Q&A: (Andew Bird)

Signer, songwriter and violinist Andrew Bird is a musician that some would say has nearly perfect pitch.

Bird, who lives in Chicago, completed his debut record entitled "Weather Systems" that the label Righteous Babe Records, founded by singer Ani DeFranco, released in June. He spent time away from the big city, recording the work in a remote valley in western Illinois out of a barn he converted into a studio located several hours away from the bustling urban center he considers home.

He returned from a tour, promoting his 2001 work "The Swimming Hour" with his band Bowl of Fire to work on "Weather Systems."

The album comprises seven lush and layered tracks, along with Bird's musical interpretation of poet Galway Kinnell's work "First Song." Some would say Bird's vocal tone is reminiscent to that of solo artist Jeff Buckley or Radiohead's frontman Thom Yorke, which isn't too far off the mark.

The Beach Reporter recently sat down with Bird, who will return to Los Angeles March 27 at Largo, and talked about his latest work.

The Beach Reporter: The song 'First Song' you're quoting a poem by Galway Kinnell and the tone of the music really augments the story told in the poem. Was it your intention to accent the already poignant words with sonic textures that essentially complement the poem's story?

Bird: Yeah, I discovered that poem when I was 18 or 19 and I had been shuffling the words around for years trying to find the right phrasing. I knew it should be very simple but I never really made any conscious decisions about what should be on it. I always knew it should just be a guitar and vocals. I must have made 50 attempts just to get the right feel. When songs are that simple, there's really nothing to hide behind. No fancy arrangements, it's just got to be musical and so that was one of the hardest songs to record.

What about this poem did you like in particular?

I like the sound of the words. The imagery is beautiful but it was mainly the sound of the poem. His early poems have a real nice round sound to them and it kind of became a standard for my own writing. I'm not very deliberate about it. I'll get a melody in my head and then create those full sounds I need to keep that melody. Then subconsciously words begin to appear and it becomes more conscious as I work on it. For me, it has to have a nice tone so I rarely sacrifice or compromise the melody or the sound for a choice of words. Anything I need to say can't be that important. The main theme of "Weather Systems" is not so much about loneliness but more about trying to quantify things. I've been kind of obsessed with that - trying to measure the immeasurable, gaseous states like clouds or concepts like musicality, what does that mean? You can't really put a finger on it.

Speaking of loneliness, the song 'Lull' seems to be a romantic view of what it feels like to spend time with yourself.

Yeah, it's someone trying to romanticize but also realizing how ridiculous they sound.

Did you experience situations spending time with yourself that kind of inspired this idea of loneliness?
Before making this record I went out the country, fixed up and old barn, turned it into a studio and left Chicago to live in the country which was only 2-1/2 hours away. You definitely figure out what makes you happy at the end of the day because there are no distractions. Some people like to have the noise to remind themselves or the noise to not have to think about awful things. I got into a routine where I'd be out there for five to 10 days at a time, work on music for five or six hours, then go for a walk and then I'd go on tour. I just needed a change because it was starting to feel one-dimensional - touring and then coming back to a big city.

You have a great sense of pitch in your singing and whistling on the album. Because you play the violin, an instrument that kind of requires you to have a really good sense of pitch in order to play in tune, do you think that picking up and learning an instrument like the violin helped your singing?

I started doing more of the simultaneous singing and playing while doing solo shows. I guess I've been stretching my ears out for years. I think I went through a real intense period like when I was 18, 19 and 20. I learned by ear to begin with and I didn't start reading (music) until I was in high school and even then I wasn't a good reader so I would get around that by learning it by ear which went quicker for me. Now it's a bit of a curse sometimes because you can't let anything go, especially in the studio.

The song 'Skin' incorporates a wonderful balance of guitar distortions, violin and vocal lines. How structured are you with your arrangements?

Sometimes Kevin (O'Donnell, drummer) and I would do sound check and I would play some riff. We rarely jam, we are very much against jamming in theory but sometimes it's good. We just don't like to noodle too much, but sometimes at sound check you're just screwing around and I was playing this riff and Kevin would play along with me and then he'd stop and the riff would keep going. That's such a very satisfying effect that I don't have time to explore in most of my songs and "Skin" along with "I" are vignettes of full songs. It's got a lot of strong ideas that I wanted to further develop. Kevin and I have played for 10 years and he inhabits a realm that I don't: percussion. Everything else I have a pretty strong idea about - guitar, bass line, etc. - and there is a reason we've been playing together for so long.