a motivational speech, and just getting solid and getting centered and kind of squaring your shoulders up, picking your head up, and just getting into it.”

True Sadness was announced to the world in an open letter about the ways that the Avetts’ music has become intertwined with their real lives, pointing from the very beginning to the heightened thematic complexity in each number.

"It does occur to me now, that in some regard, before any professional success, we were perhaps paradoxically more self-aware. The songs would show mere versions of ourselves — the heartbroken introvert, the frantic worker, the forlorn traveler, the philosopher, the romantic, the loner — all somehow imbued with the meaningful sheepishness of a James Dean character. We used to hope and vie for that attention, that perceived personality, that coolness."

If their previous work was about compartmentalizing the parts of themselves that feel, True Sadness abandons the pursuit of cool in favor of a pursuit of the optimistic and honest. “You have to come to a place of resolution within the tragedies that are always happening,” says Seth. “You don’t ever get to a point in your life, regardless of how well things are going, where everything is good — where it’s all good. There’s always going to be a duality, and I think we are all more aware of it than ever.”

Leave it to the Avett Brothers to serve up True Sadness and leave us mostly with real, gritty, imperfect joy.

Lede illustration by Cat Ferraz.