The Love Letter Band is Chris Adolf and friends.  Fear Not My Brothers, Fear Not My Sisters, For I Have Seen the Future… is their new album.  Folksters take note.  Invisible Limb got the special chance to talk to Adolf about the album and what he thinks it takes to keep it real, musically.

 Hey Chris. You’ve just released your new record Fear Not My Brothers on Happy Happy Birthday to Me Records. What are some of the changes you’ve made as a songwriter since your last full length Even Pretty Girls Take Medicine? How would you rate the response to the album so far?

Well it’s been a long time since the Even the Pretty Girls… era and I’m glad that has taken so long to make this new record. Right when I finished Even the Pretty Girls… I knew that I wanted the following record to be some futuristic shit, much better writing, more human, but I also knew that I wasn’t ready to make the record that I heard in my head until now. Even the Pretty Girls… was more about me learning how to write and learning how to use recording equipment. Now I know how. If I had made Fear Not… three years ago it wouldn’t have been as good. You see, I knew what I wanted Fear Not… to be, but I had to wait for myself to grow as a person before I could do it justice. I just had to sit it out and wait. I’m glad I didn’t rush it. I have learned that the best songs are the songs that write themselves. You can’t think too hard on them or they loose the heart and become more about the brain. The brain is for every day stuff like doing your taxes and hooking up your computer and stuff like that. I don’t want my songs to be from the brain I want them to be from somewhere else.

So far people have told me that they like my new record. People seem pretty excited about it. Perhaps they’re just being nice to me though I don’t know.

The line “Fear not my brothers, fear not my sisters, for I have seen the future and these dark clouds will part” is featured in the cd booklet and is shouted loudly on the record’s third track. Is this a theme you tried to weave across the entire album? What motivated you to write them into the record?

These are scary times. You know? It’s depressing to see what our country is doing to the rest of the world. I don’t even need to go into how fucked up things are. It’s enough to make anyone want to just give up. I wrote those lyrics when I was watching the 2004 American presidential elections. Watching those states turn different colors… what a dark night. I just wanted to write a hopeful sounding song even though things looked bleak. I don’t think that it’s a political record at all though. Asking your loved ones to not be afraid because better times are coming transcends politics.

You have a local show coming up with John Vanderslice, whose newest record Pixel Revolt was named as one of our top albums of 2005. Is this your first show with him? What have been some of your favorite artists to play with so far?

Yeah this will be the first time that I have played with him. To be honest, I don’t know very much about him. I have heard a song of his here and there and they sounded amazing. I’m looking forward to playing with him. He seems interesting.

My favorite people to play with are my friends. It’s special for me to get to watch people that I love grow as artists and music makers. I just got back from a tour with Jason Anderson (AKA Wolf Colonel) and it was humbling and inspiring to see how he has grown over the years. What he’s doing these days is seriously some futuristic shit. I have known him since his first tour as Wolf Colonel and it’s been fun watching him grow. I have a show with the Dirty Projectors coming up that I’m pretty fired up about. I put out Dave Longstreth’s first record and what he has become since then is just mind blowing. Dave is on some next level type of stuff.

“My Brave Friend” deals with the subject of passing on. Are there any topics you prefer writing about? What subjects do you tend to stay away from?

Well as I mentioned above I really don’t like to let my brain get in the way of the writing. I just let them write themselves so there is really nothing that is off limits for me. But yeah there are some things that seem to inspire me more than others; I think that I am most inspired by those weird things that people tend to talk about when they stay up too late talking. You know those conversations about things like spirituality or the subconscious that leave you feeling kind of cracked out? I think that I write about those feelings. Yeah death falls into that category but I don’t think that I write about it in a dark kind of way. I just think about the spiritual and supernatural side of it sometimes. I did die once. I was pronounced dead at the scene of a car crash but none of these songs are about that incident.

A lot of musicians admit that they don’t listen to much music. How would you describe your listening habits?

Yeah, for several reasons I’m kind of out of the loop as far as what’s hot. I’m too broke to go to concerts or go buying records all the time and I’m too dumb to know how to download music. If there is anything current that I listen to it’s usually at a friend’s house. If I like it I’m like, “Who’s this?” Either that or I listen to the music that’s made by my friends. Oh and these days I have mostly been listening to “the classics”; “the greats”. Led Zep, Hendrix, the Beatles, Bob Marley, Dylan, Motown… you know. I don’t like to be esoteric when I talk to people about music. But really there are no rules as to what I will or won’t listen to. That’s high school shit.

As an independent artist, how do you think digital technology affects the way people make music? Has it affected your approach?

I’ve been thinking about that lately. I saw this movie called In the Shadows of Motown about the studio musicians that recorded most of the early Motown hits. Those cats didn’t have multi track machines. And they sure didn’t have digital editing. They just set up microphones, rolled the (two track) tape and PLAYED MUSIC. Those are some of the greatest pop hits ever. With modern recording techniques are we loosing the idea of musicianship? I don’t know… But man, those early records seem to have a certain kind of soul that you don’t hear that often now-a-days. I have been recording on tape machines since 1995. They have always felt kind of musical to me. I was afraid of the digital thing for a long time. But then I started thinking that perhaps I had backed myself into an ideological corner so got a pro-tools set up half way through making this latest record. Actually, I live in a small apartment with paper thin walls so in a way I was kind of forced into the convenience of digital recording. Now I use pro-tools but I told myself when I got it that I would just use it like a big multi-track tape machine. I enjoy the art of engineering. I would be bummed if I let a computer have all the fun. There is a fine line between “making art” and “virtually making art”. Nothing against computer music though. Have you heard The Lucky Dragons? Or team YATCH? WOW!

Some people believe that artistic integrity and mainstream appeal are mutually exclusive. What are your thoughts? Do you think an artist should make a living from music if he or she is given the opportunity? What would you say the trade off is?

Everyone runnin’ around actin’ all industry tryin’ to be the next Strokes or the next Bright Eyes annoys me; but at the same time I think that the idea that you have to be some kind of starving artist going broke putting out obscure hard to find specialty vinyl to have any kind of integrity is a silly idea. I think that if you care about what you are doing and if you feel passionately enough about it you will always keep your integrity no matter how many people like you. I get sick of hearing things like, “Oh such and such band used to be cool. But now that they’re on TV they suck.” Sure, the industry has been known to water down and change certain artists approach to make it more marketable and that sucks but that doesn’t necessarily have to be the case.

Music and art should be for EVERYBODY and not just the enlightened hipster. Some people only like things that are esoteric, things that only they are smart enough to know about. And they want to hoard and keep what they deem as “good” music or art all for themselves. Because if everyone knows about it than they couldn’t feel superior for being the only ones knowing about it. Fuck that, they aren’t the only ones who are capable of understanding art. I get tired of that attitude that says that once someone’s mom has heard about a band then that band now sucks. What? My mom or the school teacher down the street don’t deserve to listen to good music just because they aren’t privy to some elite music scene? It is so arrogant to think that they are the only one who gets to like music and once people in the mainstream “get” it than the hipsters are too smart for it. And I would never rip anyone off or make compromises with my art. But some people have bills to pay. So if I could continue to make my music and not have to work a shitty job that keeps me away from my music I would be happy.

I hear that there is a new split in the works. Fill us in.

Yeah, my friend Johny has a band called nerveandgel and he asked me if I wanted to share a 7” record with him. I’m excited about it because nerveandgel scares the shit out of me. It should be out in about a month or so. The song that I put on it is one that I wish that I would have written in time to be on my latest album but what can you do. I am honored that my music will share a disc with nerveandgel.

Is it possible for an interviewer to ask you about your band line up without completely boring you to tears? Because I hear there have been quite a few members…

It works like this. I write songs and I try to get who ever I can to play my songs with me. People come, play for a while and when their life takes them in a different direction they go. It was never like, “let’s start this band with these specific members.” It’s more like, “Hey I have this show coming up… I was wondering if you wanted to play banjo on such and such song and drums on this or that song.” There has been up to 7 people playing at live shows. But… people have their own lives and I don’t blame them for not wanting to devote their lives to my music like I do. At the moment I play mostly solo shows because I live in a small apartment and I don’t have any place for a band to practice. In fact, I can barely practice my solo stuff in my little apartment without my neighbors getting mad and pounding on the walls. So really the main place I get to play is on a live stage.

Besides the split and the Vanderslice show, what else can we expect to see/hear in the near future?

Shit tons! I want to try to play in Europe and in Japan next year. I never have but my friends always seem to have a good time there. And of course, I write songs so I’m sure there will be more albums…

Websites
Love Letter Band Website
Happy Happy Birthday to Me Records

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