Portland folkies Blind Pilot, who will perform Feb. 21 at Cat’s Cradle, are no strangers to the Triangle. Last fall, DUU Major Attractions brought the band to Page Auditorium for a show alongside Local Natives after the release of their stellar sophomore album We Are the Tide. In advance of the band’s return to the area, Recess enlisted Julia Hawkins, who booked the Page show as the chair of Major Attractions, to talk with frontman Israel Nebeker about doing shows in Singapore, playing the harmonium and the best way to do a cross-country tour.
Recess: My friend from the Chronicle asked me to interview you, but I have never done an interview before, so I’m going to be bad at this.
Israel Nebeker: That’s okay, I’m not very good at them either.
R: I thought you wouldn’t be. No offense, but you have a line in a song that goes “A hitchhiker once told me I don’t talk a lot/ Anyway, let’s begin.” You toured the West Coast on a bicycle behind your first album, and got the school bus [ed.’s note: The bus has a name. It’s “Carpinteria.”] for the tour this past fall. Do you think you’ll have a distinctive form of transportation for the next one, too ?
IN: We never meant for the bike tour to be a gimmick, but then we went ahead and got this bus, and now we are talking about maybe going across the country by train. Touring in a van is really hard. It’s really draining. It doesn’t seem like the best solution.
R: When Kati [Claborn] was walking around Duke, she carried a stack of books. Do you guys share book on the road?
IN: Luke [Ydstie] and Dave [Jorgensen] seem to share a bunch of sci-fi novels.
R: Sci-fi?
IN: Maybe that’s not what is. Maybe “fantasy”? Whatever it is, if they were here right now, they’d be like “No way, that’s not what it is!” I like having books around, though. Book shelves make the bus feel like a home.
R: You have a lot of instruments on stage on this tour, more than your previous tour. I wanted you to tell me about the one you play in the song “New York.”
IN: I play a harmonium on that song. It comes from French missionaries in India.
R: How did you learn to play?
IN: It’s pretty easy. If you can play a keyboard, you can play this; you just need to be able to work a pump.
R: You’ve been doing a lot of touring over the past year. What lies ahead?
IN: I am really excited to be doing things on our own schedule. On 3 Rounds and a Sound, our first album, we did a lot of touring. There was never a time or reason to stop. For almost two years, I was never home. So I moved out of my apartment in Portland. But now we have a two month planned break coming up, which is really nice.”
R: Nice. Where are you going to call home during those months?
IN: I don’t know. It made sense to go home to Portland. But we just got an offer to play in Singapore, and I have never been to that part of the world. One of the hardest parts of touring is never being alone. When you do get home on the short breaks, your family and your girlfriends—of course you can’t just say to them, “Sorry, I know haven’t seen you for like three months but I need some time alone.” So I started fantasizing about being in a totally different part of the world, and I think I’m going to take advantage of it during those months.
R: Any bands you really wanna see perform live?
IN: I’m not sure if they are touring on that album The Suburbs anymore, but I really want to see Arcade Fire. And you know its funny, I was really a little desperate to see a performance by this woman Martha Scanlan, who lives in Montana. Shes just this amazing songwriter and unbelievable singer. During this last tour, the one I met you on, I met someone who knew her and I asked for her e-mail address, and then it turned out that we ended up playing a couple of shows together. I was just beside myself.
R: I will check out her out.
IN: You should. She has this killer voice that just gets me. She did an album called West Was Burning, which I recommend, with all types of crazy good musicians.
R: What city are you in right now?
IN: Columbus, Ohio.
R: Are you going to watch the Super Bowl?
IN: I probably will. We are playing some shows with the Barr Brothers right now, and they’re gung-ho about watching it.
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