Listening to State Bird‘s songwriting duo Coby Hartzler and Jared Riblet talk about their respective styles in the studio is like listening to the Odd Couple’s Oscar and Felix talk about the ideal cleanliness of an apartment.
“Me and Coby are pretty different when it comes to recording,” says Riblet of the two’s collaborations. “A lot of times I’ll put down the first couple tracks and if it’s good to me it’s good. If Coby’s going to put something together he makes sure it’s perfect.”
“I don’t know, maybe I’m just really picky about stuff,” says Hartzler. “It actually [makes for] a nice balance because the times where I’m being to picky it’s nice to have Jared say, ‘That’s not such a big deal. Let’s just go on.’ The opposite works well too. Sometimes I think I’m able to push him a bit to work things over a little more.”
Says Riblet, “We both have different worlds, but they complement each other.”
It’s the joining of worlds that acts as the thematic centerpiece to State Bird’s most recent album, Mostly Ghostly. Swelling with story-based lyrics and an uncultivated mix of freak folk instrumentation-utilizing everything from accordions, banjos, trumpets, and tribal chants-this follow-up to the band’s 2006 debut, Marching Thru the Wilderness, pushes the group’s woodland-inspired antics into frontier territory.
With the help of supporting players Caleb Winn (bass), Matt Garver (percussion/brass), Nathan Quinn (drums), and any friend willing to clap along, Mostly Ghostly is an auditory tale of the last Pilgrim and Indian.
With a pervasive conceptual narrative-including a recurring character known as the Ghost King, State Bird’s album progresses through a number of unmistakable mini-movements that often alter a song’s entire tempo, arrangement, and overall perspective in mid-stream. From gypsy carousel sounds and revivalist gospel choruses to full-blown hoe-down romps, nothing ever stays the same for long. Says Hartzler, “It’s always been tricky explaining to someone what exactly we sound like.”
For Riblet it’s about creating a looseness that he and Hartzler didn’t think was fully realized with Walking Thru the Wilderness. “I have ADD pretty bad,” he says in an attempt to explain these frequent directional changes. “I tend to get bored when I listen to music and I typically want things to change really fast. It’s kind of all over the place, [but] we’re not necessarily trying to fit to something. It’s just what we feel at the moment.
“I want the music to sound real. [But at the same time] I think we try and aim it toward each song going together with the next one. I don’t want people to listen to something and not be able to grasp a hold of it.”
Set to hit the road in the coming months, the biggest challenge now will be converting the studio energy of more than a dozen people into a small quintet tour. “It’s easy to sit down with the album and like it,” says Riblet, “but if we tried to play it live, and calm it down, we would lose people’s interest. We want to try to keep things going.”
-Mike Hilleary